Pro Tips For DIY Car Dent Repair

The ultimate guide to repairing car dents and dings yourself.

Repairing a car dent yourself is not for the faint of heart. But if you are determined to fix a car dent on your own, check out this guide on how to DIY auto dent repair like a pro!

Many people with car hail damage often ask for DIY dent repair tips that we can give. Many of them have cashed out their hail damage insurance claim check without fixing their car and are now in trouble with the bank that holds the note on the vehicle. After getting an auto hail repair estimate, some vehicle owners may be unhappy about the cost of PDR dent repair service. Others are just bored and want to fix car dents at home for something to do. Some are actually pretty handy and do many things DIY, from changing their own oil to remodeling a home bathroom. Some may even have a little bit of experience working with auto body shop repairs and know a fair amount what they need to do to make a car dent repair with PDR dent removal. However, we give the exact same answer to everyone, no matter how handy or experienced with DIY car repair they may be, and that is: unless you know what you’re doing, trying to perform DIY paintless dent repair on your car using paintless dent removal is almost always a very bad idea. While there are hundreds of PDR dent repair videos showing someone effortlessly making a DIY car dent repair, most of the guys in the videos are professional paintless dent repair (PDR) technicians. In addition to their years of training and work experience, they are using special PDR tools and dent repair lights that are not available to the average person who wants to try a dent repair DIY. The sheet metal on a car is very soft and will crinkle or bend with only slight pressure. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it is very likely that you will make a mess of the dent you’re working on and that your car will no longer be repairable using PDR. If that happens, your only choice for repairing your hail damaged car will be to take it to an auto body shop to have conventional dent repairs performed. Conventional auto body shop dent repair consists of filling the dent with a body filler and repainting the entire surface of the panel. Unlike PDR dent repairs, which usually take a day or less, body shop repair could easily take a week or longer. Likewise it will cost much more than paintless dent removal. It is important to note that most insurance companies will not cover any damage you cause to your vehicle attempting to perform DIY dent repair, so you will be stuck paying for any repair bill out of pocket. In addition, your insurance company may give you a hard time if you ever have another hail damaged car insurance claim. There are plenty of other reasons why attempting to perform paintless dent repair is not a good idea for most people. (Check out these PDR dent repair frequently asked questions.) If you still want to try and fix a dent yourself, here are a few tips to help you with DIY dent repair: 

• make sure you are working indoors out of the sun
• That you have proper lighting for PDR. 
• You should also order some professional paintless dent repair tools. 
• Find a diagram of the vehicle’s trim components, to help you gain access to each panel
• When you start working on a dent, be mindful of the leverage created by most PDR tools, start out slow. 
• Be careful not to crack the paint, stop if you do.    

Once they get in there and start poking around, most people find DIY car dent repair is much more difficult than they thought. For guys that really love their car, most quickly realize they are about to make a big mess that will require some serious body shop time to have repaired. However if you don’t care what your vehicle looks like, or how high/low it’s resale value is, you might find DIY paintless dent repair to be right up your alley. Just to put it out there one more time, if you attempt do it yourself car dent repair it is going to end badly 99.9% of the time. Your car will end up at a body shop where it will have to be filled with bondo and repainted, costing you much more than you were ever going to save by doing the repair yourself and diminishing the value of your vehicle to boot! If you have car hail damage or need other dent repair service, call or stop byDealer’s Hail & Specialty today. They are paintless dent repair experts and their master certified PDR technicians will fix your car dents quickly, correctly, and at a great price!

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Dealer's Hail & Specialty

The #1 Choice For Auto Hail Repair