While you do your best to take care of your vehicle, dings, and dents can be an inevitable fact of life. Perhaps you were in a small accident with a careless driver, or maybe you misjudged the distance between your car and an obstacle such as a pole or wall.
Dents are unsightly, but because they can be expensive to fix, many people put off this kind of repair. Many might ignore the problem altogether, and hope the dent will magically pop out on its own. However, it is important to address dents as quickly as possible, because this is a problem that won’t go away by itself.
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Will the Dent Pop Out on Its Own?
No, a dent will not pop out on its own. In some very rare cases, extreme heat can affect the shape of a dent, but generally, once the dent is there, it is permanent.
It can be tempting to try and fix a dent yourself. You’ll find a lot of methods suggested on the internet, such as using a plunger, a hairdryer, dry ice, and there are also DIY dent removal kits you can buy.
However, there is a lot that can go wrong attempting these processes yourself — while you might be successful, you should ask yourself if the risk is worth the reward.
What Can Go Wrong with DIY?
When attempting a dent removal yourself, there are many opportunities for things to go wrong. You could even end up making the dent worse. Here are some common issues for those attempting to DIY.
Bubbling
Bubbling occurs when you go too far trying to pull a dent out. Instead of the dent disappearing, it “bubbles” out from the side of your car. Some DIY kits come with shaping tools to help prevent this from happening, but an inexperienced user might not notice the mistake until it’s too late. Once a dent has bubbled out, it is much more difficult (and costly) to repair.
Paint Damage
Some DIY methods, such as using dry ice, a hair dryer, or a plunger to pull out a dent, can also damage your car’s paint. Dry ice can cause the paint to scratch or crack, and a plunger can also loosen the paint if it’s applied with too much force.
If your dent now includes paint damage, it can be much more expensive and time consuming to fix. The paint acts as a protective coating to the car, and once it’s been damaged or scraped away, the bare, exposed metal can quickly begin to rust.
3 Reasons to Fix a Dent
1. Protect Your Vehicle’s Value
Getting a dent repaired will ultimately protect the value of your car. Buyers are generally not willing to pay as much for a visibly damaged vehicle as they are an unblemished one. Even if your car runs well, a dented exterior will lower the value.
2. Cost Savings
Addressing damage from a dent quickly will ultimately save you money. If a dent is left untreated for a long time, minor damage can quickly turn into a more expensive repair. Damaged paint can flake and worsen, leaving the body of your vehicle exposed to corrosives such as salt on treated roadways, resulting in rust. For this reason, it’s better to get a dent repaired quickly.
3. Safety
Safety should be the number one priority when dealing with any kind of damage to your vehicle. A minor-looking dent could be masking a more serious structural problem with your car that isn’t visible to the naked eye. A trained professional will be able to identify if further repair work is necessary to make sure your car is safe to drive.
Paintless Dent Repair
A professional auto body shop will have a variety of repair options based on the type of damage to your car, however they often opt for traditional dent repair, which can be costly, and makes use of filler and additional paint for the repair.
On the other hand, one of the most inexpensive and quick ways to fix a dent is a process called paintless dent repair, or PDR.
PDR works best on small dents where the paint has not been damaged. Door dings, hail damage, and minor creasing are usually candidates for this type of repair. PDR is gaining in popularity because it is such a fast and simple procedure, and new technology is expanding the type and size of dents that can be repaired using this method.
With paintless dent repair, the original paint of the car is not affected, and there is no need to use expensive body filler or attempt to match paint perfectly when repainting the surface. Because of this, PDR is often a very quick and affordable procedure, only taking a matter of hours to complete.
Talk to Our Professional PDR Technicians
Many people are hesitant to go to a professional shop to repair a dent. However, if you want to make sure a dent is taken care of correctly, the only truly reliable and safe method is to take it to someone who knows what they’re doing.
Our qualified PDR technicians at JM Dent Repair are here to get your car looking like new again. Unlike other auto body shops, we specialize in paintless dent repair — meaning our service is quick, affordable, and of the highest quality. Contact us today to see how we can help.