Today, Jack from Sioux Falls Dent Repair will be taking on a huge dent repair on a 2015 Ford Edge. The dent is on the back liftgate below the license plate and runs through a body line in the back as well. There is also some minor paint damage that the customer was made aware of. Jack says that this is the perfect example of what PDR is all about and how much damage it can actually take out without having to repaint anything. Unlike a body shop, through the PDR method, Jack was able to take out the dent in about one day. Luckily, the customer brought the car in just after having it washed which made the repair process even faster.
Jack goes on to explain that there are certain OEM guidelines that have to be followed when dealing with any repair process. This vehicle, being a Ford, Jack had to run a pre-scan to ensure that he knew what was damaged before he could start working on it. To fix the dent on the liftgate, Jack has to remove the trim panel and disconnect the battery and explains why it is important to do a pre-scan in such cases. A pre-scan lets technicians know what is working and what is not before they start working on it so that they can either put it back the way it was or inform the owner and get it fixed (if possible). After Jack completed the pre-scan, he was greeted with 4 different codes – only for the area that he was going to be working on.
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Today, Jack from Sioux Falls Dent Repair gives us a detailed look into how they go about writing a hail damage estimate, we will call it Hail damage estimating 101. Every PDR case is different and requires skilled technicians to assess the damage and come up with a correct estimate.
First Things First
The first thing we do in the shop is get the damaged area cleaned thoroughly so that we can see all the dents, dings, and scuffs easily. After the panel is cleaned, we use specialized PDR lights to get a better look at the surface. In this case, the vehicle we’re looking at is a 2017 Ford F150 and it is a relatively new car with just over 1,700 miles on it. As you can see, the PDR lights allow us to see all the dents and dings in the hood of this truck.
Every dent we find is circled first so that we don’t miss out on any damage later on. Then we use special sizing coins to determine the size of each dent. The coins range from quarter size to half dollar size and is placed in the dent to see how big or small it is. From the information we get with the coin sizing, we can go ahead and get the correct pricing as well. When we come up against a dent that is bigger than a half dollar, we mark it with “OS” which stands for oversized and we price those dents accordingly as well.
We found a total of 132 quarter sized dents and 7 oversized ones. Along with that, another thing we took into consideration when pricing the repair for this truck was that it was made from aluminum. Also, the underside of the hood was almost completely braced which means we had very little access to the damaged area with our regular tools. With this in mind, we had to use the glue pulling technique to get most of the damage out.
Some Things Need To Be Taken Apart
As you can see, as indicated with the letters R&I (remove and install), we also had to remove the headlight and the fender flare to take out the damage from the fenders on both sides of the vehicle.
If you have any questions or queries about hail damage or want some information on what we do here at Sioux Falls Dent Repair,
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.
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See this new tool addition to our paintless dent removal arsenal. This new dent removal tool is actually something we use in conjunction with our regular paintless Dent Removal tools to created added leverage. This tool will allow us to make stronger pushes with using less force. This saves the technician from added strain when doing paintless dent repair. We are also working on a big door dent in this Ford Ranger Pickup. This damage is on the drivers side door near the door handle of this vehicle and in a double body line. We also can repair dents in old vehicles like this Mercury Cougar hood! This Cougar hood doesn’t even have paint on it and will need to be repainted when we are done but the customer wanted to not have any body fillers in his hood. So he choose us to straighten the metal for him!
Can Dents in Body Lines be Repaired using Paintless Dent Repair?
We get these types of questions all of the time. The short answer is Yes. Many factors come into play when determining if a dent can be repaired or not. These same factors all apply to body line damage. For instance if there is severe paint damage to the dent, sometimes paintless dent repair is not the best option. But that is not always true, some customers are ok with minor paint damage and they are happy to touch the panel up after the metal is repaired. We did another post about this recently talking about paint damage and dent repair, you can see that article here.
This repair had no type of paint damage and would be considered a medium sized depth for a dent. The access to this dent with paintless dent repair tools was pretty straight forward. Access through the upper window channel was all we needed in order to repair this damage. No removal of any parts on this vehicle was necessary in this repair making it easier for us to repair and a quicker repair.
