Paintless Dent Repair

[The Knize]

Anyone have any experience with DYI paintless dent repair? Any thoughts? I bought a bunch stuff on Temu: glue gun, glue tabs of all sorts, sliding hammer puller, lever puller, and a hammer and tap down tool, which I truly do not know how to use. I have not bought any of those come from behind the body panel rods. I think for me to start pulling out grommets, pulling interior panels, and the like, much less drilling access holes seems the way to madness. I have not bought a special line projecting light.

Anyway, it seems kind of fun, but hard to get very effective at it. I am getting better at getting the glue tabs to adhere, but I sense that if I could get them to do better I might be onto something. I am not looking to get our cars perfect. I think I do have them looking better. It is time consuming.

Anyone have any thoughts. Those guys are You Tube seem to be extraordinarily skilled. Real artists. This is way harder than they make it look. I will probably end up going to a pro or having one come to me.

 

[Toothpick]

I bought a bunch stuff on Temu

No experience with your situation. But good luck!

 

[ColtRevolver]

I have dabbled with it. I have had moderate success with glue tabs. I have a pneumatic slide hammer dent puller that I picked in case I ever need to pull a dent out of my travel trailer. Never needed it for that, though. I have used it on a car panel. It did good pulling the dent out to make things look better. Not good, but better.

 

[The Knize]

how does your pneumatic slide hammer attach to whatever it is pulling? glue? if so, you are getting better adhesion than I am!

 

[ColtRevolver]

It creates suction from an air hose.

 

[The Knize]

It creates suction from an air hose.

interesting!

 

[ColtRevolver]

Yep, works kinda like the vacuum pump I have that creates suction from an air hose. I use it to vacuum down car AC systems before adding refrigerant.

 

[The Knize]

As far as I can tell, if one buys the right glue tab set up one can really pull out a lot of dents of various sizes and locations. Enough glue tabs will do that! A testament to modern car paint finishes I suppose. However getting the area of the dent to look exactly like it originally did takes an art I do not possess or even understand, and may require going behind the panel. Also, if the dent goes through a crease in the car boady or makes its own crease, things get more difficult. Still you can make things look a lot better than simply leaving the dent alone. And that may be good enough for me.

I have no experience with professional PDR service providers. But I may soon. Does make a lot of sense to me that they can fix things for a lot less expense and hassle. Bondo, sanding, matching paint, etc. is a big production not guaranteed to produce good results. And replacing entire panels plus painting is never going to be inexpensive.

It is fun to play with.

 

[Columbo]

Anyone have any experience with DYI paintless dent repair? Any thoughts? I bought a bunch stuff on Temu: glue gun, glue tabs of all sorts, sliding hammer puller, lever puller, and a hammer and tap down tool, which I truly do not know how to use. I have not bought any of those come from behind the body panel rods. I think for me to start pulling out grommets, pulling interior panels, and the like, much less drilling access holes seems the way to madness. I have not bought a special line projecting light.

Anyway, it seems kind of fun, but hard to get very effective at it. I am getting better at getting the glue tabs to adhere, but I sense that if I could get them to do better I might be onto something. I am not looking to get our cars perfect. I think I do have them looking better. It is time consuming.

Anyone have any thoughts. Those guys are You Tube seem to be extraordinarily skilled. Real artists. This is way harder than they make it look. I will probably end up going to a pro or having one come to me.

Been using PDR for over 20 years now. It's as much an art as a science. The best ones are pure miracle workers, and have been doing it for many years. Those are ones you look for when it's a special car.

Like everything else requiring skill, some are magicians, others perhaps not quite as good. Even those who are not the very best find plenty of work handing dealer hail and routine lot dings.

One I used a number of years back on a vintage vehicle, who won national awards, and taught all the others in our region, charged $300, for less than 15 minutes of actual work. And it was worth every penny, as the traditional repair would have cost many thousands, and the resale value of the vehicle would have been forever impaired.

He then did a quick walk around, and located a couple small 'flaws' I didn't even know were there, and rubbed them out in a few seconds each.

The trick is to have them avoid drilling access holes. With the glue sticks, that is now very rare.

Cars are different now, with lighter sheet metals, which is what allowed PDR to flourish. The closest I think they did it back in the day was inflating a basketball or football inside a dented door, and hoping the thing would pop back out. The heavier sheet metal then made it work some of the time, often not. But never like today's industry can with the thinner metals. There was always some refinishing required.

Otherwise, we would drill a hole, and use a screw-in hammer rod tool to pull them out. And then came the filler and refinishing. Glad those days are long gone.