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Watched a guy in Chattanooga pull a quarter panel with a come-along and a tree
Stopped at a Walmart parking lot last Tuesday and saw this old timer straightening a wrecked fender on a Chevy using a come-along strapped to a pine tree, no frame machine in sight. He got the line decent in about 20 minutes and said it's how he did it for 30 years, but I can't see how that holds up for panel gaps or corrosion down the road. Am I crazy for thinking this is a hack job, or do any of y'all still do real pulls like that when a rack isn't around?
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valthomas1mo ago
That tree pull is a classic redneck fix, I saw the same thing outside a body shop in Knoxville back in 2015. The guy had a 2x4 and a ratchet strap on a Ford, not even a come-along. The thing is, that method gets the metal close, but it doesn't account for the natural spring back or how the metal is stretched, so you end up with waves and filler. I've known guys who did it that way for decades and their work looked fine from ten feet, but once you ran a magnet over it or checked the gaps with a wedge, you could tell. It's the same pattern with everything these days, people skip the proper tools and call it experience, but experience is knowing why the rack matters, not just how to make a tree work.
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