No, I’m not a teenager. I’m an adult. Dad is storing his car in my garage for the winter. And damn my clumsiness, I just opened my own car door too fast and put a nice ding in his driver-side door (along with a nice couple of blue paint flakes (my car) to go with his gorgeous red paint job.)
Fuuuuuuudge.
Seriously, my dad won’t admit to caring that much. He’s a laid back guy. But I badly want to have the ding removed (without him knowing, ideally). He’s been very good to me my whole life. And this car was like his fulfillment of a mid-life crisis. He’s wanted a car like this whole life, only three years ago could he finally afford it. I feel terrible. What’s that cost, these days?
The ding in question is about the size of a dime. Driver-side door. His car is red; the ding has a few paint chips of my own car’s blue. I couldn’t scratch off the paint flakes with a fingernail. I’d like to have it repaired before he comes to reclaim it in the spring.
Dunno what it would cost to fix, but you may want to rig up some type of barrier to prevent it happening again…maybe an old blanket, or some poster board.
Why don’t you take it to a good body shop for an estimate?
As for keeping the damage secret…
*The sacred lowe o’ weel-plac’d love,
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt th’ illicit rove,
Tho’ naething should divulge it:
I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But, och! it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling! *
OK, he’s talking about an illicit affair. But you get the message.
Well, I’m not going to call you names, but on those facts, you gotta pay to fix it regardless of cost. I bet it will be less than your deductable on your insurance, but if it isn’t, and money is tight at the moment, it might be worth it to submit a claim. Dunno how that would affect your rates though…
Paintless dent removal is awesome. The tech will massage the dent from behind, using tools through the window opening at the top of the door. When completed, you will not be able to find where the dent was.
Don’t let a body shop paint the door. No matter how well they color match, the eye will see that the door doesn’t match the rest of the car.
I’m with toofs. If the red paint isn’t broken, Dent Wizard or the like will be able to make the ding disappear entirely. I’ve had good experiences with paintless dent removal.
Paintless dent removal really does work. I had it done for close to the largest dent that the tech was willing to work on and he did a great job. Watching them work is like magic and it is much faster and cheaper than a traditional body shop where they basically want to take the whole body panel off and work on it for three days or so. I would give that a try. They can just come to your house if you want.
If you end up not fixing it, make sure you hang a “Not responsible for damages…” sign in your garage. Then, when dad’s eyes bug out when he sees the damage, you can smile and point at the sign. ya gots to fix it.
I didn’t ding my wife’s truck, but I did ding my garage wall with her truck… when I pushed a stack of 5gal buckets through the drywall at the front of the car. I was just trying to get it REALLY close to the wall.
Of course the right thing to do is to fix the ding. But, can I just say that this is very sweet - it sounds like you really have a good understanding with your Dad, and appreciate each other. It’s giving me the warm fuzzies, I tell ya.
No suggestions, but I have to say: Just after I got my drivers license, I was backing my dad’s Camaro Z-28 out of the garage, with his permission, but turned a little too quickly and crunched the front left turn signal and the garage-door frame. On Father’s Day.
Yes, I paid for repairs. Shamefacedly and deservedly.
ya gots to fix it.