First off, i screwed up by not taking before and after pictures of this but if anyone has an interest will post a "re-enactment".
Had a clean tail gate that was not hugely bowed in the internal ribs facing the inside of the bed but it did have a noticeable bow along the line at the bottom edge and a weird twist on the upper driver side corner. Took it to a body shop and was told they couldn't off hand think of a fix; that sounded like it might get expense.
Last summer was repainting in the house and noticed a warped door. Googled that and found that a recommended fix was to put the door on saw horses, cover with wet towels and weigh the warped part down with sand bags over night.
Okay why not the caddy tailgate? So got 300lbs of tube sand, a couple of 50lbs square bags of sand that were lying around, 5 concrete blocks, some heavy tarps and the Misses. Laid it out flat first to get the twist. Positioned the twisted corner hanging over the edge of the deck out back, weighed the rest of the tailgate that was resting on the deck with the sand bags, and kneeled/stepped on the corner. Slowly with a couple adjstments, repositioning and progress checks brought the twist out. Next put blocks at the outer edges of the gate so the center was suspended, put another block in the center below the bow (so it could only bend back in as far as the outside edges), and added the sand bags over the center of the lower edge bow. Then i sat on the whole sand bag pile, so had about 600+ lbs of dead weigh. Surprisingly enough it worked. There are some small, shallow dips where i kneeled/stepped on the corner but otherwise it is pretty close too straight. The sand bags spread the weigh out and seemed to prevent the metal elsewhere from flexing/creasing.
Much easier and/or cheaper than splitting the tailgate in half, flattening out each half and then rewelding and grinding it smooth.
Topic: Flattening a bowed tailgate (Read 3166 times)
