Perform Paintless Dent Repair
Template:FormatRemoving dents from your vehicle can be intimidating, time consuming, and could quickly turn into costly work. There are many tools and methods to removing dents in your vehicles. Some involve grinding the paint and welding studs, a glue pulling system (picture B below), or leverage bars. Being able to repair your dent takes patience and practice.
Steps
- Though it has been improved to a degree with new tooling and equipment, the basis of it is still the same. Utilizing light, a grid pattern, metal rods, and leverage to massage a dent out from behind the exterior panel. In this write-up I will be providing a how to on utilizing a paintless dent repair method with the leverage bar tools that this method was started with. In order to be successful with using the paintless dent repair method, you must first have the appropriate tools and equipment. There are different tools within the industry for paintless dent repair. The most common being a metal rod which utilizes leverage or the glue tab pull system (picture A). We will be focusing on the metal rod technique which utilizes leverage to massage the dents out from the backside of the panel. This method will only work on dents that have soft edges or indentations, anything with a crease, bend, or kink will need much more work.
- To utilize the metal rod method of paintless dent repair, you must first setup your light source and reflection tool. With these in place it is now time to scan the body panel to see where the dent is located. To do this, you will use a reflection board, which has a pattern of straight two different colored lines or checkerboard pattern, which shows the distortion image of the dent. This will provide a better image of location and size as shown in the image below.
- Setting this up will be dependent on the location of your light source and dent. Typically the light will be facing the damaged location head on, and the reflection board will be positioned between a 45-90 degree angle to the panels surface in front of the repaired area. Like shown in the image below, your reflection board setup is dependent based on the dent location.
- Once the damage zone has been located on the panel, you must now find an access point for the metal leverage bars to get behind the damaged panel. Sometimes you can utilize factory drilled or access holes, although there are times you must drill a small hole as close to the diameter of the leverage bar as possible (size will vary based on leverage bars diameter). This will allow you to get a better angle and access for the repair, but be sure to coat the freshly cut edge with primer or paint to prevent rusting when done with the repair followed by a plastic plug to prevent debris from entering the cavity.
- After you have your access hole for the leverage bar, you’ll want to get down, eye level with the dent and position yourself so that you can see the dents shape by using the reflection board. Once you’ve identified it, you will then select which kind of leverage bar to use. Majority of the time a soft round ball end is a safe go to without causing other issues and providing the best beginner results.
- Inserting the leverage bar into the access hole, you will run the leverage rod’s tip along the backside of the panel while watching for where it is in relation to the dent. Once you have the rod behind the dent’s location, you will gently start pressing against the access hole edge to push or massage the dent back to its original flat surface. Be careful not to apply too much pressure or you will create a high spot instead of the low dent. A high spot is where the damage point is sticking up from the surface of the panel and will take more effort to repair.
- Working the dent out will take some time because you want to work slow and pay extreme attention to the reflection boards image on the dent. This is where you will see where your leverage bar’s tip is at, how much pressure is being applied, and how much the dent has been removed.
