Has anyone tried them? Do they work? I have several parking lot dings that annoy me and would like removed, have not got professional quotes yet but these cheap internet tools might just do it? Any recommendations?

 

We had a guy down the street from a bunch of auto repair shops that did paintless dent repair. (he was GOOD)

Good lighting and drills (and knowing where to drill holes) as well as how to manipulate the 'bent-rod-tools'.(and a good assortment)

Takes practice but I guess you can 'go-easy' to see if it works for you.

 

My experience with the “paintless dent removal tools / systems is more observed than direct, although I did experiment on some junk body panels.

I can report that using these methods can be a good way to make the body panel look a lot worse than is was when you started out .

As motorcarman points out, go easy and you might have some luck. But in my opinion, the person that sold you the dent removal kit will have had more luck ($$) than you will.

Z

 

I bought a puller kit with the stick on tabs on ebay about $20 The puller was machined from solid aluminum .Lots of videos on you tube ...I think its like welding you got the have the feel for it ...slowly slowly Kache monkey.
Not tried it yet ..too cold.

 

That's what I'd be afraid of. We get a lot of hail damage around here and I recall when paintless dent repair first started getting popular, there were stories on the news warning about people running around the country following the storms, setting up a canopy in a parking lot, doing a half dozen cars and moving on to the next city, never to be seen again. According to the stories you were taking your chances. They might make the dents smaller, but not go away completely. You'd pay, take your car because you couldn't see that well out in the bright sun, or you'd be thinking it at least looked better and then some night after they'd gone, you'd see the real horror in the fluorescent light of a parking garage.

And speaking of parking garages, I used to work at an old downtown building where the majority of garage spaces were unapologetically marked for "small car only" despite that the Pinto and Chevette were discontinued about the time the structure was built. Of course everybody here drives the biggest SUVs and pickup trucks on the market (I'm guilty, I have one too). It was so bad that they would have a paintless dent repair guy come in a couple of times a year and fix dents right there in the parking garage. It was dark in that garage, so he would have a bunch of lights that looked like he was set up for a photo shoot. So that may be part of it besides just the tools and some junk panels from the boneyard to practice on first, you may need to think about lighting.

I get it. I grew up watching my dad DIY absolutely everything and then retire six years early because he'd saved all that money. Now I'm the ultimate DIY'er myself. I'm that guy who buys a forklift rather than ask someone for help once in a while to unload a heavy item from my pickup truck. My motto is a man can never have too many tools. But some tasks I have to admit to myself that its not the tools that are most essential but the skills to use them. I can read and follow instructions, watch videos and do a pretty fair job of taking things apart and putting them back together, but I figure some tasks are just better left to someone who does it day-in and day-out. I visit my guy at Express Dent seems like about every two years. This reminds me, my truck has two dents that I need to get done this winter before the spring storms hit and he gets busy.

 

Someone put a dent in my Left rear Fender sometime back and I stopped by the BMW Store on the way to work....Just happens that this Guy was there doing some Paintless repair on a Bimmer! He looked at my XKR and said $50.00! About 30 minutes later I paid him and left. That was about 5 years ago and I still can't tell where the Dent was! He said the good thing about where the Dent was helped for a better Job as he was able to open the Boot and could get to the back side....He really did a great job!

If I had the Tools needed, without practice, I doubt I could have done the job! Best to have someone do it for you!

Billy Clyde @ Cinco Ranch