Dent Repair Myths

by | Jun 7, 2019 | Educational, Uncategorized

“How hard can it be?”

You might ask yourself “how hard can dent repair be?” You’ve done many do it yourself style repairs throughout the years. Things around the house from minor repairs such as a door handle change. Maybe you even do major items such as plumbing, electrical or roofing. You change your own oil on your car and do other auto repairs, why not pop your own dent out? Today we are going to talk to you about do it your self dent repairs.

Dent Repair Myths

  1. Dent just pop out
  2. Use suction cups to suck the dents out
  3. Use magnets to pull the damage out
  4. Applying dry ice to the dent will make it come out
  5. Heat like a hair drier makes the dents come out
  6. Pour hot or even boiling water on the dent makes it come out
  7. Applying a cold spray to the dent, perhaps even after heating makes the dent come out
  8. Park your car in the hot sun and the dents will work there way out from the heat

Do these methods work? 

Have you seen a video of a person putting a suction cup on a big dent on a car and pulling on it. The dent makes a popping noise as the suction cup comes off and the dent looks gone. Well it appears to look gone. Once it is looked at at multiply angles the damage will looks wavy or at least less noticeable. To some people this is exactly what they want. They want the damage to be not such a big eye sore, or noticeable at be the most affordable for price. For this expectation this might be the perfect solution. To others that want the damage to look as if it never happened and completely undetectable this is not an acquitted fix.

Once a repair is attempted its is often not fixable or much more difficult to make a proper repair.

Magnets and Hair Driers

We do not use any type of magnets to pull any type of damage out, and hair driers if used improperly can actually cause paint damage by overheating it. If the paint in say a white vehicle is overheated it will get yellow or brown and the only fix for this is to now repaint the panel. This damage can happen in other colors but it is harder to see in darker colors.

Cold and Dry Ice

There is an old school method of shrinking the metal when it is over stretched. When the metal can be  pushed up as a high spot then lightly pushed on and it falls back in, and it will flip flop back and forth. To shrink metal you must put it through a very fast heat and cold cycle. To do this you take a torch and extremely heat the metal (burn the paint) then cool it off very fast with water(not dry ice). This again was a old school method and requires repainting to be done. Today’s vehicles are made up with different metals then they were back in the good ol’ days.  Most new metals are actually extremely weakened when heated.

Parking In The Sun

For parking in the sun, the reason people tend to think this makes the dents go away is cause they are typically looking at their vehicle in the parking lot. Most dont have anything to compare the damage to except for clouds and the sun, these are the worst conditions to look at a cars panels for dents because you cannot accurately see anything. This is why when looking for damage the best conditions are in a shop setting.

Hopefully this answers any of your do it yourself questions, if you happen to have any other questions or have a dent you need repaired, give us a call:

605-595-4061

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