I have a few little door dings both on my passenger side and drivers side. I don't have any experience pulling/fixing these, nor do I know if they need to be pushed from the inside. I'm not afraid to try myself, if you all think it is not difficult. I'm trying to do everything else on the car myself, I just don't have any tools for fixing dents and don't know the cost of a body shop vs the tools+DIY.

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Those dents would be easily removed with pdr. I have a guy in Albany NY that would remove them no problem. Cost was around $150 all in.

 

PDR is “paintless dent remover” right?

Do you think it would be $150ish for a professional to do them or for me to get a pdr and do it myself? Either way, thanks for your approximation. Ive read mixed things about dent repair costs these days.

 

Any pdr guy with any kind of experience can pull them out. I had some similar ones and he worked on it about an hour and a half as I remember. Went there on 2 occasions and it is back to flawless. Once you see it done you will realize it's not to be attempted and to expect perfect professional results. Various methods are employed. The first thing to know is if the paint is original. Makes a difference for a variety of reasons.

 

You dont really get a pdr. PDR involves many tools and knowledge of how to do it right. They use all sorts of tricks and tools to do it, including heat so the paint does not crack when doing it. Those seem small and if you keep the right amount of heat on them and work from the inside (if you can get to the back side of them) you may be able to do it. But be extremely careful. Once you crack the paint, things get more expensive to fix. On the quarter panel you really cannot get to the back side of those since it is a double skinned panel. A PDR person will likely use a form of adhesive and a glue on fastener to grab and pull on those. Dings in the door they may just get at from the inside. While I have done some dent repair and paint repair on my own, it is very easy to do it wrong and make things a lot worse. For example, people try to push dents out from the backside and all they do is make a larger dent outward around the original dent.

Honestly, just have a PDR person look at it and give you a quote. A good PDR tech can do some pretty amazing things. Those will not even have a trace when they are done. That is what I would do on mine with those. Even if they charged you a few hundred bucks, it would be worth it to have it done perfectly.

 

Sound advice guys. Thank you. Having read up more I will have a professional fix these. I definitely don't want to make them worse, even though I want to be hands-on with my new car. Maybe I'll take some pics to show the before and after and update this post. Thanks again fullback and engifineer

 

Update

Got the dents fixed by a PDR company that was recommended by 3 different body shops. They deduced that my car had been sprayed for sale and ended up fixing the dents from the inside so they didn't pull off the paint. Thanks guys for recommending I go to a pro for this.

 

What did they charge you?

 

Hi. This job cost me $450. Let me know if I can answer any more questions

 

First, hello! I'm in Palm Bay! I hope to see you around.
Second, I used a PDR guy in PA before I moved to FL. Best $500 I spent! He found dents and dings I never even saw. Your pics (thanks for posting the after pics) show you had a good experience, too!