Anyone here do Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) or take stab at doing it?

TTQ B4U

TTQ B4U

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I was looking at our van the other day and after 10yrs and two kids and daycare (likely where most of the small dings originated) I counted nearly 12 dents and dings, most all of which are minor and look simple enough to remove.

I've had great luck on two occasions simply brining my vehicles to a Dent Removal Place near me but at an average of $85 per ding it wasn't cheap. They will give me a "break" in price for the van but the total still came to nearly $800+ for all of them.

I'm fine with them as it's just a van and they are like battle wounds. The paint is spectacular and it looks great regardless, but I've been toying with the idea of buying one or two of the various kits available for home use to attempt to knock out a few if not all of them. Heck, prices are cheap enough that it's nearly worth it even if I can pull only a couple of them out.

Just curious if anyone here has had experience with the?

Reviews seem pretty good and most offer a money back offer if not satisfied so I'm thinking there's not much too lose?

Insight and experience from folks here appreciated.

here's a link to a handful of them.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_...+Dent+Removal&qid=1472648845&sort=review-rank
 
I used the harbor freight dent cross bar dent repair kit on my Mazda a few weeks ago. While it didn't remove the dents, it did make them less obvious. The glue tabs are just too big to pull out the small dings I was going for. Also, the glue is kind of crap.
 
Well the kit came in on time and a friend of mine and I are going to test it out this weekend on his truck and our van.

Seems pretty solid for a China Made kit. Tools aren't Mac Quality but they are decent and hopefully will get the job done. The glue sticks are under the LED Light. Instructions are sparse but good enough.

The slide hammer is like 5lbs so it's a good size one. Should pull well on a larger dent. My buddy has one on his fender and I have a small wide depression on the rear quarter of the van where my wife tagged the side of the garage one time.

Worst case I hate it and return it and/or end up with an outty instead of an inny :)

 
pdqgp said:
I was looking at our van the other day and after 10yrs and two kids and daycare (likely where most of the small dings originated) I counted nearly 12 dents and dings, most all of which are minor and look simple enough to remove.

I've had great luck on two occasions simply brining my vehicles to a Dent Removal Place near me but at an average of $85 per ding it wasn't cheap. They will give me a "break" in price for the van but the total still came to nearly $800+ for all of them.

I'm fine with them as it's just a van and they are like battle wounds. The paint is spectacular and it looks great regardless, but I've been toying with the idea of buying one or two of the various kits available for home use to attempt to knock out a few if not all of them. Heck, prices are cheap enough that it's nearly worth it even if I can pull only a couple of them out.

Just curious if anyone here has had experience with the?

Reviews seem pretty good and most offer a money back offer if not satisfied so I'm thinking there's not much too lose?

Insight and experience from folks here appreciated.

here's a link to a handful of them.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_...+Dent+Removal&qid=1472648845&sort=review-rank
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Jeez dude they are ripping you off at that price. I have a guy here in Arizona who is absolutely spectacular. He got a really deep dent out of my truck (like 2 months after I bought it new too) and I was amazed. Did it for $50. We just picked up 2014 Ford Escape in great shape, but it had 7 small dents around the vehicle. He took them ALL out for $125. He let me watch him do it too...he just had an array of long metal bars that he uses to get them out...accesses the dents through various holes in the doors or through the windows. He also uses some sort of plastic punch tool and a soft blow hammer...Anyways, her Escape looks BRAND new after he did that...and it is a black vehicle too. Can't wait to detail it with some Menzerna or something.
 
CC268 said:
Jeez dude they are ripping you off at that price. I have a guy here in Arizona who is absolutely spectacular. He got a really deep dent out of my truck (like 2 months after I bought it new too) and I was amazed. Did it for $50. We just picked up 2014 Ford Escape in great shape, but it had 7 small dents around the vehicle. He took them ALL out for $125. He let me watch him do it too...he just had an array of long metal bars that he uses to get them out...accesses the dents through various holes in the doors or through the windows. He also uses some sort of plastic punch tool and a soft blow hammer...Anyways, her Escape looks BRAND new after he did that...and it is a black vehicle too. Can't wait to detail it with some Menzerna or something.
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Tell me about it. Here in my area $60-80 per ding with a slight break if you have more per-panel is common. I have used them in the past with perfect success. Even one on my Audi the very first week I got the car was done in like 3 minutes.

Yes, using the push tools is easy and often easier than glue pulling, but I'm not wanting to invest what is needed to do that. If this was gong to be a side-gig I absolutely would but this is more for personal use. If I can pull 3 out and make my money back I'll be happy. I'm feeling pretty good about getting most all of them out though as they are very shallow and not creased or chipped. Almost like the other car's door was resting on our van just enough to dent it.

Hey, I'm always up for a new challenge!
 
Tell your kids to be more careful with the doors :xyxthumbs:

Although I'm guessing most the time it is OTHER people who dent them.
 
CC268 said:
Tell your kids to be more careful with the doors

Although I'm guessing most the time it is OTHER people who dent them.
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Child locks.....I use them to keep not just my kids but any passenger from putting dent in either my door or another car. Priceless for kids. I even put black tape over the switch on the cars so they can't get wise and turn them back off. :xyxthumbs:

The ones in our van are likely from when the kids were little and my wife still worked and they were at day care. Whenever I would pick them up or drop off, I was the A-hat that would park diagonally in the far corner away from everyone. Van is gong on 11yrs old.
 
Prices differ a lot.Theres a guy that will charge per panel,if you have 3 dents in that one panel it's 50.00.Thought about tooling around with the idea of using pdr as additional income.The promblem is all the training guys want thousands of dollars for a 3 day class.one guy wanted $40,000 out in California.a majority of clients don't care about dents so it would take for ever on roi.To many pdr guys around me that are good.Dealers pay 20.00 for you to go around a used unit.Its a good skill to have but if I have to second mortgage my house I will pass.
 
GSKR said:
Prices differ a lot.Theres a guy that will charge per panel,if you have 3 dents in that one panel it's 50.00.Thought about tooling around with the idea of using pdr as additional income.The promblem is all the training guys want thousands of dollars for a 3 day class.one guy wanted $40,000 out in California.a majority of clients don't care about dents so it would take for ever on roi.To many pdr guys around me that are good.Dealers pay 20.00 for you to go around a used unit.Its a good skill to have but if I have to second mortgage my house I will pass.
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I"m with you on the costs. I understand it's a finely crafted skill and I'd love to take the training even if for nothing else other than learning something new. I like you can't justify doing it for those costs though.

wkndwarrior89 said:
How did the pdr kit work out?
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Worked out pretty well. I counted 13 dings and dents in the van and got 8 of them out. 2 nearly perfect, 2 95-98% and the rest about 90-95%. The downside is I did make two worse but not to badly. Instead of an inny they are outties and I can't seem to knock-down the high points effectively. There's certainly a skill to using the LED's that come with them and I've watched a number of vids but I just can't seem to get them. What bothers me is these are two that I should have probably just left alone but I couldn't help push it a bit to see if I could really nail them. Being on a huge sliding door that's so smooth and flat, and the fact that I have the thing polished like a mirror area all working against me here.

I'm okay with that as I do plan on taking it to a local place to have that panel, the passenger sliding door, done and fixed. It includes these two that I just couldn't get right and one other. In the end that really shouldn't cost too much and combined with what I achieved, I consider the kit a worthwhile investment in my cabinet. I paid for the kit with just one detail and I took care of a number of dents on five different panels thus saving myself a ton. Unless I point them out or someone is "inspecting" the van, the ones left aren't hardly noticeable.

Not sure where I'll go from here with it. I know I won't be accepting any "jobs" as I'm just a backyard guy with a kit. I do have some friends who want to take a crack at it and I'm fine so long as they do the work and put no liability on me even if I help.
 
pdqgp said:
Well the kit came in on time and a friend of mine and I are going to test it out this weekend on his truck and our van.

Seems pretty solid for a China Made kit. Tools aren't Mac Quality but they are decent and hopefully will get the job done. The glue sticks are under the LED Light. Instructions are sparse but good enough.

The slide hammer is like 5lbs so it's a good size one. Should pull well on a larger dent. My buddy has one on his fender and I have a small wide depression on the rear quarter of the van where my wife tagged the side of the garage one time.

Worst case I hate it and return it and/or end up with an outty instead of an inny :)

Click to expand...

This kit looks to be one of the more complete kits. I didn't notice the slide hammer. A 5 pounder is good most at 3 pounds. Can you PM me where you got this kit? Also when using suction cups heating the panel seems to help. I've actually popped some dents heating the dent and using compressed air (upside down can) to get freon to pop it. Dents need to be in a flat spot on the panel however.
 
I take my vehicles to a dent guy that's been doing it for around 30 years. It's pretty cool watching him work. He tapes a mirror to the body and uses an assortment of old trunk rods. Of course his knees, hands and back are about shot after so many years of doing this.
 
I do PDR. Save your money and time. I have invested over 10k in tools and training. I can't even tell you how many hours practicing on old panels and friend beater cars before I got to a point of comfort to charge for my work. It's nice to add a $60-100 dent to a detail but in hind sight it was not worth it.
 
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