Kia Soul Collision Repair

October 10th, 2015

I worked on my sister's Kia for about 8 hours.I wasn't expecting it to take as much work as it did. I did an oil change and re glued her center mirror back on and then set to work on her fender. She got hit while it was parked at school and the person didn't leave a note or anything. It dented her fender in pretty bad and she could only open her door about 30 degrees. 

(I didn't have a before picture but this is what it's supposed to look like minus the pinstripe)

So my goal was to get the fender off and bent closer to what is should be and have her be able to fully open her door. It ended up taking a lot more work than I thought it would. 

As it turns out to remove the fender you also have to remove

- Both headlights

- The front bumper

- The wheel and tire
- Some other protective panels 

- and the wheelwell liner. 

(Notice the jack, jack stand and tire are under the car in case anything were to go wrong)

After I removed the fender I beat it with a dead-blow hammer and a metal working hammer and a small anvil and test fitted it numerous times. Unfortunately the small grille in the fender (visible in picture 1) would no longer fit and I couldn't modify it because if we ever order a new fender it won't come with is so it would be better to save and reuse it than modify it to fit the current fender.

Instead I cut a piece of plastic to fit the hole and zip tied it to the fender in three places before sealing the hole with the pinnacle of all shade-tree mechanic and NASCAR tech equipment; good old duct tape.

It came out looking OK but not great but the goal was function not form, even a pro bodyshop would have just bought and painted a new fender instead of trying to fix it, I had to make the best of what we had as our Dad didn't want to buy her a new fender. 

So, what did I learn on Saturday:

1. Bodywork can really suck

2. To their credit Kia made it pretty straightforward to remove the bodywork

3. Almost every bolt on a Kia is a 10 millimeter

4. It's always better to work on a car when the person appreciates what your doing (Sam thanked me numerous times and took me out to dinner)