It depends if they are pushing the dents out from inside or doing a glue pull from outside. After a repaint, the glue pull is much more likely to pull paint off, but if the dents are too big, even pushing can crack the paint.
Heat shrinks metal. Most of what they usually fix is either stretched or neutral. I have seen some amazing results, however. Good luck!
Can't hurt to give it a try, if paint adhesion is a problem it will be obvious right away, and hopefully he'll be able to access stuff from the backside.
Definitely not true! I did a later model El Camino, and shaved the tailgate (had to make a pretty large patch to get rid of the handle). Painted with a fussy red color, with silver flake stripe and Pearl Black up top, with some great Anthony White (000Mack) pinstriping on it. The crate motor blew up, even when idling in the shop, and we had to push it around for a few weeks. A helper pushed in the middle of the tailgate, and put a big dent in it! I was sick, thinking of touching this paint up! Had a paintless dent guy come to the shop to estimate it, and he said he could fix it. He did a miracle, even the most discerning eye could not see the repair. A real magician!
I bought my late model GMC pickup and was using it to pull fence posts out of the ground. I was using like 4 ratchet straps linked together hooked to the trailer hitch. One post was set to the depth of China and the strap snapped, which launched one of the buckles at the tailgate at approximately the speed of sound. Somehow the paint didn't crack but there was a very pronounced dent with a sharp crease. A PDR guy worked magic and got 95% of it out, it really is incredible what those guys can do.
That’s what I was afraid of. I have a buddy that does PDR and is pretty amazing. But, he can’t do much with the old stuff.
My next-door neighbor is a paintless dent pro. He mostly does trade-ins for car dealers but he also services the general public. I've had him remove dime-size dings 3 times from my OT daily over the last 6-r-7 years. I time when I ask right before I plan to BBQ ribs on my smoker and I just add one more rack to pay him. When the subject of my old cl***ic entered the conversation, he said that his tools can remove dents that are a short distance from the access hole but for longer spans his tools can't move the thicker gauge metal used in the old days. I think it's a leverage/flex thing with the tool length. I haven't asked him a lot of additional questions regarding exceptions that can be successfully removed...... so if anyone has a success story, I guess you had fortunate cir***stances.
Been popping dents for almost 30 years if you dont have factory paint i would think twice about glue pulling. Yes older cars have thicker gauge metal but can be done with great results. I worked out a dent in the bottom of a door on a 50 Merc was a workout but dent gone same with a 51 ford door I did.
Hello, In our old Westside of Long Beach home, we had teenage gatherings for my brother’s friends. He was three years older and his friends already had their cars. Old cars, hot rods, cruisers, one truck and plenty of sedans used for daily drivers. Most of them liked the drags and since Lion’s Dragstrip was opened in 1955, about a couple of miles from our house/neighborhood, it was a natural to like fast hot rods and cruisers. When I was allowed to tag along to the drags, it was exciting. We had seen the racers in 1955-56 and they seemed like they were small blurs going down the dragstrips from our railroad berm seats. It was the closest we could get to the action at the time. Being allowed to go to the drags was fabulous, as our mom told my brother to take me along. So, for a little while I was sitting with a bunch of older teens. That was very cool. I even dressed like them. Now, once I started filming at the request of my brother, we had a stack of films weekly. Back then, it took almost a week to get them developed. So, when our dad got the films back, I used the editing machine to edit our our dad’s film clips, and organize the dragstrip films. That is how I was paid to be able to use this small 16mm color point and shoot movie camera. Use what was left of any film in the camera for the drags movies and edit our dad’s family/friends film shooting. Jnaki So, my brother’s teenage friends started to come over to our house weekly to watch the old drag racing films. I had set up the projector and ran the films to the tune of those teenagers calling out the names of the racers and motors. When we got a LP album with the exact sounds from our lions dragstrip racers in 1959, I played the LP in the "den" and showed the actual racers trying to coordinate the sound and film at the same time. Sound on film was something that only Hollywood movies did due to the cost and function of the recording devices. It was way beyond our scope. (not like digital editing, today...) What was our driveway and street parking was like a gold mine for the local cruising dent repair guys. Usually there were two to a car, stopping to ask if we wanted to get those dents repaired without sanding and repainting. We were all skeptical at first. But, when they came around on another day when they saw the hot rods and custom sedans parked on the street and driveway, they stopped to offer their services. A couple of older sedans had dents in the doors and fenders. The two guys offered to do one dent free, if the other would pay to have his repaired on the same day. They wanted the business as they saw a gold mine in those teenage cars sitting every week at our house. The guys were professional and got right to work. They got their unusual tools out and with a little finagling, they started to rub and lightly hammer until the painted side smoothly popped out. No creases, no other dent lines and the door looked as good as new. All of us were amazed and yes, the other guy paid to have his fender dent popped out on the same day. So, when the teenage cars gathered at any time, we could always count on one or the other of the roving dent repair guys rolling by or stopping for some business. We were sold on the repairs. It was amazing. Later on, when some of my own teenage friends came over to my house, they too got some dents rubbed out to our satisfaction. The skill and labor was intense and they did a great job on those that needed dent repair. But, they were not equipped for the full body dent repairs that required sanding, filling, and paint matching. That was left to the local body/paint shop. YRMV
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