Winter Weather and Vehicle Dents:
What you Should Know
Cold winds, snow and ice can take their toll on your vehicle, which will cause scratches, cracks and scratches. To help you avoid the excessive wear and tear of winter, we break down what often causes your car to malfunction in that season.
Here are some common causes of winter dents:
Hailstorms: If you are taking a trip during your winter vacation, you may end up hitting one of these popcorn sized hailstones, which can do quite a bit of damage to your car body. The roof, hood or trunk of your car are easy targets for all manner of hailstones — from tiny pebbles or giant golf balls. This kind of damage can be prevented by parking your car in a covered area, or even using a car cover before a storm hits.
Slippery Roads : Ice and snow-covered roads are often the cause of fender benders and minor collisions. You can even slip on ice when driving slowly, and hit someone else’s car, curb or other objects. A lot of these small collisions end up causing dents that are purely cosmetic and can certainly make your car look awful.
Ice And Snow Accumulations: Sheets of ice and snow from a variety of outdoor sources, such as trees that hang over driveways or ice forming on the roof or the vehicle. If you need to park your car, do not park near trees; snowplows could knock down dangerous limbs and ice formations.
Busy Parking lots: Winter causes shopping centers to be overpacked, so drivers tend to get as close as possible next to other cars in order to not walk far in the cold. Thus, doors are more likely to open into adjacent parking spaces and lots of the shallow but irritating door dings occur.
Shoveling Mishaps: Using the wrong tools or techniques to shovel snow away from your car can cause denting. Careful with those hard shovels or ice scrapers that can do some serious damage if not used correctly on your car’s body.
Ways of Protecting your automobile from Winter season Dents
If you can, park under a carport or in a garage to protect against hail and snow or ice that may accumulate on top of your car. If you do not have a garage, then park outside using a protective car cover. Remember to drive slowly as roads can be icy and making driving more dangerous, so avoid fast speeds to have full control of your vehicle.
Before heading out of the house, you should always check the weather reports so you can be prepared and know what the road conditions are like. You should also ensure that your car tires are maintained well, especially during winter so that they can have a good grasp on icy roads.
Why Opt for PDR in for Winter Dents?
If your vehicle does get dents this winter, Paintless Dent Repair (PDR) is a great option. PDR repairs dents without repainting, leaving your auto with its original coat. That’s why we at Sioux Falls Dent Repair are experienced certified PDR technicians and allow them to remove large dents promptly, delivering a full body repair job that looks great without the high costs or lead times of traditional repair methods.
It does not matter if you have hail damage, minor collision dents or some falling debris dent- PDR is a quick and inexpensive way to get your car back in its original shape. Being informed of winter hazards and precautions you can take to avoid them, should assist in preventing your car from suffering unsightly dents.
Today, Jack from Sioux Falls Dent Repair will be taking on a dented hood on a 2016 Chevrolet Suburban.
Now, the owner of this vehicle actually purchased the car with the dent in it and decided to approach us for Paintless Dent Repair as it would turn out to be a lot more affordable when compared to taking a car to a traditional body shop.
With the use of our special magnetic half dollar size coin, we can estimate the damage size and give the customer our pricing for the repair. The dent, as you can see, is bigger than the coin itself and so we price it accordingly. In order to gain access to the damaged area, we had to lift the hood and remove the insulator pad on the underside of the hood. There were a total of six clips that had to come out so that we could find a way to get our tools in and push the damage out.
As it turned out, the dent was located under a brace in the frame which makes fitting our regular tools a lot more difficult – and sometimes impossible. Luckily, in this case, we were able to get our brace styled tools under the brace and push out the damage. When the specially designed brace tools do not work, the next best thing is the glue pulling method for getting out any type of damage. Since the dent on this car was rather large, we decided to first use the glue pulling method to get rid of the majority of the damage from the outside. Once the bulk of the damage was removed with the pull tabs, we were able to get under the hood and take a closer look at the finer details of the repair. You can probably see that we are using a couple of PDR lights for this repair and the reason for this is so that we can get all the right angles of the damage and successfully push it all out without having to constantly move the light around.
In the end, getting rid of a dent like this takes more than just a couple of pull tabs and a few pushed from underneath the metal. Often, we use hundreds of small repetitive pushes to get out a dent completely. Lastly, we polish and buff the damaged area to get it back to its original state – or at least close to it.
For any kind of dent removal inquiries or questions, call or text us at 605-250-1023 to get your dented cars repaired.
Click Here to fill out your contact info to start your repair process now!
In today’s quick video, we are tackling some crease-style dents on the hood of a 2019 BMW X3. According to the owner, they came out from a restaurant they parked at and saw the dents on their car’s hood.
The hood of the X3 is made from aluminum and has absolutely no access points on the back of the hood which is why we had to opt for the glue pulling method for removing the dents. Fortunately, we here at Sioux Falls Dent Repair have a lot of experience in glue pulling and own some of the best pull tabs in the industry.
As you can see in the “after” footage, the dents and other damage was completely removed and the hood looks as good as new.
If you have a car with similar dents or even worse and are thinking about the PDR option, give us a call or text us at 605-250-1023.
The Paintless Dent Repair method can even be used to repair Storm Damage Dent Removal caused from falling snow or ice. This Chevy Silverado Pickup hood we have in our shop today was purchased with this damage on it and the customer had to have it repaired. The Silverado was actually at a local body shop at the time and they decided to contact us to do paintless dent repairs on the hood of this while the truck was in the body shop getting unrelated repairs done to it. The storm damage dents were then removed that day and returned to the truck at the body shop the next morning.
Disconnecting Electrical Components For Repairs
We have another vehicle in the shop for some storm related damage. This 2016 Dodge Durango had some tree limbs fall on it during a thunderstorm. This damage looks similar to hail damage with the multiple round dents but the way the damage is on the panel indicates other than hail and was confirmed by the customer. In order to do the repairs on this Durango we have to remove multiple components. To safely do this and not cause on electrical related damage we have to disconnect the battery to power down the entire vehicle.
To read more about electrical components and why we need to disconnect and computer scan the systems CLICK HERE!
Did you know this Durango has the batteries located below the passenger front seat. Yes that’s right, you read that right, this vehicle has not one but two batteries in it! The bigger of the batteries is for the main motor components and the smaller batter can be used to power many things typically the smaller electrical components on the vehicle, like inside lighting, radio, ect.
If you happen to need any time of dent removal services yourself give us a call or text us today to schedule your appointment!
When Scott brought us his vehicle he was so bummed out about what he had done. He went to move some things around in his garage. Suddenly, some items fall on his hood of his Audi. This is a big deal and very upsetting to almost everyone, but to Scott this was like a jab to the heart. He was so unhappy with himself about what he had done. Looking online for a repair specialist, he found us online, and gave us a call. He brought his Audi over to our shop and we looked it over. He was ecstatic that we would be able to repair it. The clear film on the hood would just need to be removed in order to repair it. Luckily he wanted that replaced anyways. This was no issue for Scott, this was an easy choice, take that dent out!
He dropped his car off and we were able to this repair along with the other minor ones all within a day. He was so happy about the repair he even had us do a video review of his experience, which you can view at the end of this repair video.
Thank you so much Scott, we loved working with you and we love making people happy and restoring their vehicle back to show room condition once again!
