My son's girlfriend had a deer strike with her beater '88 Acura Legend sedan last week, and the deer hit the car right where the left front fender and driver's door come together. The deer hit pretty good and she could not longer get the door open so she had been crawling over the console to get out. My son Alex mentioned to me that the body shop quoted her $ 300 to make it so the door would open so she could get in the car (without fixing the dents).

Knowing she didn't have any money, and the whole car is worth only about $ 800 I said "Have Denise bring it over here and I bet I can make it so she can open that door and get in the car, let's see if we can save her some money."

So last night she comes over at 8:11 p.m. We pull the car into the garage so I can get it under the light and her and Alex are standing around watching as I assess the situation. I study the damaged area until 8:12 p.m., then walk over to my tool box and pull out my BOSOPB. (that's Big-Ole-Snap-On-Pry-Bar). With the BOSOPB firmly in hand, I position between front fender and door edge and then give it one 45 degree wedge push, then re-position 30 degrees lower and push again. At precisely 8:14 p.m. I'm all done. The door opens smooth and clean. Total time in the garage to fix : 3 minutes. I put a quart of oil in her car and aired up her tires just to make the experience more complete...so that took another 5 minutes.

The kids were shocked. She says "Why was the body shop going to charge me $ 300 to do what you did in less than a minute?"

I said "Because they can is why. Now you can see that sometimes you can just do things yourself and use that money for something else." They were both stunned as they stood there that I did that in such as short amount of time.

It's always fun to be a Garage Hero.