The complete guide to Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) Part 3
PDR can be used to repair car and van doors
Like bonnets as long as the basic structure isn’t deformed, we can repair a wide variety of damage in vehicle doors, we access the damage in a number of different ways.
Most commonly we would access the rear of the door skin by lowering the window, placing a metal or plastic glass protector between the glass and door skin and open the gap between the two by gently inserting plastic or inflatable wedges to allow access to the inside of the door with our specialist tooling, we can often access rear doors by removal of the wiring loom from the grommet at the front edge of the door and in some cases we can remove the door trim to gain access to the inside of the door, we then lever and massage the damage back to its former position.
Paintless dent repair is a great solution to damage on front wings.
Front wings can be prone to picking up minor damage, we often see damage that is caused by people reversing out of a parking space and concentrating on where the back of the car is going whilst applying a bit of steering lock and glancing the car next to them with the bumper and damaging the front of the wing and squashing the line of the wheel arch. PDR can often be the best repair solution for this and many other types of front wing damage. To gain access we can remove the plastic wheel arch liner which allows good access to most areas of the wing, occasionally we can access from behind the headlamp or at the top of the inner wing too.
Paintless dent removal on quarter panels and rear wheel arches
Vehicles can often pick up dents on the rear quarter panels from various different causes, we can often gain access to the rear of the panel by removing some of the boot trim and carpet that covers the inside of the panel, there is also often access if we remove the rear light assembly, both of these options give better access to the rear of the panel and are less useful if the damage is towards the front, however we can sometimes find ways to access these areas and often use glue pulling techniques to help where access is challenging.
Is Paintless dent removal possible for damage on car roof
We get a lot of enquiries for damaged roofs, some damaged by falling objects such as hailstones, branches, conkers, and various other debris during storms and High winds but we see damage caused by vandalism when mostly drunken youngsters think it’s a good idea to climb on someone’s car roof on the way home from the pub in the early hours of the morning, even though this damage can be severe we can often repair using PDR. The most common causes of damage are caused by roof rack installation and loading, whether it’s fitting a roof box for extra storage capacity or to mount push bikes or kayaks you can easily damage a car roof by leaning on it with your elbows.
In the middle section of a car roof we would almost always remove the cars headlining to gain access to the inside of the roof skin, this takes between half an hour and an hour depending on the vehicle, in cases where the sides of the roof are dented (roof rails) there’s no point in headliner removal as there’s no access to these sections, if the roof rails are dented a glue pull repair is the main repair solution.
Paintless dent removal and how it effects your vehicle paint
As the name suggests PDR is a totally paintless repair method, this means that we’re able to restore the damaged area by gently massaging it back to its original shape and removing the dent without sanding, filling and painting. To do this we use specialist tooling and microscopically small pushes restore the shape, because modern vehicle paint has a degree of flexibility these small pushes don’t damage the paint, if there’s a surface scuff or any paint transfer from another vehicle we can polish these off using fine cutting paste on a small machine polisher.
What materials can be repaired using paintless dent removal?
Most car body panels are made from steel or aluminium alloy, there are different grades of steel and alloy and they all behave slightly differently during repair and can present different challenges but in general they can all be repaired using paintless dent removal. Only the severity of the damage and its location will determine the outcome.
Materials that can’t be repaired using PDR
Some vehicles have panels made from plastics, composites, carbon fibre or fibreglass such as smart cars, tvr’s, motor homes, kit cars etc, these aren’t suitable for a PDR type repair as once they’re damaged there’s no reliable way to restore the shape of the panel back to its original from.
For more information on Paintless Dent Repair, watch out for upcoming articles.
To find out more about how much Paintless Dent Repair costs visit our dent repair price guide or should you need a Dent Repair Specialist near you, get a dent repair quote today.