Tiny dent, no paint damage

Thx! I guess I will have to resort to that after all.

Randy

I have a couple of "ping-hammer" dents in my front left 1/4 panel. I took it to a paintless dent repair place in the Capital Auto Mall and they quoted me just over $200 to get them out. Said they would go in behind the panel and "massage" the dent out. I thought to myself, "WTF? They are going to bring in a $50/hr masseuse to work on my car???" Thinking about trying one of those "As Seen on TV" suction cup dent pullers for $19.95 and do it myself. At least I'd get some experience working on my own car.

I've seen jobs that my friend has done where, had they been left to someone with experience, they would be unnoticeable. Since some people like to cheap out and try themselves, it usually ends up costing more and looking worse in the end. Consider this...a dent is usually put in by a single motion that pushes the metal one way. You go in and try to fix it. You bend it a little this way, a little that way. All of a sudden this simple dent has high spots, low spots, and stretched metal that can't be brought back. If you care about what the car looks like when it's done, take it to someone with experience. If not, go for it. You might do OK, but more than likely not. It truly is an art. I'm not telling you this because I have stock in every paintless dent repair place across the country. I'm telling you because I've seen what happens when the average Joe tries to play bodyman. It's almost always not good. And that suction cup thing...crap. The ONLY thing that will do is pull a sprung panel back out. And even then it will still probably look like crap when it's done.

Keith opined

I'm with Keith... I've done my own body work, and I would SURE leave the ping dent in there before I'd try one of those things.

They ARE indeed massaged out.. and there's art and science to it.

Expensive learnig experience if you screw up.

Those dent pullers you see on TV will pull a dent that's not deep enough to cause a crease, and at least twice the diameter of the puller head that you glue on to the dent, but they're absolutely useless on small diameter dings. Massaging out a ding truly is an art, but if you shop around you should be able to find someone who'll do it for a lot less than 200 bucks.

The rate to look for is $50-$75 bucks per dent. Greg said he had a couple, so he's not far off. Depending on how hard they are to get to, how close they are to one another, etc, he may be in the neighborhood. Can't hurt to try a few places though.

My girlfriend was driving my F-250 to the grocery store one day and this guy pulled up behind her in the parking lot. He offered to take out all the dents with the paintless repair (a couple of door dings and a larger dent on a rear quarter panel) for $20. Thank God she knew better!