Hey guys

Pulled my car out of the garage yesterday to wash it and while I was putting stuff away in the garage, a golf ball came over the house and hit the car after bouncing off the ground. Left a nice tattoo in the hood.



Underneath it looks to be just inside or on the bracing as well so I can't get to it directly. I'm planning on calling some body shops tomorrow but wanted to ask for suggestions on how to attack this myself.

 

Make hole in bracing.

Push dent out.

 

Thank, you Tonto...

 

If you mean you want to fix the dent yourself and without painting then you're out of luck. Dents don't just pop out and it will look funny if you try. Maybe a skilled paintless dent repair guy would be able to do it for you, where I live they charge 50 - 100 bucks per dent.

 

Looks like a job for PDR for sure. You're lucky it didn't break the paint. Like ZsTransAm said, figure around $100 to get it right.

 

I had a golf CLUB ding on my hood that was similar. Paint was missing so a shop charged 600 to fix it but insurance covered it. Call some hail experts, can't be too much.

 

I watched a show the other day, gas monkey garage and they were fixing hail damage that looks similar to your unfortunate situation, they took a propane torch and went around the dent heating it up slowly not to damage the paint, after about 5 min it just popped out!! I don't know how it would work for you but if it saves you a trip to the shop then it is worth a try. Remember metal has a memory.

 

That sounds more like me buying myself new paint for setting my car on fire. Finesse isn't necessarily my strongest asset.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm making some calls tomorrow.

 

Yes, and the guy on GMG made the point that ONLY old thick metal works with that repair type. The memory just isn't there on the newer, thinner metals, and I think that our cars are considered newer. So I would not try the torch thing (paints are probably different too!) I've seen the PDR guys run a rod under bracing like that and pop it out in minutes, so i think thats definitely the way to go.

 

Paintless dent removal did the trick, $75 and 45 min. Can't argue with that.

 

No offense, but I can still see where the dent was. The dent guy didn't complete the job. If you're happy with the repair, then that's all that matters, but I would have spent more time cleaning it up if I did the repair. You obviously know how to take a picture of the damage using the light reflection to read the dent. If the dent guy did that same reading, he would have seen that he has some highs and lows still there. Again, if you can't see the remains of the dent and you're happy with the repair, then that's all that matters. But the fact that you knew where to put the reflection to take the second pic means you can still see where it was. You shouldn't be able to with the dent you had. I have OCD with dent removal.

For those thinking that dents just "pop" out, they don't. The metal is stretched and needs to be shrunk for the dent to be removed. PDR requires many pushes on the back side of the dent to tighten the metal back up while lifting the shallow areas back to level. I have pushed some dents a couple hundred times to get them right. Granted, those were larger dents, but even some of the smaller ones require quite a few pushes of just the right amount of pressure. Too much pressure can crack the paint and leave a high spot. There's a fine line between the perfect push and paint cracking!!!

 

Nahhh it's not perfect but the car has it's share of flaws, mostly in the front bumper where it looks like it's been hit with buckshot and touched up (lots of nicks) as well as a couple good scratches in the nose / grill from someone losing their splash shield in front of me on the highway (split in two, missed the first half but caught the 2nd). Guess it all depends on how you feel it looks against the particular car in question. On this one you really can't tell without looking for it specifically. I took the picutre deliberately under the light to show the difference, yep. Hood is up at shows and cruises so nobody is ever really looking at it. It's gone enough so that when I walk into my garage I don't see this 1.5" dimple staring at me like the mole from Austin Powers. Works for me in this instance.

 

Yeah Scott is right.. not bad for a daily driver but not perfect. From what I've seen there are a lot of PDR guys that do good but not great work like this. A paintless dent repair guy once told me that it takes 5% of his time to take out 95% of the dent and 95% of his time to take out the last 5% of the dent... I'd bet the cheaper guys cut back on time to make more money.

 

You should see the work out in house PDR guy does on the used cars we sell... YIKES. Dimples everywhere... but we've sold a thousand or more cars that he's taken dents out of and no buyers ever notice. So I'm pretty sure no one will notice the imperfections from your dent being removed unless you point it out to them. I think it looks really good for the price you paid

 

I apologize for my comments about the quality of the work. I didn't know if I should say something or not. I wasn't trying to be a jerk, but I feel you should get what you paid for. I probably would've charged the same price and it would be a lot less noticable. Again, if your happy, that's all that matters.