Man...I'm In The Wrong Business!!!

Hmmm...two minutes. The last time I had one taken out of one of my cars the guy told me he used a body hammer and dolly to remove it. I didn't think he did. Now I know he didn't. I've seen the little suction cups...I've heard rumor of heating and then dry ice. Seems to me that heating and dry ice would damage the paint. Do you what method he used?? Sorry to hear about the dent by the way.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
That reminds me of the story of the factory with the production machine that isn't working. They call the repairman, and the boss brings him over to the machine. He looks at it for a minute, takes a hammer out of his toolbox, bangs the side of the machine, and it starts working.

The boss is happy until the repairman hands him a bill for $500. The boss goes ballistic, says "would you care to itemize that bill!?!?" So the repairman takes the bill and writes on it:

Banging on side of machine with hammer: $1
Knowing where to bang: $499
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That is freaking great!!!!! Lmao!!
 
6 or 7+ years ago, a watermelon slipped out of my mom's hands and landed on the rear quarter of her '00 TL and left a huge dent. A local PDR guy came to our work and took it out; he did such a good job you couldn't even tell there was any damage. I sat there slack-jawed in amazement watching this guy work. It was unbelievable.

Plus, he was able to keep this raised edge straight:

View attachment 12741

That's a picture of my '02, but it's pretty well the same car as my mom's '00.
 
fahoumh said:
6 or 7+ years ago, a watermelon slipped out of my mom's hands and landed on the rear quarter of her '00 TL and left a huge dent. A local PDR guy came to our work and took it out; he did such a good job you couldn't even tell there was any damage. I sat there slack-jawed in amazement watching this guy work. It was unbelievable.

Plus, he was able to keep this raised edge straight:

That's a picture of my '02, but it's pretty well the same car as my mom's '00.
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Did he do it with a body hammer and dolly??
 
DaveT435 said:
Did he do it with a body hammer and dolly??
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I think so? He had a variety of tools; I distinctly remember some odd L-shaped tool to reach in from the backside of the panel and he worked the metal back out to shape. He also had one or two mirrors set up on the body to make sure everything looked right. I'm sorry, it's been a while and my memory's a little fuzzy.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
That reminds me of the story of the factory with the production machine that isn't working. They call the repairman, and the boss brings him over to the machine. He looks at it for a minute, takes a hammer out of his toolbox, bangs the side of the machine, and it starts working.

The boss is happy until the repairman hands him a bill for $500. The boss goes ballistic, says "would you care to itemize that bill!?!?" So the repairman takes the bill and writes on it:

Banging on side of machine with hammer: $1
Knowing where to bang: $499
Click to expand...

Ha! that's awesome.
 
fahoumh said:
I think so? He had a variety of tools; I distinctly remember some odd L-shaped tool to reach in from the backside of the panel and he worked the metal back out to shape. He also had one or two mirrors set up on the body to make sure everything looked right. I'm sorry, it's been a while and my memory's a little fuzzy.
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WOW!! If he did that using those types of tools he is a true artist. I know from personal experience that that's not an easy thing to do. One of the guys that my son works with backed a customers car into my sons car. It's got a bad dent and it pulled the fender a little out of place. He said on of there PDR guys said he could fix it. I'll take a picture of the dent and post it...then post the results after the guys tries. Could make the company replace the fender and repaint it...maybe I'm old school, but I hate taking factory paint off a car if it's at all avoidable...
 
DaveT435 said:
WOW!! If he did that using those types of tools he is a true artist. I know from personal experience that that's not an easy thing to do. One of the guys that my son works with backed a customers car into my sons car. It's got a bad dent and it pulled the fender a little out of place. He said on of there PDR guys said he could fix it. I'll take a picture of the dent and post it...then post the results after the guys tries. Could make the company replace the fender and repaint it...maybe I'm old school, but I hate taking factory paint off a car if it's at all avoidable...
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Yeah, the guy was a wizard.

I'm sure everyone would like to see those pictures. :xyxthumbs:
 
People should go to jail for damaging someone else's car. It's already happened to me 4 times since I got my ride in late march, and I'm pissed off as hell. Just because they don't care about their car, they think it's OK to fling open their door without regard. God help them if I ever catch them doing it. :bash:

I was taught to have respect for other people's things. Obviously the rest of the world wasn't. Pretty sad.

That being said, I now park out as far as possible wherever I go so the possibility of someone parking next to me is near zero. I don't care if it's 105 degrees out and takes 5 min to walk. Human beings obviously can't be trusted.
 
fahoumh said:
Yeah, the guy was a wizard.

I'm sure everyone would like to see those pictures. :xyxthumbs:
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Ok...here are the before pics. In my opinion this is a pretty bad dent. The PDR guy said he was pretty sure he could fix it. Hopefully he'll have him do the work soon. I'll send the after pics as soon as it's fixed. Personally I don't think this can be repaired using a PDR process. The fender also doesn't line up with the door. The gap is right...but the fender is about 1/8" out from the door.
 
Ouch. That is a pretty wicked dent. I'm also curious to know if he'll be able to get it back to normal. Maybe when he works the dent out it'll realign everything? :dunno:
 
If he can get the dent out he should be able to align the fender without any problem. If I can just get my son to quit procrastinating and get it over there. lol
 
My brother is a PDR guy. He's currently in CO fixing up dealer cars from a NASTY hail storm. $1500/car and you try for 2 cars a day. CO has had enough work for 2 months. 13 hour days. Most also pay "headliner guys" to take down and put back up headliners, roughly $40-$50/car.

NOW

It's about 2k in tools, he drives a Chevy Avalanche, and lives out of hotels 6-7 months out of the year.
Yes, it's a 6 figure income, NO you cannot have any sort of relationship or family.
 
Let me know if he heads to Texas next to repair all the hail damaged cars here. lol That's a rough way to make a living. So they do actually hammer and dolly them out. That takes some talent. I was lucky to get the sheet metal straight enough to keep it a thin coat of bondo instead of a thick coat. lol I'm still going to be amazed if this guy can get this out. The one end is just short of being creased...and then the crown in the metal around the wheel well.
 
I dont see how that dent can be repaired PDR. Please post up if this is the case though. Naturally a dent is the metal being stretched. A small dent can be worked out where it is not noticeable, that looks like to much metal stretched to be worked out. A good metal man could work that dent out and use a shrinking disk to shrink the metal back down. Of course this would all be done on bare metal and wouuld need body work and paint after. I hope the PDR can work some magic.
 
If your guy is worth his salt that dent should not be a problem. The only issue may be paint bruising with that color.
 
alko said:
***caveat: Kind of a long off-topic story***

So Sunday I washed my car and applied some XMT 360 spray wax. And man did she look ggggaawwwjjjuuusss!!! So from doing this, I went through every square inch of my car. Even when I park, I look at my car to see if there are any scratches of dents or anything.

So anyways, Monday I park in the parking garage at my job like I do every day during the week. I park in the same exact spot each time. Well now that the 100 degree days are back, the parking garage gets full again. This guy who also normally parks in the garage decided to park next to me. I go to lunch, and while at lunch I park next to NO ONE. Return to work and park in the same spot. When I left for the day, I'm walking towards my car and notice a door ding....SHUT THE FRONT DOOR....are you serious?!?!?!
So the ding lines up perfectly if the guy opened his door. And get this...I've had a conversation with him about detailing. He's always saying how nice my car looks etc. We talked about the fact that both of our cars are black and hard to maintain. So as I was sitting there debating whether or not to say something to him, he's walking to his car. He smiles and waves at me and I get out of my car. I asked him if it was possible he hit my door with his. He said he didn't believe he did and so I left it alone. I told him I wasn't trying to make a big deal about it and there really wasn't nothing I could prove, but I was still pissed.

So I called up the PDR guy I used the last time I had a ding taken out. I met up with him at his shop and in less than 2 minutes he got the dent out. He charged me $75!!! $75 bucks in less than two minutes?!?!?! I’m in the WRONG business!!!! That’s a lick right there!!! I need to look into adding PDR to my resume! LOL! With anything this comes with skills and maybe one day I will. But for now, I know exactly who to call for any future paintless dent removal.
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I have a PDR guy that does work for me on clients cars and he charges me about $40-50 per ding, maybe less if they are close together. That way I can mark it up and make a little $$$ to. :props:
 
DaveT435 said:
Ok...here are the before pics. In my opinion this is a pretty bad dent. The PDR guy said he was pretty sure he could fix it. Hopefully he'll have him do the work soon. I'll send the after pics as soon as it's fixed. Personally I don't think this can be repaired using a PDR process. The fender also doesn't line up with the door. The gap is right...but the fender is about 1/8" out from the door.
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I've seen them take out same crazy large dents before, some even on body seems, but at some point it really makes more sense for the body shop to do it, especially when there are chips or cracks in the paint.

I have this truck at my shop now. The owner wanted the dents popped out and PDR would be around $600-800 my cost. Given that there are scratches on the same panel down to bare metal, a repaint makes much more sense, which was what my PDR suggested too, but he could get these out if I wanted him too. :props:

IMG_2579.jpg


IMG_2583.jpg



Owner was poking at this one already....making much more work for the PDR guy
IMG_2582.jpg
 
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