Hi Guys,
So a nut fell on the hood of my car while driving creating a pretty small dent on it. I got estimates of about $200 to $300 to repair but thought I could do this myself. I found decent PDR dent repair kits on Amazon for around $40 that use the glue to pull on the dents but the repair guys seem to think because our hood is aluminum it can be tricky to fix it. Anyone here have any experience with these?

 

The pros do a similar method. How many dents do you have? You should be able to find someone for $25-40 a dent.

 

I have one dent, pretty small and no paint damage, I got 3 estimates and each one is in 200-300 range. I don't think I can find anything cheaper not in my area anyways.

 

Do you know anyone who works or owns a car dealership? That's way too high a price.

 

You might end up in the $50-75 range as it's not really worth someone's effort to work on just one little dent. But totally agree that $200+ is too much. Is that for pdr people coming out to you? If you take it somewhere it's probably cheaper vs having them drive out to you

Aluminium is harder to work than steel but a good pdr person will have no problem making it look like new

 

Almost guaranteed that you have more than that one dent on your car. PDR tech's can find the most minuscule dents. I bet if you say "take out whatever you see", they'll have enough business to make it worth their effort.

 

only one of them would come out, but the price is the same for onsite or come to me from this one, and he says upper 200s so probably 300 range. The other two said about 200 as well and very long drives for me. I would prefer to do it myself if it is not too difficult. I only have this one dent, if there are others then they are not visible and I don't care to fix them

 

Found a guy in NYC to fix a dime sized dent. He charged me $80. Also, asked me if a body is an aluminum. Then, he took a torch heated up an area for a bit and 4 minutes later the dent was fixed 100%. Others wanted $125-$150 didn't even want to bargain. He came to me as well.

 

It may be an idea to check whether the glue can be used on a painted panel. Most of the kits I have seen specify unpainted (bare metal) only.

Aluminium is notorious for stretching when hit by something. Best to carefully check for creases, even very small ones, in the dent. If you find some I would strongly recommend you get the job done professionally as pulling a creased dent can be very difficult to get right.
Cheers,
Cubist

 

I just had a dent pullled on my f type. It was a pretty nasty one on the rear quarter panel (or third panel for the f type, I suppose) at about shin height, some ***** had knocked it with a metal paint bucket in my office parking spot (grr) and then didnt bother to leave a note. Anyway to get to the point of it, the dent fixer ("the Dentonator") who was an awesome guy was saying that he could try pulling it with glue or go in through the door jam (essentially) and push it out. I got the impression that the glue was likely a better result but if there was any paint scuffing there was a small risk that the paint would come off with it. Because there was a very small amount of scuffing to the clearcoat from the ***** painters f*@n bucket (I seriously hope that that ****** gets the clap and his dick falls off) and given the cost of a panel beater job which would include the car being off the road for a week and virtually pulled apart, I went with the latter. It worked pretty much perfectly.

I wouldnt stuff around with it myself, but then I'm not particularly handy.

 

I have used a Dent King I bought years ago that uses the hot glue. As long as the vehicle has original paint. In other words not been repainted, it should not lift the paint. I pulled many Large, and Small dents on cars, trucks, and motorcycles, with almost always excellent results. Small dents as you are describing are the easiest, most usually only requiring one pull. The softball sized dent in my motorcycle gas tank, took a little more time, and numerous pulls, but was 98% effective. So yes you can definitely pull them yourself. Hope it helps.

Jack

 

any chance I could get his contact info? he may work in NJ?

 

pretty sure when they say paintless it doesn't mean there should not be paint on the car..... I always thought it means you can fix a dent when you don't need to get repainted? I have seen many videos of people using these and every time there is paint on the car..... but now you make me think why it says paintless after all lol

 

Paintless Dent Removal is irrespective of whether the surface is painted or not.

 

No, you were right...it means you don't have to paint it after you're done. Theoretically it beats hammering out a dent, filling, sanding, and painting. They do need to get behind the body panel though. The one time I had it done, it was near the fuel filler and he didn't have enough room to work up next to it in back. Didn't come out perfectly so he didn't charge me anything.

 

I feel your pain, the current one I got was a day after Christmas in the shopping mall garage and it was a "pure" dent perfect shape no clear damage. Eight years ago before the current Jag someone put a golf sized dent on the passenger side door a few weeks later I got the car. A month later, the one similar to yours an inch wide scraped off the clear and the location was next to the gas tank lid. In order to get an access a repairman had to remove the tail light and punctured a hole in the wheel well plastic (covered it with a plug later). The repair itself came out 99% except I had to touch up the clear coat damage, "thanks" to carel@ss strangers.