Making repairs with Hustler Pogo Stick.

“Basics of Basics” Pogo stick dent and body pulling. By Brian Martin

After owning a “Pogo Stick” for many years and hardly ever using it I went to work for a very innovative guy who taught me some great uses for the tool that I had never thought of. It quickly became one of my favorite go to tools.

The cool thing about this tool is it allows you to apply even pressure. When you are applying even pressure you can massage out buckles or crowns in surrounding metal. Be it a dent, or a bent structure like a radiator support, being able to apply even pressure while you straighten out the buckles or brows makes all the difference in the world.

The “Hustler” Pogo stick is basically a minor “pulling” device, sort of a baby frame rack. Don’t sell this tool short, it can do some serious work, much more than you ever dreamed you could do by hand. It can be used to pull radiator supports or rear body panels. Repairing crushed rockers and your typical large dents can be made much easier.

The Pogo stick is simply a pipe about 4’ 4” long with a handle at one end and a “foot” at the other. It comes with a chain approximately 6’ long with hooks at each end. The hooks are made from flat steel, one being a single sided and the other a split hook. The hooks on the Pogo stick are the exact same as the split hook on the end of the chain. They are designed to hook a chain on to them. But they also work just fine to hook them onto the part needing to be pulled. The hammer is for size comparison. See photos A, B and C.

I highly recommend taking your new Pogo Stick and removing the rubber foot cover and gluing it onto the Pogo stick with weather-strip adhesive or window urethane. They don’t stay on very well at all and usually fall off very soon after you start using it.

The Pogo stick is a simple leverage tool. You put the foot against something solid (or at least more solid than what you are pulling is all that is needed) hook the chain onto what needs to be pulled and pushing down on the Pogo Stick handle (or up, if the foot is above what is being pulled) and wham, you have a jr frame rack!

You can simply hook the hook over the edge of a piece of metal, wrap the chain around it and hook the hook back to the chain, or my favorite simply putting bolt thru the hook to hold it to something like this radiator support in photo #1.

Photos number 2 and 3 show you how you have two different hooks on your Pogo Stick. They provide different amounts of leverage, and sometimes you have a choice which to use.

Photo #4 shows in ingenious way to hook the chain to a Vice grip. This is an old bodyman’s way of doing things. He welded an “Eye” from the hardware store to the bolt to adjust the Vice Grip! I love this stuff. I have a Vice grip designed for pipes that the chain hooks onto real well. But this is a neat trick.

Photo #5 shows one of my “pulling tabs” for sheet-metal. It’s made from a piece of sheet-metal that I simply weld to the sheet-metal needing to be pulled. I put a little weld bead at a few locations on it where I put the Vice grip so it doesn’t slip off the tab. These tabs can be welded on and removed with a cut off wheel and reused over and over. When the edge gets funky, simply cut off the portion with the welds and use start all over.

Photo #6 Here is a close up of a pull on a dent. In this case my buddy was using a tab designed for pulling that has a tool (the green piece) which slides over a rolled piece on the tab. The foot of the Pogo Stick is put up on the rear inner structure of the bed for this mocked up pull. In this case the dent was stronger than the inner structure and the structure would bend before the dent, you have options and you need to pay attention on where you are putting the foot.

Photo #7 shows how in this case you would be pulling UP on the Pogo Stick.