Oh deer, what happened?

Here at Push Paintless Dent Removal, we do a lot more than just come up with catchy titles.

We fix dents.

Sometimes big ones.

You've likely guessed by now how this dent came to be, but just in case you haven't, here's a brief rundown. This customer was driving down the highway on his way to Banff, Alberta, when a deer darted across the road and ran head first into the rear door of his truck.

The deer, although a bit dazed, was seemingly fine and ran off into the forest. His truck on the other hand, had a permanent reminder of the time a deer ran head first into the side of his truck.

Due to the size of the dent, a little bit of vehicle disassembly was required to make a proper repair. We started by removing all of the contents of the door including the window glass so that we would have full access to our affected area, which turned out to be pretty much the entire door from side to side and top to bottom (this deer had antlers). Once all of the trim was removed, we removed the door to put it on one of our stands.

Then, the slow tedious work began to start working the metal of the entire door in stages. Because there were several smaller, sharp dents contained throughout the area of the door that was largely pushed in by the impact (likely from the antler tips) we had to work each dented area in pieces, not fully completing any one dent until the entire door panel had been completely raised close to it's original form. Once the metal of the door as a whole was back to where it was supposed to be, we could then put in the finishing work to restore the remaining areas back to their original shape.

Once the door had been fully repaired, we remounted it onto the vehicle, restored all of it's components and verified the correct operation of the window and door handles.

The total repair time for this vehicle was about 5.5 hours from start to finish and came out perfect!

And now, on to the photos.

Time to get your stretch on!

One of the many challenges we face with dents is stretch. This is when a dent has pulled too much metal away from the surrounding area and doesn't want to return to being flat again. 

When the repair fails as a result of this, the term we like to use to describe it is "oil canned". If you remember in days of old, the bottoms of paint and oil cans would have a little pop to them if you pushed on them. This was created by the tension of the metal around it's edges. 

The same thing can happen with your vehicle when it gets dented. The metal is pushed in stretching it far beyond it's normal size. When an attempt is made to push it back to being flat, the tension from the surrounding areas creates an oil can effect. In order to restore it to it's original form, a slightly different approach needs to be taken when repairing the dent, and it's not something everyone has experience to do!

Here's an example of a Dodge Grand Caravan that came to us. In the first couple of pictures you can see the size and severity of the dent. It runs from the top edge of the wheel well all the way up to the bottom of the window. From the pictures you can also see that prior to it coming in to our shop, another PDR technician had attempted, and failed to repair it. 

Before: 

After:

With some time, patience and skill we were able to restore this vehicle's rear quarter panel back to it's original form, and save the customer a lot of time and money!

We do box sides

We do box sides. 

Dents on a truck box can be some of the toughest easy dents to fix. Allow us to explain! 

Many times we have customers come in and say they'd like to have a dent or two fixed on the box side of their truck. Easy enough! But truck boxes are usually made of some pretty tough stuff, and when they get dented, it's not because you leaned up against them. It's because something big and heavy hit it pretty hard. 

Here's a good example of a customer who called us to have a dent fixed on the box side of their new Ram 1500. This actually ended up being 3 separate dents all mixed in to one area of about 8 inches and right through a nice sharp body line (this adds to the level of difficulty and requires signifcantly more time to move the metal nice and slowly back in to place to avoid any paint damage)!

This repair was about 90 minutes start to finish and with a good polish it's like it never happened! See for yourself. 
 

Before

After

Just a little dent...

Here's a situation we deal with pretty often in this industry. Perspective!

People often ask how long it will take and how much it will cost to fix a dent, from small to large. The best way for us to answer that question is to see it for ourselves. 

In this case, our customers Dodge Durango had a slight disagreement with a garage wall! 

In the end, we were able to completely restore the fender back to it's original form, and with some help from the folks at Calgary PPF to replace the damaged 3M film, the customers vehicle was as good as new. 

We spent approximately 4 hours start to finish on this dent, plus another hour for Calgary PPF to replace the necessary 3M. 

When the customer brought it to us. 

After we repaired the dent. 

What we do at Push PDR

If you haven't heard about Paintless Dent Repair before, you need to! It's a way of removing dents that requires no painting or bodywork to restore your vehicle back to how it was from new. We repair everything from door dents to full hail damaged vehicles. 

Using specialized tools we can massage metal to restore it's original form. Just take a look at the pictures below from a recent customer. This happened when a coworkers vehicle door swung a bit too wide and made a baseball sized dent in an otherwise meticulous Infinit M35x. 

When the vehicle came in to us. 

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You'll notice that the dent runs right through the body line. Although this vehicle has a softer body line, it still makes the dent that much more difficult because this area will be the most rigid part of the door to work on. 

You can also notice the scratch lines in the deepest part of the dent. A lot of times this is mainly paint transfer from whatever hit the vehicle and can be removed. 

When the car was ready to leave. 

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After we removed the dent, we were able to buff out 99% of the paint transfer from the other door. 

The customer was quite happy with the repair!