Automotive hail repair: The two techniques mentioned above will remove the majority of hail damage on your car, but a professional job at your local auto body shop is recommended for deep dents or badly damaged surfaces. The services tend to be cheap, fast and rarely require a new paint job. However, it is a good idea to compare prices and offered services at various body shops to see which package works best for your wallet and car’s situation.
First let’s begin with some car paint care tips: Repair times are up to the severity of the hailstorm and the damage on your car. For the light or moderate damages, the repairs may take from 1 to 3 days. But for heavy damages, it may take you 2 to 3 weeks as that damages will needs body shop participation, for paint work and panel replacement.
I don’t care if you wash your car yourself (more on that strategy later in this page) or you take it to a quality car wash. (Yes, not all car washes are created equal) This is not an option as dirt is your #1 enemy when it comes to the finish on your new car paint. And this doesn’t mean once every 6 months whether it needs it or not. This means regularly and consistently. (A minimum of once a month…minimum!)
Apply the dry ice as many times as you need to, but it should pop out eventually if the dent isn’t too deep. You can also try heating up the dent first, with something like a hair dryer (similar to the hairdryer and compressed air tip above), and then apply the dry ice to it. Suction is one way to get out a dent, but the problem is finding a dent puller with the right amount of power. Well, why not just create your own? All you need is a pot (or bucket), a vacuum cleaner and some tape and you can get that dent out of your car in no time.
Undercoating: Although waxing the car and polishing it produces good results, you need to protect the car from long term damage by undercoating and rust-proofing it. When the car metal is oxidized, rust sets in and destroys the surface of the car. To avoid this, you should consider rust-proofing the vehicle, particularly if you reside in a state where the humidity is high. Discover more info on Automotive Repair & Customization in Colorado Springs.
Dents near edges – If a dent of any size is situated near the very edge of a body panel or near a seam, PDR repair may be impossible. The reason for this is that in order to repair a dent using these techniques, you need to access the back side of the dent. The dent has a crease – If there is a sharp crease (like a folded page) in the dent, PDR likely will not work. Older vehicles – If your vehicle is older than 1990 or is a classic car, the odds are good that attempting paintless repair techniques on a dent will damage the paint. This is because the paint quality on older body panels can’t withstand the strain of the repair techniques.
So, we’ve explained what the procedure looks like — assuming it was done properly. And as you could probably guess there are a lot of ways an amateur or first-timer can get it wrong. It’s different than most other car repairs because it’s not about mechanical prowess; it’s more about control and the ability to maintain a steady hand and a gentle pace. You can’t rush it. The problem is, once a sheet metal repair starts to go awry, you’re usually much, much worse off than if you’d just left it alone. Metal holds its shape, but only to a certain point. Let’s say you get a dent in the hood — nothing too drastic, just a shallow, even dent with no sharp creases in an area that’s pretty easy to reach. You think it’ll be easy to pop it out on your own, so you begin to massage the underside while holding your shaping tool in place. You’ve made good progress so far, and a casual observer wouldn’t even notice the flawed area. But it’s not exactly perfect, and since it’s been fairly easy to this point, you decide to keep massaging the area to make it flawless. After a few more minutes of massaging, you realize that you’ve pushed it just a little too far. And now you’ve got this flabby area on the hood where you stretched out the metal. And there’s no easy way to shrink it back down. Keep going and it’ll stretch even more. Lesson learned.