2 Ways to Repair a Dent in Your Vehicle's Body
If your vehicle has been dented during an accident, you may not need to take it to a body shop for repairs. There are several ways you can make the repair to your vehicle. Here are two such ways to repair a dent in your vehicle.
Use a Stud Welder Gun
One way to repair a dent in the body of your vehicle is to use a stud welder gun. To use this method of repair, you will first need to sand away the paint and primer on the area of your vehicle's body that needs the dent pulled out. The stud welder needs bare metal for the metal pins to attach onto the body of your car. You can weld as many 1 1/2-inch long pins or studs onto the dented section, as close as one inch apart. When you press the pin-loaded gun onto the body of your vehicle and pull the trigger, an electric current passes through the tip of the gun and the pin, and into your vehicle to weld it into place.
After you have finished welding the pins onto your vehicle, allow the welds to cool before you try to pull on them. Pulling the pins too early will result in the pins breaking off your vehicle and can cause damage to your vehicle's body.
Use a slide hammer or a hand puller to hold onto the pins as you pull out your vehicle's dent. A hand puller uses your own hand power and is best on smaller dents. A slide hammer will give you extra pulling force for pulling larger and deeper dents. Pull on the pins, working from the outside of the dent to the inside. Then, once you have pulled the dent out, clip off each of the pins with a wire cutter. Grind off the remaining pieces of stud pins with a grinder. If you need to fill in any dents or creases, apply an auto body filler to the area and allow it to dry.
Once the auto body filler is dry, sand down the repaired section. Because it can be easy to damage the body of your vehicle from the heat of a grinder, use a dual action sander with 36 to 80 grit to smooth down the body of your vehicle, preparing it for new primer and paint. This type of sander will not heat up the metal as much and will also minimize the amount of metal your remove during this final sanding step, preventing damage to your vehicle's body.
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Use a Wooden Dowel
If the body of your vehicle has been dented, without any visible damage to its paint, you can use this repair method. And you won't need to sand off the old paint and repaint after repairing the dent.
You will need:
- 1 1/2-inch wide wooden dowel
- Hot glue gun
- Package of 1 1/2-inch long metal screws
- Wood saw
- Plastic or rubber spatula
Cut the wooden dowel into four-inch sections. Attach two metal screws into opposite sides of one end of each wooden dowel, approximately 1/2-inch from the end. Make sure the screws protrude from the wooden dowel by one inch. The screws will provide grips for your finger as you pull the dowel and repair the dent.
Clean the dented section of your vehicle with soap and water to remove any dirt and oils that will prevent the hot glue from adhering. Put hot glue on the bottom end of a dowel, opposite of the screws, and press the glued end onto the dent. Place the remaining pieces of dowel in your vehicle's dent and allow the hot glue to dry for 20 minutes.
Pull on each of the wooden dowels until you pop the dent out, then peel off the dowels with a plastic spatula. You can reattach the dowels with hot glue in different areas if any of the dent still remains. Then, after you are finished, peel off any hot glue that remains on your vehicle.