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In the Workshop - Body Damage

 

Through its racing life the Rav has received a fair amount of body damage. If you look closely at the historical photos in the Gallery you will see a number of notable accidents ...

 

May 2008 - Jean de la Fontaine

Roll, dented roof, dented bonnet, broken windscreen on driver side.

 

November 2009 - Plaines and Vallees

Roll onto passenger side and roof resulting in the loss of a headlight, damage to the front wing, broken windscreen on the passenger side, bent rear suspension but continued to finish.

 

November 2010 - plaines and valliees 

The 'big' accident. Scrapes on roof and side, dented roof, drivers and rear door damaged beyond repair. Fireglass filler patch over a large dent from another accident!

 

 

When I took possession of the Rav, visually it was a bit of a mess. It wasn't much to look at, and taking it on was a bit of a leap of faith! Having seen the pictures of it from the past, and always had the idea in the back of my mind that I wanted a Rav4 for competiton, I jumped in.

 

My plan was never to make the Rav look showroom perfect - Comp Safari racing is hard on a vehicle so I just wanted to make it look presentable. In some ways the fact the car has 'lead a life' and already been rolled a number of times made my job easier as there were clearly going to be limitations to what could be achieved.

 

Following the big 2010 accident the minimum had been done to get the car driving again. The front wings, and been beaten back into shape, the rear door, which has had the glass broken and been almost torn off was replaced and the damaged drivers door was also replaced. The rest of the car still showed a lot of damage. The roof was dented in behind the driver, and the A, B and C pillars had a lot of dents.

 

I started by replacing the wings, before tackling the roof. Using various props and a hydraulic jack I was able to jack the roof back into shape, and after drilling a few tactical holes in the in the internal pressing I was able to push out some of the dents in the B & C pillars, ending up with a shap that is more or less what a Rav4 should look like!

 

 

The next step was to deal with the dents and the messy repair in the rear quarter panel. There was a significant excess of filler repair (it looked like Isopon P40) that needed to be ground down before several rounds of sanding, priming and filling the deeper scratches. This area of the car had already been damaged a few times, the first back in 2006, so there was quite a few layers of old filler and repairs to navigate and make good. Once a reasonable finish was achieved, it was time for a coat of red. 

 

 

UPDATE : And later in 2025, here is the finished result (after the repaint was completed and with graphics applied) :