Here's what I'm starting with - an extremely ugly passenger side fender. It has so many colors, I can't tell if it has any dents.

It will be impossible to smooth out the wrinkles in these body panels until the rough surface rust is gone. It's so rough to the touch, you can't hardly tell where the dents start and stop.

I'm not sure why these big globs of filler were smeared on the car. Looking at the back side of the fender, I can't see any sign of dents that were filled.

This is my first attempt at sanding on body panels, so I went through a lot of methods. First was using 100 grit sandpaper by hand. That helped me to feel out the dents, but it was really slow. I soon switched to using a cheapy plastic sandpaper holder thing that I originally used over 5 years ago to sand on the car while it was still in the barn. Yes, I was anxious to get started!

Good grief, it's a lot of work to get rid of all that nasty stuff! I was getting pretty tired by this point!

Sanding by hand didn't last too much longer. I switched to the die grinder with a course sanding pad that I got at Harbor Freight, but that wore out quickly. I eventually got the rest of fender mostly smoothed out, and mounted back on the car out of the way. I need a DA sander!