A bunch of skill, lots of experience and a ton of patience.

 

I'll just pay someone to do it.

 

Sam, where was the ding relative to the side molding?

 

My friend tried to tackle this as a job! Bought the tools and went to school. But, you have to have great patience in doing this work and know how to manipulate metal. The slower you work the better. Then there is the paint on the other side to worry about. Too much pressure it could crack the paint or raise the metal and the it will become a fight back and forth till the metal lays flat. Not something I want to do and he didn't' either. For what the dentless paint repair guys do... the money is not that expensive.

 

UPDATE!


The ding guy fixed it and it looks as good as new! It's as if the dings were never there. I had three dings. There was the new one on the door (which was about 2 inches below the horizontal molding piece, Skidmark). That one really bugged me because it was very obvious anytime I looked at the car. There was a tiny one on the left rear fender which was barely noticeable, and there was a big one on the hood where something fell off of a truck and hit the hood when the previous owner had the car. The one on the hood was the worst of the three, but it was actually the least noticeable because you had to be in the right location to see it. The ding guy fixed all three for $200. I watched him do the first one. He made it look easy, but I'm sure it took lots and lots of practice to get to the point to know exactly where to press to massage out the ding.


There was a scary moment before I met the ding guy. I was meeting him at a used car dealership at 8:00 AM. I got there and I parked in an empty spot near the back of the car lot. There were three spots all in a row and I parked in the far right spot facing out with my passenger door exposed to any car that might park in the center spot. I figured that at 8:00 AM no one is going to be visiting a used car lot. Three minutes later I saw this rusty, late 1980's Buick Century driving through the lot. Sure enough, it turned and pulled into the spot right next to me! AND THE DRIVER ONLY LEFT ABOUT 18 INCHES OF SPACE BETWEEN THE CAR! The large woman in the passenger seat started to open her door, and I was freaking out! I immediately started the engine and I was motioning to the large woman to wait for me to move, but she didn't even know I was in the car. When I started to pull out she finally looked over and stopped opening her door. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I have no doubt that she would have put a fourth ding in the car.

 

great news reverend! I've also done that before...moved the car if the next arrival wasn't a good distance away. Just yesterday, I went to a local bbq joint, first stall I chose didn't have a good 'ora' to it, so I backed up, and looked for that end spot, where I could get 1/2 inch from the curb (Im getting REALLY good at lining up my tires in relation to side curbs w/o rubbing) and leave 3' to the adjoining stall's stripe. You and me...must be kindred spirits of some sort.

 

Sam, glad to hear you got a good fix on the dings. The experience that you described reminded me of MY 2003 Audi A6. I purchased the car new and had it for about three weeks; parked it in the corner of the lot one day at the gym. When I was leaving to go home a rather large lady was flinging the door of her old Cadillac Eldorado open, jumped in and sped away. When I got up to the A6 there was a deep dent and pealed paint on the quarter panel. No question about it this person had gone out of there way to do something miserable. However, these days because of medical limitations my wife and I get to part the Jag in a handicap space and it would take a door 6-7 feet to hits us. Not the best, but useful consolation.

 

I'd vote for any politician who ran on the platform to give XK owners a special license plate and parking zones. With my first really nice car, a 340 Duster which had an aftermarket, beautiful custom paint job, once went to a strip shopping center to visit a girl I was dating who worked in one of the stores. I was inside the store when a 4 door sedan with 4 girls in it drove by and they were all laughing and acting up. I had parked two aisles away from the front of the store, without even another car in the same aisle. That girl swung that car around and parked right up on top of my Duster and the two girls on that side flung their doors open right into my car, laughing the whole time. I was so sick and angry that I just did not know what to do. The girl that I was dating kept me from going out there. The image is still in my mind like a scene from a horror movie. When I bought my Jag, the guy who sold it to me owned a body shop and was handling the sale for his friend. It had two dings in it. As a favor for me, he took it over to another shop that did ding repair while we went to lunch. When we came back they had repaired them to look like they were never there. I only parallel park this Jag, or park it way out somewhere where it cannot get hit. The thing that bothers me the most is the knowledge that there are a lot of people who would ding it on purpose.

 

The most common cause of shopping mall door dings here in NJ are the women driving SUV's. With a phone up to their ear, coffee cup in the other hand they'll crack their door open with the handle then kick it all the way open with their foot. After they get out they'll slam it shut with their hip. If their husbands only knew. Jack

 

Reverend - switching gears a bit .... I saw the TAMU sign at the bottom. Seriously, you're an Aggie? Now I need to add the picture of my car with Kyle field backdrop.

 

LOL! I just did that to mess with h20boy! I'm actually a Duke fan.

 

I worry about my Jag getting dinged all the time at work, my car sits in a plaza parking lot 8 hours a day. With my last job I used to sit in my Van reading maps to get to my next job, I couldn't count the amount of times that people swung their doors open and hit my door. I didn't care as much with that vehicle as it was my work horse but it never ceased to amaze me how many people have no respect for other people property

 

I and others I know have had similar experiences where you could barely tell that there was a ding. These guys used to be pretty easy to find and worked in a mobile fashion where they would come to your house or work and take the ding out. The company I used years ago was DentWizard but I find that these types of mobile dent guys are no longer around. Instead, you need to bring the car to a car dealer and they arrange the paintless dent guy to show up. I really wish that I could find some mobile service again.


Doug

 

The guy who did my car said he had been doing it for about 15 years. He used to work for Dent Wizard, but he quit them to go out on his own. Here's what he told me, I don't know if it's true or not, but it makes sense. He said that most of the people that work for Dent Wizard or one of the other big name companies are relatively inexperienced and new. They get the Job at Dent Wizard and the company trains them. They don't get paid very well because the company knows that if they quit they can just find someone else to come in and do the job after two weeks of training. They have to sign non-compete agreements and stuff so the guys who work there can't simply quit and then go out on their own.

But, the most experienced guys know that they can make much more money on their own. Heck, I paid the guy $200 for one hour of work. And that was after I talked him down in price. I agreed to meet him somewhere so he didn't have to drive out to the boonies where I live, and I agreed to pay him cash (that way he doesn't have to pay taxes on the $200. He didn't say that, but I know how the game is played. $200 cash is like $300 by check or credit card). Dent Wizard will probably do a good job, but the really experienced guys are the independents. At least that's what he said.

 

When the Dent Doctors repair your cars at a dealership, they often split 50/50 with the dealership. My new car dealership provides their dent guy a closed service bay, as he doesn't like people to see how he does his "craft." Last year, the dealership cleared $60K on his services. Not bad for 1 day a week!

These guys are now getting their own facilities--and taking 100%. Last time I tried to fix a bunch of hickory nut dents on my trunk lid, they wanted $1000. Heck, I can buy a new trunk lid for $260--and have it painted for much less than $1K. Or, fix the dents with bondo and the lid repainted for much less.

Dent Doctors are often 'on the road'--chasing hail storms/hurricanes/tornados all over the country. That's when they really make the big $.

 

Sam, sorry to hear about your dent troubles. Glad to know that it's fixed, though.

There is a guy in Calif. who is an expert in dent repair but uses soft tools and flat tools rather than the sharp tools that most dent repair guys use. Here's a link to his site, which I find very interesting. Dent Expert Training is pdr training or paintless dent removal videos and dent repair pdr tools He also has lots of videos on YouTube and appears to be the real deal.

When it's my time for this type of service (and it will be inevitably) I intend to contact him and find out if there are any of his (experienced) students in my area.

 

This is really good news, I am happy for you Rev . It's good to see your ride is back in champ condition lol

 

I just noticed that Matt went to Tech!

Speaking of paintless dent repair - the single dent on my car is what they call an 'outie' - imagine a mosquito bite on your skin, but it's on the surface of the trunk. I think the previous must have carry something on the trunk - maybe golf clubs - and just slammed the trunk w/o looking. Need to get that done - have not gotten the time yet - but reading about your success, I'm going to give that a shot and post the result here.

 

Outies are also able to be removed...they are quite magic with those little tools. :

Gooooooooooooooooooooo Tech! <my guns are up>

 

A van hit a parked car in my lot at work today. He ripped the front bumper off and broke the signal lights. He was a good guy though, he left his info under the wiper. I would have cried if it was my car