How to Perform Dent Repair?

[VanCourtney]

Inspect the dent on the current vehicle, determine the location of the dent, and assess the difficulty of the dent repair based on the size of the dent. Based on the assessment, visit a local 4S shop to seek relevant personnel for repairs.

[LaDamian]

Last time my garage door scratched the car body, I tried the hot glue method. I got one of those car-specific hot glue guns online—melt the glue stick, apply it to a pad, and stick it to the dent. Once the glue dried, I used a puller to slowly pull it out. Plastic bumpers are the trickiest; you need to heat them with a hairdryer until they soften slightly before pulling, or they might crack. Remember, for small dents on metal panels, don’t heat them above 200°C, or you’ll burn the primer. During the pulling process, apply gentle force in multiple stages—if you rush and pull too hard at once, the dent might bulge out like toast, and you’ll have to hammer it back from the inside. This method works best for shallow, coin-sized dents. For bigger dents, just skip the hassle and go straight to a body repair specialist.

[McZane]

Check out this dent repair tool set in my workshop: five sizes of bridge pullers with various shaped hooks. When dealing with a dent in the middle of a car door, you need to make three finger-sized holes in the inner liner panel and insert a specially designed pry bar to push against the steel panel. While pushing, you must use a magnetic light against the car body to observe the curvature changes. The worst fear is overstretching the steel panel, causing an irreversible crease that even filler can't smooth out. Door corners are the toughest—last time, fixing the waistline of a Mini took a full three hours. Nowadays, the new paintless dent repair (PDR) machines work quite well, but small shops usually don’t have this equipment.

[BethanyFitz]

The standard repair shop procedure involves four steps: remove interior panels to expose the back of the steel plate, use graduated push rods for precise pressure application, observe shadow changes with xenon side lighting, and finish with rubber hammer adjustments for micro-deformations. For deep V-shaped dents, first use a hot melt glue puller to lift the main depression before refining edges with push rods. Post-repair, measure flatness with a straightedge—tolerances must not exceed 0.5mm for approval. Remember fixing neighbor Lao Zhang’s Buick LaCrosse hood? Post-repair, sunlight revealed no trace of the collision.

[DelJayden]

There's a new paintless dent repair method perfect for new cars. They use an endoscope with a camera to peek inside door panel gaps, analyzing the metal grain direction on the backside of dents. Special tools then apply precise pressure from inside like acupuncture, completely preserving the factory paint. My cousin's Tesla door got a shopping cart dent at the supermarket - post-repair, even paint thickness gauges couldn't detect any repair marks. But forget about double-layered roof panels though, manufacturers weld reinforcement beams that block tool access completely.