The Lowcountry Miata Club hosted the event for a second time.  The first event was in 2008. They are a really passionate group of people.   Twice a year, once in the Spring and once in the Fall, they have their Tech Day events.  During these events I go and spend the whole day removing dents that their prized Miatas have accumulated.  These people love their cars and are a fun bunch.

Miatas Doin' The Charleston 2008 Event

One thing people need to be made aware of in South Carolina is that law states you can have your vehicle repaired at your choice of repair facilities. This is referred to as steering. People should be weary of insurance companies requiring you to go to their back-pocket deal preferred vendor.  The choice is yours to make.  Not the insurance company’s. By law, in South Carolina, the insurance company cannot tell you who to take your vehicle to for hail repair.

For more information, visit our Hail Damage FAQ page.

I really feel that there needs to be education for the body shop industry to inform them of what is possible with paintless dent removal. The amount of time savings that PDR can save is quite substantial. Let’s take, for example, this van. If this van was to go the traditional route for repair it would go something like this: Customer would drop off van at body shop and get rental car for a few days. Next the body shop would sand the paint off the dent, weld some studs in the dent’s center, pull the dent out, grind off the studs, fill in the rest of the remaining dent with bondo, sand that down smooth, spray on the primer, spray on the paint, then spray on the clear coat. Time elapsed: a few days.

Now let’s look at how I fixed it:

When I arrived at this appointment the owner said he was trying to avoid taking it to a body shop because they wanted something like $1,500 to fix it. They said that that was the only way to do this repair and that paintless dent removal wouldn’t be an option on this one. In all honesty, this was a nasty dent and knew it would be a tough one. I told the owner I was pretty sure it would come out but I wouldn’t know until I had spent a little time on it. So, he went back in his office to get some work done and I went to work. I removed the taillight was able to get tooling up under the backside of the dent and massaged it out. Time elapsed: 2 hours.

I am not advocating that every dent out there can be fixed using paintless dent removal. What I am saying is that there are too many cars getting repaired that are being repainted when there is another option. Painting a car is sometimes unavoidable but it should be avoided at all costs is possible.

Anthony Spencer
Owner
Dent Dynamics.com