Cars can get minor dents and dings in the body very easily, and often they are small enough that your insurance deductable would cost more than the repair. However, visible damage can detract from the vehicle's aesthetic and affect the resale or trade value of the car. Body shops offering paintless dent removal services can often get the dents out without damaging the paint and save money, making the repair much more palatable.

Getting An Estimate

Before any dent removal work can start on your vehicle, the shop doing the dent removal will need to look at the damage to determine if a paintless dent removal service is sufficient. Often, the best candidates for this service are cars with hail damage, light door dings, or small rock impacts that have not cracked the paint and are not very deep. Dents with hard crease lines often stretch the sheet metal and are not candidates for this type of repair, whereas small door dings and other minor dents where the paint is intact are.

The tech doing the repair will go over the vehicle's surface with a bright light that creates reflections that show the distortion in the body, making it easier to find tiny dings and determine their severity. Sometimes more minor dents may not show up as easily, so it is vital that the tech locates all of them to generate an accurate work estimate for you.

Dent Removal

Once the car is ready for repair, it is washed and dried to allow the paint to show reflections and then taken into the shop, where large lights are positioned to help the technician see imperfections and warps in the metal. The tech will work from the inside of the dent and slowly work the dent out from the backside. 

Each section of the car is worked individually, and the progress is checked with the light on the paint to ensure the dent is coming out without causing more damage. The metal is pushed out in tiny amounts to avoid pushing the dent too far. Each movement is slow and meticulous, but if done correctly, the tech can reshape the sheet metal to a near-perfect shape, and most people will never see where the original dent was. 

While the process is often slower than having the dent filled and painted, it results in a better repair, eliminates the need for body fillers, and keeps the car original because nothing is replaced. The size of the dent that can be fixed using a paintless dent removal service is limited, but each shop sets the standard for what they are comfortable removing, so you will need to inquire about it at your local body shop.