Our long-term Jetta was the victim of a senseless act of '70s car-show copycat crime. We had a rather ferocious-looking dent in the top of the driver's side fender and a large butt-sized crater in the hood. No one on staff would 'fess up. And even though I've seen every episode of CSI (with a great whodunnit record), I was unable to deduce the perp.
I had some experience with dents in the past, and was convinced we were looking at a few weeks in the body shop and a repair bill similar to those for our performance mods. I'll gladly hand over a stack of bills for stuff that makes a car faster or handle better, but there's something plain wrong about spending large sums of cash to get back to where you were before. It's like buying a set of stock wheels to replace some gorgeous aftermarket pieces.
Luckily, before heading to the nearest body shop, someone convinced me to take it to a paintless dent shop to see if they could help. I knew PDR guys could do wonders with door dings and small dents, but I thought this was well beyond their scope. I headed to Beach Cities PDR, in Huntington Beach, California.
They took a look and, after cringing, confirmed my assumption of a Starsky and Hutch-style hood slide. After a quick examination both inside and out, they proclaimed it could be fixed. To say I was skeptical was an understatement. I expected a magnifying glass, some straight edges, measuring of material thickness, some sort of quantitative analysis. As I soon found out, PDR is as much old-world craftsmanship as it is hard science.
It's a painstaking process of working the dent in different spots, being able to see that lifting here will cause a dip there and once you get that section lifted beyond the level you want, you can work the other sections that dropped, and everything basically levels out. About 15 minutes in, I was convinced we were going to go from a giant crater to washboard. This is a time-consuming process requiring lots of experience and a real feel for the metal.
After a couple hours of pushing, bending, hammering, tapping and retina-straining observation, the hood was again smooth and glassy. Being able to push out an 18-inch diameter dent with a quarter-inch-wide tool is a pretty amazing, though counterintuitive, process.
The dent on the fender was (I thought) a challenge of immense proportions. The fender had been pushed down so far that there was a visible crease where it had hit the unibody beneath. Luckily, VW left cut-outs along the inside of the fender that, combined with sneaking behind the fender liner, gave all the space needed to work the dent out.
After watching the effort on our Jetta, I am a convert to PDR thinking. Yes, there's still a large amount of bodywork that can't be fixed by any other means than a traditional body shop, but for dents with little or no paint damage, think about seeing what a PDR shop can do. Pick a good shop with lots of experience. The guys at Beach Cities have been doing this for years, and that's really what's required. They've done work for Chip Foose, Mothers and several other notable clients.
When looking for a PDR shop, ask to see examples of their work. Ask about their experience. A well-intentioned but untrained guy can ruin a body panel faster than a disgruntled ex wielding a golf club, so don't be afraid to turn and walk out if you aren't comfortable with a shop's credentials.