The topic of paintless dent removal came up a while back. Just thought I would share my experience today. My 09 G6 got hail damage on the roof, hood, and trunk. About 20 dents in all with most dime size or nickel size and about three quarter size. The PDR guy did it and the results are excellent. Good as new and no paint damage or hole drilling. They did pop the headliner, head light and tail light for access but no problem. Plus the total bill was $1200 (covered by insurance) which wouldn’t go far with normal body work and refinishing, and it was done in a day. I think you do need to be careful that the guy does good work but my experience was very good.
I have heard plenty of good things about paintless dent repair. The first time I read about it was in an article in a muscle car magazine. A paintless dent repair guy took 8 or 9 dents out of an unrestored 1970 Hemi Road Runner, including a 2 inch long crease running through the lock cylinder on one of the doors. The owner of the car visibly flinched every time the tech struck a hammer to a tool and eventually had to leave, but he was much happier a couple hours later when he had a perfectly straight body on his classic Mopar for only a few hundred bucks without replacing or repainting anything and compromising it’s “survivor” status. The PDR tech said the Road Runner was more difficult to work on than modern cars due to the thickness of the body panels.
Warning: This is an old thread from 2011.
A couple years ago I also used the paintless guys for a fender bump on my Acura. I have no idea how it happened but suspect a soccer ball or something from a reunion we were at. I didn’t notice it for a while. At any rate it was softball size on the front side of the fender and the car was highly polished. It cost me $150 but the job was perfect with no visible ripples anywhere. There was no broken paint and just a little scrape that polished out no problem.
The problem is there are good and bad folks. I rely on the body shop to pick the guys and just deal with the body shop and they call the guy in that they want to use. The PDR guy did need to look at it first to make sure he wanted to tackle it.
There is a guy here that I have used twice, within the same week. It was a new to us Sonata, 1st time was when I decided to let the dealer do the oil change since it was under warranty. Went to pick it up and there was this nasty dent on the driver door. After listening to the service writer insisting that none of his staff would admit causing the dent, I had to put my foot down and see the manager. I told him, I dropped the car off without the dent and I want it back that way. So they paid for the fix and it actually looked great. Same week, same car got the biggest ever dent from a shopping cart (wife say the car right next to the dent). Probably 1.5 inch wide and one inch deep. Found the same guy and he told me the dent would still be visible. I didn’t want to paint the car, so let him do the work. The area is a bit “wrinkly” if you look close but at least it is not an eye sore. I was happy with the result.
The second time I watched him work. It needs a lot of patience and some tools to get access from behind on today’s cars.
I had a trusted body shop handle the issue. Some of the work they did was traditional for some scrapes and dents, some was PDR for hail damage. The only problem was with the PDR work on the hood: the underside of the hood was scratched and scuffed all over. I complained that this cheapened the car and enabled future rusting… The body shop repainted the underhood and obtained and applied new underhood stickers without any extra charge.
earlier this spring I had a nice big, round ding in the back door of my Dodge Durango. Also looked like a ball or something hit it. Not wanting a claim on my insurance policy, I bought a $10 suction cup and pulled the ding right out of it with the second try. Took super human strength before it made a loud pop and scared the wits out of me for a moment. The ding came right out with no paint damage and you can’t tell that there ever was a ding.