Paintless dent repair, PDR: For dents that are fairly small and not deep, a dent repair kit may be an inexpensive and simple solution. These kits are available at any auto parts store and tend to be very user friendly — instructions are always included. The best part is that they usually cost under $40. Most include several stems for various sized dents, a glue gun and a knockdown tool. You may be surprised at how well the kit works and how professional the result looks. We don’t recommend this kit for large, deep dents — you might cause even more damage trying to fix those with a kit.
First let’s start with some car paint care tricks: For small dents on your car hood, a car dent repair kit may be a simple and inexpensive solution. You can easily find these kits at any local auto supply store and they are very user-friendly. Each kit often includes a knockdown tool, a glue gun and many stems for different sized dents. You may be surprised at the way the kit works and the professional result it makes. But we do recommend this kid for small dents only. For deep, large dents, it is better if you take your car to garage as the repair kit can not fix them and even cause more damage.
Don’t underestimate the necessary step of decontamination prior to application of your chosen wax. If you fail to do this step, you will get disappointing results regardless of the type of wax you have chosen. And yes…even that brand new car straight off the dealer lot will in have some form of pollutants already on the car paint from its travel from the factory to the car dealership. Clear coat is the top layer of your cars paint. It acts as a protective layer to filter out UV rays. But your clear coat is what you are trying to take care of with the above requirements. People get confused about clear coat vs. car paint. Virtually every car today is finished with a clear coat as the top layer. Think of it as car paint with no color added to it.
Only three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and getting a dent in your car or truck. Even if you’re as careful as possible, you can’t always account for runaway shopping carts, wrongly thrown footballs, out-of-nowhere light posts, and other real-life annoyances. However you got your dent or ding, the next thing on your mind is, undoubtedly, how to get it out. Sure, you can take it to a body shop or friendly neighborhood mechanic for repair, but their price quotes can be unbelievable, especially if they want to remove the paint first or use body filler. $200 for that tiny dent?! I don’t think so.
Using the Right Wax. Since each type of paint reacts differently to wax and polish, you need to find out which paint was used on your car and purchase detailing products that suit the paint. Some products may act as abrasive agents and strip the car off its original shine. Find extra info on Auto Repair Colorado Springs.
If you are considering learning the skill of how to do paintless dent repair, it’s important to understand that it isn’t simply a matter of “popping” a dent out and expecting that the body will be perfect again. PDR involves a very slow and methodical process that requires special tools, a certain level of knowledge and skill, and a great deal of patience. Some dent repairs, even on small dents, can take up to two hours.
So, we’ve explained what the procedure looks like — assuming it was done properly. And as you could probably guess there are a lot of ways an amateur or first-timer can get it wrong. It’s different than most other car repairs because it’s not about mechanical prowess; it’s more about control and the ability to maintain a steady hand and a gentle pace. You can’t rush it. The problem is, once a sheet metal repair starts to go awry, you’re usually much, much worse off than if you’d just left it alone. Metal holds its shape, but only to a certain point. Let’s say you get a dent in the hood — nothing too drastic, just a shallow, even dent with no sharp creases in an area that’s pretty easy to reach. You think it’ll be easy to pop it out on your own, so you begin to massage the underside while holding your shaping tool in place. You’ve made good progress so far, and a casual observer wouldn’t even notice the flawed area. But it’s not exactly perfect, and since it’s been fairly easy to this point, you decide to keep massaging the area to make it flawless. After a few more minutes of massaging, you realize that you’ve pushed it just a little too far. And now you’ve got this flabby area on the hood where you stretched out the metal. And there’s no easy way to shrink it back down. Keep going and it’ll stretch even more. Lesson learned.