Having an unfortunate encounter with a stray shopping cart or hail can easily ruin the pristine look of your car. With your once beautiful bodywork now marred with dents, many will be desperate to try and remedy the situation as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) allows for an effective and affordable repair of most dents found around your car. Before the widespread use of PDR, dealing with dents would require technicians to fill in the uneven spots with body filler and then try to match the color of the car’s original paint. This tedious process doesn't address the underlying dent in your body panel and, many times, would be easy to spot due to the difficulty of matching factory paint.
Paintless Dent Removal improves upon many aspects of regular dent repair, most notable of which is the lack of needing to repaint your car.
How Does It Work
Using a variety of hammers, picks, glues, and tabs, a technician will manipulate the body panel back into its original shape. This is typically done by pushing the metal from the underside of the panel back up. However, in situations where that is difficult, special paint-safe glue can be used to leverage the dent from the exterior side.
While the process might sound simple, it takes a lot of finesse from technicians as they precisely move the metal back into its original shape, accounting for the original curves of the car.
Benefits
● Cost Savings. Compared to traditional dent repair, a paintless dent repair comes in at a lower cost due to there not being a need for body filler, sanding, or repainting.
● No Color-Matching. Any repair work requiring repainting is a nightmare when trying to match the original vehicle paint. Poorly chosen colors can be just as noticeable as an unrepaired dent. With PDR, there’s no worry about color-matching.
● Quicker. As there are fewer steps in the repair process, a Paintless Dent Repair will typically be done much quicker.
● Retain Resale Value. If you have a collector car, you know the importance of the original paint on the final value. Since there is no repainting, you’ll be able to retain the car’s value.
Is It Worth It?
Paintless Dent Removal is the best way to repair your car for the vast majority of day-to-day dents. The cost savings, quicker turnaround, and retention of the original paint are hard for traditional dent removal to match against.
However, PDR is not a magic bullet for every type of dent. While the majority of dents can be fixed with PDR, there are certain types of dents that will require different methods.
The most obvious type of dent that can’t be fixed with PDR are ones that have had the paint removed. PDR can’t regenerate paint, so these types of dents need to be repainted; otherwise, you will have bare metal. Additionally, dents that are significantly deep, complex in shape, or have resulted in stress cracking will also be difficult to repair with PDR.
As previously stated, however, these cases are in the minority, and most dents will be fixable with Paintless Dent Removal