Paintless Dent Repair for Hail Damage    

In the past few years, many shops have begun offering "paintless dent repair", especially in Texas where hailstorms are a fact of life.  And the idea behind the industry is a good one: rather than using a combination of heat and body fillers which always require priming and painting, a dent can simply be smoothed out from the back of the panel.  The conventional repair method is costly and time consuming whereas the paintless dent repair method is relatively quick and costs about one-third less.

Paintless dent repair can be preferable to conventional methods for a number of reasons, beyond the fact that it avoids the color-match difficulty.  Painting a repaired area usually means all trim, lights, door handles, stripes, etc. must be removed.  Occasionally the delicate moldings have to be replaced and almost always, the plastic clips that retain the moldings have to be replaced.  Needless to say, the painting process adds substantial material and labor costs to the repair.

Paintless dent repair is accomplished by gaining access to the damaged area from behind — sometimes interior panels or sound deadeners must be removed.  Then a bright light is directed onto the damaged area (photo at left).  Specialized tools (photo at right) are carefully and skillfully manipulated until the dent is pushed flush with the panel surface.  However it’s easy to push the dent too far out, resulting in a raised area as unsightly as the original damage.

And there are other potential problems with significant safety consequences.  Because paintless dent repair can be so profitable, people with no background in collision repair are entering the field.  This becomes problematical when repairs are made on body panels whose structural integrity is important to the safety of the car, for example the roof.  Reinforcing members cross a car’s roof — if a dent is located above one of these reinforcements, it may only be accessed by drilling a hole through the reinforcement.  This may diminish the ability of the roof to protect the occupants in the event of a rollover.  Some new "paintless dent repair specialists" are either unaware of the consequences of their actions, or are unwilling to lose the job by turning the repair over to a shop able to do paint work.  Some of these areas can still be repaired without the need for paint by using a special technique of lifting the dent from the outside but this method is even more difficult and requires an even greater degree of skill to be done correctly.

At Rebreu, we know what constitutes a safe, quality repair.  If good, safe results are not obtainable using the paintless dent repair method, we can still repair the panel correctly using the conventional method.  If you bring a hail-damaged car to Rebreu, you can rest assured that the car you get back is as nice to look at and safe to drive as it was before the damage ever happened.