Flagg

Not to the the 911!

My wife was caught in a hail storm in her VW Passat. Nothing broke the paint. It is a 2002 she is in love with - and we plan to keep it a while. You can not see the damage that much - but at the right angle, or lighting, especially when the car is washed, you can definitely see a ton of little dings.

Anyone have a solution for this? I have heard of paintless dent removal. I even remember hearing about special kits you could order to do it yourself - One of those TV adds that makes everything look easy!

Any advice, or products on the market, would be helpful.........Thanks!

Flagg

StevoUK

In the UK we have a company called Dentmaster - they use a sucker device to pull out dents - see if you can search for something similar on Google.

993Maineiac

I'm afraid the news is not good. Hail damage is not completely repairable and is very expensive in terms of eventual resale value. For a better take on this go to a good body shop and ask for an estimate to repair the damage. If there are as many dings as you say it is almost impossible to get it back to like new condition. Of course if you plan to put over 150K miles on the car it won't matter in terms of resale. Good luck.

Al

deleonl1

Definitely take it to a paintless dent removal professional to get a quote. I've used PDR on a few cars and it works great, though I've never had any hail damage repaired. What part of Maryland are you? I've used a guy out here in Northern Virginia on two of my cars and he does great work.

Greg Fishman

The dent removal companies can work wonders.
Also if you can get the car under some heat lamps or out in the hot sun it might pop them out.

LAURIER

If you have several dents, paintless dent removal can be expensive. You should call your insurance company.

SteveL1

I unfortunatly have had three cars get hail damaged in the last four years! My daily driver BMW 528i, and my wife's current 330Ci and her preveous Acura CL. Both of the BMW's are black and show EVERY little ding. I had all three repaired by the PDR guys with great results! My insurance company gave us $$$ based on traditional repair techniques, but I really did not want to repaint unless absolutly neccessay. I did have to rplace the hood on mine, but other than that, there is no way you would ever know that any of the cars had been worked on.

The key is finding the right guys to do the work. I did a lot of research before having the first one done and will tell you that there are a number of "storm chassers" that I would NOT use. They use step drill bits to go through braces and door jambs to save time. Dent Wizard is headquartered here in St. Louis and I've been to their training facility and was very impressed with the quality of the work and people. Just do your homework and you shoudl be OK. AND............you should be able to pocket some of the insurance settlement and buy some mods for the P-Car! I've made over $3,000 on the three cars of mine!

jdoc7

PDR is great but technician experience is key. Find a reputable tech and you will be amazed at the results. They typically charge a flat rate per panel, not by number of dings.

ceboyd

I would opt for paintless dent removal myself..

Repainted cars never do as well at time of resale/trade in and the good paintless removal folks work wonders (you literally cannot tell it from new)

BUT rates around here at DentBusters are $75 for 1st dent and $45 each dent.. BUT I think they also do PANEL pricing (IE. $275 for a hood, etc.)

...so just look into who there is in your area!

BUT if you wanted to plan a trip to Chicago... I could hook you up with Skiff who is the dent guy for a lot of the local dealerships (including the local Porsche dealership) and has taken many dents out of my various cars!!!