Steve, has your mouth been washed out with Fels-Naphtha soap? Or were you able to contain yourself?

Try getting on top of a table (i.e., heavy like a picnic table) and with one of those suction cup gizmos like body shops use to suck out a similar kind of depressed area, try to pop it out. You could try it first with a very large "plumber's friend" suction cup which once worked for me. However, if there is a crease in the skin, it will almost surely remain even if the depressed area does pop out. Some people have tried dry ice (but protect the skin from any direct contact, and by all means protect your own skin!) Place it over the dent, but don't expect a miracle because yours sounds to be fairly large.

Conversely, heat will sometimes pop it out, but again you don't want to apply it directly to the skin. Over a period of time, heat from the sun will occasionally and slowly restore the damaged area.

Yours is a Vintage Airstream and if you want to restore it badly enough, and these homemade remedies don't work, your only recourse is to replace the damaged panel. Those panels can be custom ordered from jim.sharon@airmarktools.net and it is possible to replace them yourself, but it is a major job drilling out and replacing all of those rivets.

Furthermore, they are known as Olympic rivets, much larger and of different design than the usual pop rivets, and requiring a special tool to replace the new head to its polished and rounded finish. Only a shop that repairs damaged Airstreams will have the knowledge and equipment to restore that panel to its original appearance--and by all means you should have the replacement panel fabricated by Jim Weston (Airmark Tools). He is located at Tulsa, OK.

Good luck; a reversal of your experience up to this point! Makes me sick to even scratch one. If I can help in any other way,let me hear from you.

Donald Kribbs