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Bay Door Damaged
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Al: This is obviously a case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
If this were my coach, I’d find a skilled metal fabricator in my area. Often you find them involved with motorsports. Those guys and gals are skilled at “cutting back” (taking off and taking apart) until they get to “good stuff” (straight stuff that wasn’t bent in the incident) and then coming back to make it as good as new.
It appears to me that the door is essentially a number of “layers”: rub rail and skin (both stainless steel), back of door (looks like plywood to me), and the frame (probably mild steel welded together that everything fastens too). In additional it looks like there are some small trim pieces.
As Jon pointed out, a Metal Mangler might be able to straighten, pound out, and polish some or all of the stainless steel (something I’d like to watch happen!) so it looks like new. Or you should be able to obtain those pieces from Steve Kolb at International Bus Parts along with the small trim pieces. The fabricator should be able to easily straighten/rebuild the steel frame.
Keep us posted. Good luck!
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Al,
You can also give Walter D’Andrea a call :
A few years ago we damaged the drivers side rear engine door trying to get into a way too tight spot. A really good hot rod metal artist guy in Sierra Vista, AZ, said he could repair it by removing the door (easy to do), removing the skin (not so easy to do), making custom rollers to match the skin profile (not at all easy to do), rolling the skin back to form, then cutting and welding the frame back to original (which takes real skill to do correctly) and finally replacing the repaired skin with the correct kinds of rivets and polishing it to match the rest of the SS.
He also said not to go to all that work and expense because the dent was not all that noticeable most of the time and over time we would see it less and less. That is what we did and have not regretted it since.
Your damage looks way worse than ours was/is, however.
Jerry
thank you Guys . Bought a Home after too many years as a full timer so we have been busy. Nice change to spend 7k on a living room set and other home needs instead of a Generator 🙂
So next week plan to decide where to take her and have some repairs upgrades done prior to our 6 week summer run . Thank you again for all the suggestions .
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