Project Ron Burgundy: Rainy Day Body Repair

By Justin Banner - December 15, 2015

In the introduction article, you saw that Ron Burgundy’s body is in rather rough shape. So, what does one do when they have no real body repair experience and wants to fix their vehicle? We begin to answer that question and see what we can really do with a hot glue gun.

For a $1000 truck, Ron Burgundy is actually not in horrible shape but there are spots that are rather tough or even impossible to get to because of their locations. The one that had me most worried was the dent on the rear of the cab. There was no way to get to it with a dolly and hammer it out and figured I would either have to use a stud welder and pull it that way or Bondo over the baseball sized dent. Neither one of those appealed to me but I didn’t know what to do until I saw this video.

Now, where he used wood screws and several wood dowels, I decided to find a kit that would let me do it but without spending over $100 on a tool that I was probably only going to use once or twice after this. $12 later at a local Harbor Freight and I had a kit that included a hot glue gun, puller, and a couple of adapters. Then, I’m sure like you are thinking right now, “oh, great, you’re getting what you’re paying for. Crap.” Well, turns out this damn thing actually works.

I could probably do more with the roof, but I’ll look into it a little later but I feel like it is far better and now small enough that body filler can become an option.

Then I decided, “what the hell, let’s try to pull that dent in the right front fender.” It warns you that it doesn’t work on all dents in the instructions, but even this large bend here wasn’t too big for this job. Within four pulls I got it pretty straight and began thinking about getting to the lower right of the cab when…

Rain. Great, the one thing it’s not supposed to do in Southern California and it does it on the night I wanted to get some of these panels straight. Oh, well, guess I’ll have to knock the rest out in the morning. Some observations with the kit, though, you should try to clean off the spot you want to apply the glue just as the instructions say. If not, the glue will not hold.

Your paint really needs to be in perfect condition, guess what isn’t on my S10. A couple of spots pulled the paint down to bare metal but Ron needs a paint job anyhow. Finally, I’d rather have seen a glue gun that actually pulled the glue back rather than allow it to continue to pool out. Pulling on the glue stick helped until it was too short to reach.

Finally, I wanted to point out a really nice pair of non-tool items I used while working on Ron so far. The first is the ReFuel 7800 MaH battery pack. It let me continue to listen to my music and use my phone’s light for extended periods and not drain my battery. I actually used it on my way to Buttonwillow for Super Lap Battle, too, and it let my phone’s battery last the entire trip. It didn’t even drain down as its indicator was still showing three lights and I used it on the way home.

The second is this XT Bluetooth Outdoor Speaker. It’s a waterproof mono speaker that lasts for ten-hours and allows for hands free calling at the same time. It also features a threaded bottom that’s designed to allow it to mount to a bike but it’s also the same thread pitch as most any tripod…

Which I mounted mine to an old one I had lying around. So, if you have a mount that uses a 1/4-20 thread pitch screw mount, you can use it on the ReFuel XT Speaker. It will read from your phone up to 33-feet, which is a class 2 Bluetooth range.

Next up for Ron Burgundy will be steering related parts as I will finally install the ZJ Cherokee steering box and install a ZJ intermediate shaft to gain some important header clearance in the engine bay. Then begin to take a look at the QA1 Race Control Arms for the S10. For now, Stay Classy.