Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc.

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
View Threaded
Tue 4 Jun 2019 19:27
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - KB.

Whilst the car was in my garage the wind blew a light aluminium stepladder on to the Hyundai drivers door and put a very small dent in the panel... (about 7 inches down from the window line). To all intents and purposes it looks just like a ding caused by a careless parker opening their door on to mine.

I took the door card off and the dent is behing an inner metal panel... I can reach it with my hand via an opening in the metal inner panel but can't easily get anything on it to push the dent out. There's a patch of black rubbery sound deadening immediately behind the dent so you cant feel the dent

I rung a dent removal bloke who was recommended to me and haven't had a reply so need to look further. There are millions of them. Some are franchisees attached to national companies and, I guess, some are sole traders.

There's loads of stuff on Youtube about the mini-lifter hot glue puller method. You can buy various kits for anything from £3 (on AliExpress) up to hundreds of pounds for the real thing. Some include a slide hammer some just the bridge etc.

A further complication is the door panel has been sprayed a few years ago and I see that it might not be recommended to try the glue method on a sprayed panel.

Any recommendations and any idea what I might expect to pay to get it sorted|?

Edited by KB. on 04/06/2019 at 19:29

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 4 Jun 2019 19:55
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - oldroverboy.

where are you?

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 4 Jun 2019 20:18
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - CHarkin

Small dents bug the hell out of me and have paid to have a dent removed from my car. It was expensive at £90 but worth it to me. These specialists are very good and have a host of ways to get behind a dent, I could not tell the dent had ever been there. I have removed dozens of dents myself on my wife Toyota because it was old and I could not go wrong. The hot glue kits work pretty good and I have used them on painted panels with success but it is risky, depends how much force is needed to pull the dent out and how good the paint is to start with.

Shallow rounded dents come out easily but if it has lines or edgers its much harder.

The dent I had removed was similar to yours, just under the wing mirror. With the window down he used a thing like a starting handle with a two pence piece on the end and pushed it between the glass and the door skin, manoeuvred the two pence part to where the dent was and gradually twisted the crank so the edge of the two pence started pushing out the dent. It took him 15 to 20 minutes but he did a good gob.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 4 Jun 2019 20:25
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - KB.

Thanks for the above ... helpful. No crease - about the size of a half crown and barely the hint of a scratch on the paint itself ... T Cut will sort most of that.

I'm 6 miles from Newton Abbot near the moor. Nearest big towns, Exeter and Torquay.

Edited by KB. on 04/06/2019 at 20:28

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Tue 4 Jun 2019 21:08
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - oldroverboy.

My nasty ding, crease broken paint just above the fold line at the top of the tailgate was £85 in the bodyshop. and baked too!

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 5 Jun 2019 21:50
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - KB.

Clearly there's not a lot to add to the issue .... except to say that Dentworx haven't called me back but the local fella from DentDevils (who I have used before (several years ago) answered straight away and has promised to get back to me next week when he has a spare spot. I don't know how much it'll cost but the dent is right in my line of sight every time I approach ther car so it'll have to be done.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 5 Jun 2019 22:31
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - nick62

Park the car facing the other way round, much cheaper. ;-)

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 5 Jun 2019 23:04
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - Avant

I got a small dent puller from Amazon for £5 - no glue, just a vacuum - thinking there was nothing to lose, and amazingly it pulled the dent out. It'll work only on a flat surface and on dents that aren't too big or too small - but it worked on mine.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link
Wed 12 Jun 2019 15:54
Ding on car door. Repair options - DentDevils etc. - KB.

Apologies, Avant, I didn't spot your latest. I will look. For a fiver I'd me mad not to!

However, the 'Dent Man' called today.

Credit where credit's due, I rang last week and the boss said he'd get his lad to ring this week. He did ring as promised and said he'd be here at 8.30 this morning - and he was here on the dot of 8.30.

He removed pretty much every trace of the ding and left everything clean and tidy.

Slight downside was - where he used his tools to slide down the side of the driver's door window it has marked the rubbery/plastic seal with a couple of minor dent like imperfections - but it's done now and they don't annoy me as much as the original ding. And THB I didn't notice them till after he left and don't feel overly inclined to make a fuss as it would mean a new rubber seal and, frankly, it's not bad enough to worry too much about.

The cost? He said the standard price for a ding is £85 plus VAT but as it was such a minor dent he said £60 plus VAT.

The end.

Reply | Report as offensive | Link