Dent Repair on Your EV with an IMI Accredited Technician is a Must
Your electric vehicle is less likely to get into accidents because of all the computerized sensors it has. However, accidents don’t always occur when the car’s on the road. Sometimes, they can occur even when you’re car is carefully parked in the driveway. Dent and dings on electric vehicles hurt your wallet a lot more than dents on a normal car. What’s more concerning is that there are very few auto-repair shops with IMI accredited technicians to help your electric vehicle.
Read on as we tell you how you can save money on dent repair through paintless dent repair and why IMI accredited technicians are the best choice for you.
What Is PDR?
Paintless Dent Repair or PDR is a non-invasive method of fixing dents and dings on your electric vehicle. It’s a method that auto-technicians prefer due to the ease with which they can do it. It doesn’t involve any extra paint or extra material, which is why it’s so popular. It doesn’t involve any cutting or scrapping of metal and thus saves both you and the auto-technicians a significant amount of time.
How Does it Work?
The PDR process is fairly simple. You bring the car into the auto-shop. Your accredited IMI technician will look at the dent or dent if they’re more than one to assess how many of them, they can perform PDR on. They will then give you an estimate based on this assessment. After you’ve consented to the estimate and the procedure, the certified technician will get to work. The procedure involves the use of special tools and techniques acquired through years of experience to pop out the dents on the body of your electric vehicle. Once they’ve done this, they further look into the body of the vehicle to ensure that they’re not missing anything. Once they’ve done this, you can pay and have your car back in your garage.
Benefits of PDR
There are many advantages to this process, and we have listed some of them below:
1. It helps retain your car’s value
Paintless Dent Repair doesn’t involve any extra material, which means that your car’s value will not depreciate based on this procedure.
2. Insurance companies cover PDR.
Your electric vehicle is already going to be heavy on your wallet for other reasons. Since insurance companies cover PDR, you don’t have to worry about paying for this procedure out of your wallet.
3. They’re environmentally friendly
Paintless Dent Repair doesn’t involve any wastage by scrapping material. It doesn’t use paint which means that no harmful chemicals are released into the environment.
Why Choose Sioux Falls Dent Repair for Your EV needs?
Sioux Falls has IMI accredited technicians who have years of experience with electric vehicles. We have worked on the bodies of cars like Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model X, Nissan Leaf, Audi e-Tron, or EV Ford Mustang.
You must take your electric vehicle to certified IMI accredited technicians for many reasons. We have listed a few of them below:
1. It’ll cost you less
IMI accredited technicians know what they’re doing and thus are likely to botch the job.
2. You’ll get quality of service.
IMI accredited technicians train for years so that they can achieve finesse, you’ll get the best work possible.
3. They are reliable.
Since they’re accredited and claim to be too, they’re held to a higher standard. This standard means that you can rely on them to put the best work forward.
Here at Sioux Falls Dent Repair, our main priority is the customer. Don’t believe us? Come on down to our shop and let us sort you out.
Today we are removing some damage in a 2018 Ford Edge using paintless dent repair. This damage is in the right rear door and is very extreme damage. The damage is on a body line and very deep and has a bunch of displaced metal all around the area. In order to remove this damage we had to use a heat gun and apply a constant 160-180 degrees when pushing out the last little bit of this damage.
Have similar damage and want to call or text us: Click Here
Paintless dent repair, also known as PDR, is an environmentally friendly way of repairing a dent. With the help of PDR, you can easily restore your car into its original shape without destroying the factory paint or the protective layer on top of it.
The paintless dent repair process usually consists of four vital steps. If you’re getting hail repair done from a certified technician, they’re probably going to perform these four steps for dent removal.
Damage assessment
Entering the dent
Looking/Evaluating the dent
Applying slow pressure to remove the dent
The PDR Process
Every day our certified technicians work on all kinds of vehicles to make car owners happy. The best part about the PDR process is that it doesn’t hurt your wallet that much, and it’s very quick. To understand how the PDR process works, read on!
Damage Assessment
Initially, the certified technician working on your car will first evaluate the dent so they know how serious the damage is. The severity of the dent can also decide how much time the technician will need to remove the dent.
In most cases of PDR, the dent removal process can take just a day. But if the dent is too big, the certified technician might take more than a day.
Examining the Dent
When a technician is done looking at your vehicle after the initial stage, they’ll plan how to enter the dent so they can fix it. In most cases, expert technicians enter a dent from the back so they can slowly massage the car’s body back into its original form. However, if that is not possible, the technician might try to “pull” out the dent from the front. This, however, depends on the car accident that occurred, and the damage the car has sustained.
Taking a Better Look
Certified technicians at Sioux Falls Dent Repair can also use a special light to look at the dent so they could understand it from their point of view. The light can show them shadows of the dent. This can, in turn, tell them which part they’ll have to focus on particularly.
Applying Slow Pressure
Once the technician has understood what they need to do to repair the dent, they carefully utilize their tools to massage the exterior of your car’s body so it can be restored back to its original state. In most cases, the PDR process can be completed on the same day the car comes to our shop.
What Can’t Be Fixed With PDR?
Even though dent repairs can be made very convenient with the PDR process, there are some car accidents for which PDR is not recommended. For example, if your car got a scratch or an abrasion, PDR can’t help in this case.
In a case like this, touching up will be necessary, and your car might need a repaint.
Conclusion
If your car got in an accident and you’re looking for dent removal – Sioux Falls dent repair can help. Our certified technicians can ensure that your car is back in the shape it originally was without compromising the original paint.
Back again for another paintless dent repair and here we are going to show you some of our big dent removal techniques on this Dodge Challenger Scat Pack edition. This vehicle was brought to us with some tree limb damage. Yes that is right, a tree company was unfortunately cutting down some tree branches above this car and during the process they fell all over this vehicle. This caused damage all over including the hood, fender, roof, roof rails, trunk lid but today we are focusing on just the quarter panel damage.
What Tools Did We Use?
We started off these repairs by gaining access to the backside by removing the interior trim panels in the trunk. From there we remove the tail light and work through the wiring access hole for the tail light. The first tool we used was actually an Ultra Dent Tools double bend tool with an interchangeable tip and extension. We start off a repair like this with a bigger ball style tip. From there we slowly downsize the tip size to get more precision pushes. Towards the end of the repair the damage actually started to slightly oil can, shown in the video. The panel is very flimsy and movable with just minor pushes with our fingers. We knew we had to tighten the metal up so we started by using some electronic tools.
Electronic Dent Removal?
In this repair towards the end of the repair like stated prior we had to resort to using some electronic style tools for this repair. What we are using is the steel hotbox machine from Betatag. This tool uses electromagnetic heat induction to heat up the panel. We heat up the panel with this tool to a safe temperature that will NOT damage the paint finish. From there we then spray the area with a cold spray. This method of quickly heating the metal and quickly cooling the panel is nothing new to metal workers. What this does is tighten up the molecules in the metal making it shrink. This shrinking action tightens up the metal so it does not remain flexible after the finished repair. Say for instance we DID NOT do this, the panel make at some time be pushed in from say someone leaning on the vehicle or a high pressure car wash for instance. More than likely with this minor stretched metal it will not stick inwords looking like a dent but it could happen so we must take special precautions to prevent this.
Finishing it up
In the end we were able to remove not only this damage but damage all over the vehicle from the tree limbs. We use only the paintless dent repair method for our repairs and no painting, body fillers or primers were used in these repairs. Be sure to Subscribe to our Youtube channel to see other repairs we performed on this vehicle coming soon.
Will my dented area rust after paintless dent repairs are performed?
We have been asked this question multiple times from customers of ours. First off, does the damaged area have any paint damage, broken paint, a scratch of some kinda or cracked paint? If the answer is NO to those questions that’s great news! That means your damage is a perfect candidate for Paintless Dent Repair and your damage will not have any paint issues and no rust issues down the road.
What if my damaged area DOES have some paint damage?
One thing to clear up is often damaged areas may have minor paint damage, anything from a smaller light scuff to maybe even cracked or a chip in the paint. Now the dented areas can often still be repaired and smoothed out BUT the paint damage may remain if its severe.
Can you fix my paint damage?
Depending on the severity of the damage, YES. If your paint damage consists of a minor scuff or scrape we will wet sand, buff and polish the area to remove the paint damage. This paint damage will not be noticable at all after our repairs are done and the paint will look as if nothing ever happend.
What if I have a crack, chip or deep scratch in my paint?
We can do things like apply some touch up paint to the paint damaged areas or do some wet standing, buffing and polishing to removed scuffs and scrapes, but if the paint damage can not be removed with buffing. The paint damage WILL remain. Some people are ok with having us do touch up paint, others are not, that is strictly up to you, the customer. Everyone’s needs are different for each repair and we are willing to work with you on your needs. The best way to describe how touch up paint will look after applied is it will look like a black button up shirt WITH a black button. The button(paint damage) will be visible, you will be able to see it to a certain degree and really looking for it. You yourself, know EXACTLY where it is, others like friends, family members or the general public may not pick out the damage unless it is specifically pointed out. This is the best case scenario, touch up paint is often best suited for solid colors, black and white being the best. Colors with a high metallic paint, pearl colors and specialized colors may not look the best when touch up paint is applied. We would be happy to discuss all of these items, your needs and our personal suggestions for your situation. We have even suggestion people with severe paint damage that we are NOT the best course of action for their damage, we can then happily get you fixed up with a recommended body shop in the area
Want to see what a repair looks like when the paint IS DAMAGED? Here is an example of a repair we did on a vehicle that had a minor crack in the paint prior to our repairs: CLICK HERE
What is corrosion protection?
Often times people do not know that there has to be some kind of protection sprayed onto the backside of there dented area after we repair it. If we have to use any types of dent repair tools we are taking sometimes sharp metal tipped tools and pushing on the backside of the dented area. This pushing can cause small scratches in the coatings on the back side of your damaged area. Now these are very minimal but something needs to be done to protect this area. After a repair is made with dent tools we apply a corrosion protection spray like a 3m Cavity Wax spray. This is a very runny liquid that will run into all of the areas it is sprayed in. This spray stays soft and gooey like honey for instance. This spray will not harden and crack like some other products on the market. Now with glue pulling for example no harm is caused to the backside of the panel because we are gluing glue tabs to the OUTSIDE of the panel and pulling the damage out, no pushing on the dent is done so there is no need for the application of cavity wax.
Here is a video of us explaining the use of 3M Cavity Wax spray when performing dent repairs.
Hopefully this clears up any questions you may have had about rust and paintless dent repair.
If you are still curious about the paintless dent repair process or maybe you have some more questions on our methods of preventing rusting, feel free to call, text or email us!
