Ever Tried to Remove a Car Dent?

There’s a dent in my car door from where another car slid into it and dented it. All the workings (power window, power locks, etc.) are just fine, except for the dent. My preference is to somehow pull it out, and I’ve looked at several different things to use like this but am wondering if anyone has had any experience with pulling out a dent themselves?

I had a friend run into my car. Literally. Running and tripped, left a nice dent in the driver’s front panel. We took it most of the way out with a toilet plunger and water to help the seal. If I tried it again, I would use petroleum jelly on the plunger rim - water had to be reapplied. We stopped at mostly gone because I didn’t care, but with a small enough plunger and good light, you could probably get the whole thing smooth.

Haven’t done it, but I have been told that it can be helpful to get the metal hot by parking it in the sun.

Someone backed into the door of my high school beater and then left the scene. I wouldn’t have cared except for the fact that I’d just had it painted a month prior.

I pulled the door panel off and tapped on it from the inside with a rubber mallet. It looked ok with just a glance but was still reasonably obvious if you looked closely.

It’s a 2004 Hyundai Elantra, with door padding on the indside, and I’m reluctant to pull off the door panel (thought about that already!) because of the power windows and power locks. Both work now, and I’d hate to mistakenly wiggle loose a wire and not have them work afterwards. :dubious:

If it wasn’t for the power stuff and the door padding, I could work off the door panel and tap out a good portion of the dent.

I did it in high school and used a plunger to fix a dent in the tailgate of my prized truck. It was way better after that especially from a distance but it was obvious if you looked at it much at all. My SUV got hit on a rear panel and I called one of those paintless dent fix places. That worked pretty well and it was fun to watch the guy work. It is an art. They use these special picks to slowly stretch the metal back into place from lots of different angles. It takes about 45 minutes or so but they do have size limits on the dents they can fix. It costs about $100 but that is way better than the many hundreds of dollars and several days that a tradition dent repair costs.

My currect car (Ford Focus Wagon) had a big dent in the rear panel and the wet and soapy plunger trick worked well.

My 70’ Baracuda from High School needed two small holes drilled and some borrowed tools and then some sanding, bondo, primer and paint.

Jim

Just don’t do this…

Shagnasty’s right. Take it to Dent Wizard or your local equivalent and pay the money.

I don’t have a few hundred dollars to shell out, or that would be an option for me.

Hmm, no money, eh? Well, way back when I was in high school, my then-girlfriend reported that her brother had removed a door dent by putting a deflated basketball inside the door and then slowly inflating it. Of course, you’d have to pull off the interior panel to get access.

I’ve done this. It worked a lot better on my Chevy pickup than my Honda Accord (yes, I popped out a lot of dents growing up, why do you ask?). But, if you don’t want to take off the door panel, you’re pretty much SOL.

An asshole kicked my car door when I was in high school. I was lucky, because it was more of a large concave than a metal-creased dent. I popped it out with a plunger. You couldn’t tell.

I have a large suction cup, the kind you use to carry sheets of glass.

It works much better than a plunger.

I’ve seen these, and that’s the direction in which I’m leaning.