How to Repair Small Car Dents and Hail Damage

Maintaining the best appearance of your car takes dedication. You wash it, wax it, and drive it carefully, you take care of it. However, you can’t control the driving conditions of other drivers and the weather. A car can rear end you, or a car parked next you can slam their door into your car. Plus, with the bipolar winter of Arizona, a possible hail storm can damage your car. Having dents on your vehicle is infuriating. Excel Collision has a few tips on how to fix small, minor dents on your own.

Repairing Small Car Dents

The methods below work on dents that are minor and that haven’t caused any serious damage to the body and mechanics of your vehicle. It will save you a trip to a collision repair center.

Use a cup plunger. Start by splashing water on both the plunger and the dent. Then start pushing and pulling until it the dent pops outs.

Use boiling water. This usually only works for plastic bumpers. Boil some water in a pot and throw it on the dent. Be careful not to burn yourself. Then, reach behind the bumper and try to pop the dent back in. The heat of the water should make the plastic a bit flexible. Keeping pouring hot water until the dent is completely gone.

Use a Hair Dryer and Compressed Air. These two popular house products can also fix a car dent. Start off by heating the car dent with the hair dryer, it will expand the plastic of the car. As soon as it’s hot enough, grab the can of compressed air, turn it upside down and begin spraying that same spot. The cold air will cause the plastic to contract. The dent will pop out.

Use Hot Glue, Wooden Dowels and Screws. This method requires a lot of patience. Place two nails into each side of the dowels and put the hot glue on the bottom. Place each one in around the area of the dents, let them dry, and pull each one until the dent is gone. Depending the size of the dent, it might required to place the dowels in multiple places, multiple times. Again, this takes a lot of patience.

Use a Specialty Tool. This the alternate method. If you are not having any luck with the previous methods, this is last DIY form. The tool is called Simoniz Pops-a-Dent kit. It’s only thirty dollars, you will only have pay once, but use it as multiple times as you want. In the long run, it an investment.

Car dents only make your car look beat up and it lowers the trade-in value. You can choose to go to a car collision repair center to have a small dent fix. However, the methods we described above, are simple and straight to the point. If you don’t feel confident on fixing the dent by yourself, Excel Collision can always get the job done.