[Thad E Ginathom]

Where there is a dent, the metal has stretched. I'm aware that various kinds of pulling and pushing are done, but, where necessary, accompanied by the panel-beater's (tinker's) art of manipulating the metal back into shape with hammers and dollies.

I'm curious to know how this works out with this, and other amateur dent pulling solutions. In some cases, wouldn't one risk replacing a dent with a bump? And this is, I suppose, why the very last trace of the dent in the opening post could not be removed.

[HalfOctave]

I was just wondering, will this technique work on dent on underbody, the one on running board? Anyone tested it?

[Rahulkool]

Another paintless repair DIY, reversed into another cars open rear door. It was completely my mistake as i had parked the other car too. After parking i got into my car to reverse and didn't realise that someone had opened the rear door of other car. There was very little gap between my car and wall on the driver side so i was concentrating on that and bam. The car i hit was facing the other side and its rear door edge hit my cars rear quarter panel and the hatch door. There was dent but no scratch and luckily no damage to the other car.

Here how it looked after the hit


I called couple of paintless dent repair shops but nobody was interested in such small work.

Then thought of trying the DIY, removed the hatch door pad and both dents were accessible but the quarter panel was really difficult to access as it was curved and the access was really small and panel had really sharp edges.

Tried pulling it out with the dent repair took, it did 40-50% of work.

Dent repair tool.


Then by using the handle of the rubber mallet, pushed the dent back in shape, like using a lever. It was really difficult but managed to fix most of it. Lots of bruises and cuts in hand, tried using a glove but due to very small space, couldn't grip the wooden handle properly.

The rear hatch dent was relatively easy one but i foolishly tried using metal tool and it left sharp marks. I removed most of those by hitting slowly with rubber mallet and keeping a wooden block behind. It looks much better now.

After all the work done, but i have to admit that you can see still see the dent and undulations in person. Camera image it looks much much better.

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by Rahulkool

Another paintless repair DIY, reversed into another cars open rear door.

Wow - must say this is fantastic. Given the really small size of the dent & the precarious angular location at which it was - I'd have never thought that the pop-a-dent can work here. Really excellent. I'm a bit surprised your thread doesn't see a lot of traction. Considering our driving conditions, this one should really be the most visited thread on our forum!

[Rahulkool]

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Wow - must say this is fantastic. Given the really small size of the dent & the precarious angular location at which it was - I'd have never thought that the pop-a-dent can work here. Really excellent. I'm a bit surprised your thread doesn't see a lot of traction. Considering our driving conditions, this one should really be the most visited thread on our forum!

Thank you mate, even i was not too sure about it. The pop a dent tool worked rather well but couldn't fully remove it. The pushing from behind the dent worked but was rather difficult, you have to just do it by feel as you cant reach the dent, i was just using the hammer as lever and feeling with the other hand on the outside making sure i was applying pressure on the right spot.

[haisaikat]

Late but one more member of this club.

Sometime back I got two dents on various occasions on the boot lid of my Crysta. One of them was incidentally right on the TBHP LTD sticker, not sure what I hit there but may have been also caused by someone at any hotel or car wash having unnecessarily pressed there with all might while pulling down the lid.

Nevertheless TKM Service Center quoted me 11K if I go without insurance and I decided to go for the NCB as only few days were left for renewal.

I decided to give a mass market dent puller kit a try, there were plenty on amazon and I selected this one

The two dents




The Dent Puller kit purchased online


The basic principle is as explained in the video below where the melted glue using the glue gun is applied on the pad and stuck around the center of the dent to allow drying up with a strong bond. Thereafter using the screw based pressure bridge we have to try to pull the traction pad outward from the dented panel area in order to restore back the original shape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=098bSVGwBwc

As evident from the image of the kit there are traction pads of various surface area for various dent sizes but realized small dents and those around crease lines are not that easy fix with this one. I tried on our Hyundai i10 first over a small dent on the bonnet lid and it worked only partially, although it did improve to an extent.

Now it was turn to repeat the same on the Crysta, but the single glue stick supplied with the 40Watt glue gun in the kit had almost exhausted more than 60%. Needless to say the remaining 40% soon exhausted while trying to make a few attempts on the bigger dent.

Ordered online another set of glue sticks which came with another gun. The default content of the Dent Puller kit had a 40 Watt gun with a 11 cm stick but the one I additionally ordered (Link) had a 20 Watt gun with 7 mm sticks.

New set of glue gun and stick purchased


While the 20 Watt gun took ages to heat up, these glue sticks proved to be more sticky than the default ones which were anyway failing to create sufficient bonding strength for a effective pull.

Believe me, with the 7 mm glue stick the first time I tried, the bond was so tough that in the highest traction position of the trigger bridge the setup remained as is for almost one minute before pulling out but successfully.

Smile? Not yet. Why?

The traction pad was still stick and was no way coming out like before. At this stage I started getting concerned on damaging the paint if I try to make further attempts of peeling off the glue / traction pad.

Suddenly the Mentos Moment happened. I took a hand sanitizer and soaked a few sprays on a piece of cotton and slowly started applying it on all sides, especially around the northern tip of the glued area. I may have just applied for maximum 10-15 seconds and with the subsequent peeling attempt the glue and the pad completely came off. Absolutely no damages to the underlying paint. I did gently rubbed the residual sanitizer dry from the applied area.

The traction pad stuck with glue on the bigger dent, note I had to take off the LTD sticker


The final state of the bigger dent, as good as new


The final state of the smaller dent, did not improve much, I let it stay and never bothered again


Would love to know what other BHPians have used for small dent repairs without a full garage job.

[Leoshashi]

Originally Posted by haisaikat

Sometime back I got two dents on various occasions on the boot lid of my Crysta. One of them was incidentally right on the TBHP LTD sticker, not sure what I hit there but may have been also caused by someone at any hotel or car wash having unnecessarily pressed there with all might while pulling down the lid.

Our 3 month old Crysta had a very mild dent at the same location as yours, most likely due to driver slamming the boot hard and pressing the panel. It wasn't as deep as yours, but easily noticeable if seen at an angle.

I used an old Mobile phone suction mount, since the depression wasn't too deep, it sat well on the surface and then pulled it suddenly. The dent came out and now looks flawless.

[asethi]

My Swift had a major bonnet damage after a tree branch fell on it during a storm while we were vacationing in Wayanad. At first sight, the damage was immense & bonnet was literally bent from center & lifted upwards towards the front.
Being a Maruti has its benefits at such occasions, I just opened the bonnet & slammed it from inside till it came back to shape, well almost! Took me some 15mins for the job and never bothered to repair it again as I was anyway planning to sell the car.

Below picture will give you an idea, the yellow marker highlights the point of impact and red ones were the other remaining dents. This is more pronounced in this night picture, but you could easily miss these during the day as is evident in the second picture.