Thread: paintless dent repair

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i was wondering why there is no body work area on this forum, just curious if anyone else does paintless body repair around here? ive been doing it for 12 years now for a japanese auto maker, every night all night. I was partly trained by a trainer sent from japan. it was a 2 year program to learn. we repair dents as the cars are moving down the line, kinda tricky at times. just wondering!

For awhile I worked at at local bodyshop, and we would use Dent Doctor or one of the other paintless dent removal guys pretty often. It was cheaper to have them come in and do certain dents and boo- boo"s than to have our guys do it.The work they did was amazing, and they wouldn't let us watch them work (so we couldn't learn how they did it) but when they were done you couldn't find where the dent had been. Even our seasoned body techs had a lot of respect for what these guys were able to do.

Don

When I had my shop I'd offer the service as an "up sell" benefit for my cutomers. While we were fixing the accident damage in the conventional manner I'd have the mobile guy I used come in and do the small dings and such on other parts of the car. This usually only appealed to the higher end owners who had some level of emotional involvement in their vehicle rather than viewing it like just another appliance in their life. I'd have him take out the door dings on my truck periodically (amazing how no matter how much you try to park in places where it shouldn't happen these little dings "magically" appear) Like any other skill based craft not all paintless dent guys were equal, somes better than others.

some guys just cant learn it. we had a couple guys that either were blind and could not see what they were doing or they just plain thought they knew a better way then you were training them. and usually in paintless repair that means your screwing it up and its going to paint shop next.

I managed Body Shops back in the 80's and early 90's this was just coming into the Chicago land area. It is amazing its done so well with out cracking the paint. But like body work some have the feel and some dont.