recently, a hi-lift related incident left a pretty deep gash in my driver side door. at first it didn't really bother me as it's purely cosmetic for now.

what i'm concerned about is since it is so deep (down to the primer) will it start to rust and flake? what should i do to prevent this? add some touch-up paint to it myself, or would it be best to take it to a pro and have them sand it down and repaint? the latter options is obviously more expensive and i will most likely never do it...but i wanted to hear what others suggested.

once again, it's the long term effects that bother me, and i want to get on it right away if there is anything i can do.

bare metal will rust if not covered. If your truck is in pretty good shape over all (mine still looks brand new) I would let a pro do it.

If it's already banged up and you don't mind that your own repair may not look perfect then go for it. Bare metal may require priming for the paint to stick - haven't had to deal with a scratch that bad yet. Some searching around with google will probably yield lots of advice on doing it yourself.

Oh, and a lot of the ding removal places like DentPro will also do touch up work. I had a friend use dentpro to repair a pretty bad gash and they did an excellent job and was half the price of a traditional auto-body shop.

Touch up paint and Langka.