What is Paintless Dent Repair?
The History of Paintless Dent Repair
Paintless dent repair is essentially a niche sub-service of auto body repair. Its origin came about, as most things do, due to necessity and urgency.
In 1960, Oskar Flaig was an ordinary member of staff at Mercedes-Benz. Primarily, he was in charge of making sure the vehicles displayed at car shows/trade fairs were consistently in perfect condition day after day while on display. The problem Mr. Flaig discovered was not the cars, but the people that attended the events. Body damage, dents, and scratches on the paintwork caused by the attendees needed to be repaired and re-painted at night. With quick thinking combined with a use of a hammer handle, he could gently push out the small dents without damaging the paint.
Thus, PDR was born.
Paintless Dent Repair Today
Like most amazing inventions, there is refinement. Today, instead of a hammer handle, PDR techniques utilize metal rods and body picks to push out the dents from the underside of the body panel.
Glue and specially designed tabs may be used to pull out the dents from the outside of the panel. Fine-tuning the repair often involves tapping down the repair to remove small high spots. Technicians can blend high spots to match the texture of the paint called orange peel.
This is the technique our Springfield paintless dent repair technicians use today.
The Springfield Paintless Dent Repair Process
What is the paintless dent repair process? PDR is predominantly used to remove the small dents and dings caused by hail – auto hail repair. PDR is the preferred method of repairs by the insurance industry. Paintless dent repair is faster, cheaper, and more efficient for these types of repairs.
- Step 1: Inspect the damage.
- Step 2: Submit the estimate to the insurance company.
- Step 3: Begin repairs. Once your vehicle is in our shop, we re-inspect the vehicle to insure all damage has been accounted for. Next, to access the underside of the exterior panel we remove headliners, interior trim panels, the hood, and trunk lid, and we begin the PDR process.
- Step 4: The vehicle is reassembled, reinspected, reported to your insurance company as repair completed, and delivered back to you…like new!