Car Care Advice

PDR stands for ‘paintless dent repair‘. It’s a method for removing small dents without the need for filling and repainting. It’s perfect for the kind of small dents you get on your doors at supermarkets, and can often be used on larger dents but it does have it’s limitations. The first of these being that the paintwork must not be broken. The other limitations come from the fact that when a panel is dented, it stretches - the bigger the dent, the more the stretch. This stretch can never be put back, so it is is often impossible to get larger dents completely smooth again, there will be a bit of a ripple, but PDR is a much cheaper alternative to conventional body shop repairs.

The tools most commonly used are a set of metal rods and bars. These rods are used to get behind the dented panel in order to lever and massage the dent out from behind. The dent repair man may need to remove interior door panels, interior trim, lights, or other fitting to be able to get his levers behind the dent. In some places the panelwork of the car is double skinned preventing access, in these cases sometimes it’s possible to drill a hole in a discreet place (such as inside the door shuts) to gain access, or a glue puller can be used on larger dents.

A glue puller is a device for pulling a plastic lug which is glued on to the face of the paintwork. When the lug it pulled, in theory it pulls the dent with it - the lug can then be removed from the paint’s surface. This method can sometimes be effective but it is very clumsy compared to the use of the metal levers.

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