DIY dent removal: How to use a dent puller

You’ve probably seen those online videos spruiking cheap, you-beaut tools that remove dents from cars like magic.

One minute there’s a huge, caved-in section in the panel, next minute the dent has disappeared. But is it really possible to fix those eyesore dents yourself with such tools?

This type of repair is called Paintless Dent Removal (PDR), and as the name suggests there’s no painting involved. If paint has been scraped off, a PDR repair can’t fix that.

We don’t pretend to be anything like a master PDR technician but if our experience is anything to go by, anyone with a degree of aptitude can have a go at PDR.

However, quality tools, a level of training and experience makes a big difference.

While you might think a dent is just a dent, there are all sorts of variables: where the dent is situated on a panel, how big the dent is, what type of metal the dent has been made in and metal thickness are just some factors involved.

There are no PDR qualifications as such. Yet PDR training can cost tens of thousands of dollars and a quality commercial PDR ‘starter’ tool kit costs about $7000.

Most professional PDR technicians charge around $300 per dent removal.

A huge variety of PDR tools are available for different types of dents; you’ve got your whale tails, your shaved tools, your long flag tools… and that’s just to start with.

The number of different tools available, and their specific uses, can be overwhelming.

Essentially you have tools that pull a dent out from the outside (usually with hot glue) and hand tools that push dents out from the inside of the panel.

With the aim of fixing dents simply and cheaply, we went for a glue puller kit that cost $30. In hindsight, a set of PDR hand tools teasing out the dent from behind the panel may have worked better with sharp dents such as these (especially in the hands of an expert).

You’ll also need isopropol alcohol or wax and grease remover and a plastic chisel, so that’s another $20 or so.

A PDR glue puller kit should include a T-handle dent puller tool (basically a slide hammer with a slot in the end to connect to the glue tab) and glue tabs in a variety of sizes.

You can either get a hot glue gun and glue sticks from a craft shop or buy those as part of the PDR kit.

PDR techs use a PDR light that emits a soft, diffused light and has straight lines on the lense that reflect onto the dented panel. The lines reflected on the panel really show every element of the dent and make it easier to remove it completely.

But quality PDR lights are expensive ($1000 or more), so here we’re keeping it simple by relying on natural light to see the dent.

The dent on the Peugeot 308 shown here was caused by a rear wheel driving onto a sleeper that then flicked up and caused all sorts of mayhem on the sill panel.

There were several dents and some paint scratched off, so the plan was to try to remove as many of the dents as possible with the glue puller.

We started by wiping the dent area with wax and grease remover so the glue would stick properly.

The PDR glue kit comes with a variety of glue tabs. It’s a matter of selecting one that best suits the size of the dent, so the bigger the dent, the bigger the glue tab.

As the dent began to pull out, we used smaller tabs to suit. We found that the glue has to be nice and hot, so we left the glue gun on for about five minutes, until hot glue started to drizzle out of the gun.

Then we just applied a layer of hot glue to the glue tab and gently pushed it onto the centre of the dent.

With the glue dry (it takes a couple minutes; if you can make a mark in the glue with your fingernail, it isn’t ready yet), it’s time to slide the end of the slide hammer over the glue tab.

We soon learned that how much gusto you throw into the slide hammer can either fix a dent or make it worse. So don’t give the slide a red hot go the first time; just give it a quick tap starting from about half way down the slide, closely watching the metal to see how/if it moves or appears to pull out the dent.

Then it’s a matter of removing the slide hammer and using a plastic chisel to remove the tab and glue from the panel.

What can happen is that the metal around the dent starts to pull out, causing high spots. You can see in our results that there is a slight high spot around the dent.

We discovered that most of the time the glue tab would actually break away from the panel and remain intact on the tab.

We gave it about five applications of hot glue tab and dent pulling to pull the dent out until we weren’t game to try anymore – the high point was only going to get worse.

We also tried getting out what looked like a hail dent on the bonnet. It was so small it was hard to photograph, but hopefully you can see that the difference before and after is minimal. We tried pulling the dent out with a glue tab three times before stopping to avoid high spots around the dent.

If our experience is anything to go by, you might get some dents to not look quite as bad… but really it doesn’t make much difference.

You might get better results with a bowed-in section of a large surface area of a panel such as a door, but for sharp dents such as those in these images it was all but impossible to remove them completely.