Rickjames

Ok, I've been living with two dings on my S--one one each door. One of which was there when I bought the car, however it is so small that I didnt notice it when I went and looked at the car initially--the only way I saw it was when I was washing my car and I was sitting on the ground staring at the door. But the other ding I received last summer while I was up in chapel hill and some jerk with a white car left a big ding on my passenger side--not to mention a lot of white paint. Well I got their paint off and I went to a body shop and dent wizard to see what they recommended. The body shop told me that they could do it, but that dent wizard was the best place to have this sort of thing done. Dent wizard said they would take both out for about $200. I decided to wait thinking I could live with the large ding since I got all the white off and it looked not as bad. Well this past weekend I was looking at my car and I noticed another ding on my door--passengerside. Not too bad, but it pisses me off that people just go around opening their door into other people's cars and don't leave a note. Obviously if went to get a new quote, it'll go up another 100 dollars. My question is this: Do these sound like reasonable quotes and can anyone else recommend anyother solution?

Thanks.

CaptainMike

PDR (Paintless Dent Removal/ aka dentwizard etc) will be your best bet, I have used them for years and I live less than 1 mile from the ocean..(I have heard 'body shop' guys say that PDR removes the paint/rustproofing from the inside panel where they push the ding out, thus causing long term problems with rust blah blah blah), but I have never had any such problems even after 5 yrs on my MY00. between $75 and $150 per ding here depending on size/difficulty, and that is for a mobile guy I use.
on another note.. I had two BIG dings put on my pass side door within a month of buying my MY04 even though I had the car parked at the very end of a row with 9 or 10 empty spaces next to it, someone parked right next to me dented my car, moved their car a few inches and dented my car AGAIN.. I came back out and found the 2 dents, same height, same black paint about 6 inches apart ARRRGGGHHH! and still 9 empty spaces between me and the nearest car. I always check both sides before I get in.. Some import hating rednecks or extremely clueless senior citizens... No shortage of either in Central FL.. parking spaces are getting smaller and smaller here as well. So good luck and make friends with your PDR guy..
Mike

Nate03

dent wizard



I just (about 10 days ago) had two dings removed from my passenger door panel = $125 plus tax...
(one about the size of a dime the other was essentially invisible until you really looked for it-of course to me the car was 'totaled' -LOL) ....totally happy to look at that panel now!

wanabe

and you can buy kits for ding removal...
just took a couple of dings outta my daughters car yesterday.
the kits are cheap and they work fairly well.
they use a glue gun to glue a dart looking thing onto the dent. they you use a supplied puller to pull the dent out. just as the dent comes out, the dart comes unglued from the car.
there were also a couple of dings we could not get out- so the dent wizard will get to fix those.

CaptainMike

Wanabe, any ill effects to the paint/finish by using hot glue gun kit?.. saw it on TV but figured it was junk. I'm assuming you stripped ALL product down to bare clearcoat, I would be petrified of just popping off a big chunk of paint with the glue.. I'm assuming it worked for simple circular dings without any kind of crease or more complex shape., If I had a test beater around I'd give it a swat, hmmm perhaps the GF has a ding, must ask her..
Cheers, Mike

wanabe

mike-
rubbed the area down with alcohol first.
good point about our paint though... our paint is not as good as some car's.
as with any procedure, best to test in a less conspicous area first.

no ill effects on my daughters car. the biggest dent she got a body shop estimate of around $500... that one i fixed so you can not tell it was ever there. she got that one from a car that bumped her while driving (not a ding, but a real dent). i think it works better on dents than on small dings. i had to use it several times on the dings and gave up on a couple.

probably the same product you saw on tv- i got my money's worth!

animeS2K

I'm not sure if I have any "before" pictures, but I'll look around... I had a rather sharp dent RIGHT behind the passenger-side door because I was an idiot and forgot to retract the seat rail when I was putting the seat back in... It was literally RIGHT behind the 90-degree turn in the metal of the door jamb.

One shop said "nope, can't do anything about it". I took it to the PDR guy at my Honda dealer (Criswell Honda/Chevy/Lamborghini/Lotus) and he got it out. The metal looks perfect. Amazing stuff. I highly recommend PDR.

MikeyC

OK. I feel I have to chime in on a few of the items discussed here:

1. I once used a PDR guy years ago (probably close to 10) and he did a great job. You couldn't even tell there was ever a ding there. Also, if I recall correctly dent wizard at the time charged by the panel not by the ding. Obviously, that's changed.

2. I'm surprised to hear that those do it yourself ding removal kits work at all. Every review I've ever read of them say they're garbage. My friend bought one, but after reading some reviews he never bothered to take it out of the box.

3. I believe dings are caused by the inconsiderate morons of the world who through some sort of personality disorder are not able to park evenly in the giant space between the two white lines which define the parking space and in a perpendicular manner to the aforementioned lines. People like that should be euthanised.