The Art of Dent Repair: A Tale of Two Pros

As I sat in my garage, surrounded by various tools and parts, I couldn't help but feel a sense of unease. My car had taken a beating, with two dents that seemed to stare back at me like stubborn reminders of my lack of skills. That's when I decided to call in the experts – or rather, a professional who was willing to lend his expertise to my project. Jason from NeverDent had arrived, armed with a slide hammer and an arsenal of hot glue.

Jason got straight to work, expertly using the slide hammer to coax out the dent on my car's fender. The process was slow and methodical, requiring patience and finesse that I could only dream of replicating. As he worked, I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at his skill and experience. It was clear that this was not his first rodeo – after all, Jason had reportedly charged someone $600 to fix two similar dents on another car, an experience that left him with the tools for the job.

But as Jason worked, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment. Despite my best efforts, I just didn't have the skills and experience to pull off the repair. My attempts at dent removal were clumsy and half-hearted, resulting in little more than a few shallow scratches on the surface of my car's bodywork. In contrast, Jason's work was smooth and effortless, with each dent disappearing seemingly into thin air. As I watched him work, I couldn't help but feel like I was watching a master at work – someone who had spent years honing their craft, developing the skills and experience that came so naturally to them.

Despite my best efforts, Jason ultimately emerged victorious, his dents disappearing from view as he worked his magic. My own attempts, on the other hand, left me feeling defeated – with two still-dented fenders and a lingering sense of inadequacy. As I watched him pack up his tools and leave, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the experience – if only because it had given me something to learn from.

As we chatted, Jason revealed that he had actually used hot glue to treat the dents before attempting to remove them. "It's a game-changer," he said, smiling wryly. "The hot glue really helps to loosen up the metal and make it easier to work with." I couldn't argue with that – despite my best efforts, I just hadn't thought of using hot glue myself.

With Jason's help, I had managed to reduce the dents slightly, but ultimately, he emerged victorious. As we discussed the cost, effort, and outcome of the repair, it became clear that there were several factors at play. On the plus side, I had saved around $400 by opting for a DIY approach – and Jason had been happy to lend his expertise in exchange for a bit of exposure for his business. But on the downside, I had spent a small fortune on tools, with no guarantee that I would be able to replicate the results.

As we wrapped up our discussion, I couldn't help but feel a sense of respect for Jason's skills and experience. Despite my own efforts, it was clear that he was the superior mechanic – someone who could work magic with metal and leave dents looking like they had never been there at all. And as I looked over at his shiny new We Buy Junk Cars shirt, emblazoned with the logo of his business, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of admiration for his confidence and expertise.

And so, if you're like me – someone who's always looking to learn from their mistakes and improve their skills – then take heart. Jason's experience may have been invaluable, but it was also a reminder that there's no substitute for hard work and dedication. With practice and patience, I'm confident that I'll be able to replicate the results of Jason's repair – or at least come close. And who knows? Maybe one day, I'll even earn my stripes as a professional mechanic.

In the meantime, though, I think I'll stick with what I know best: buying junk cars and learning from others. After all, as Donut would say, "If you're not getting any better at it, then maybe you shouldn't be trying." And so, if you've got a car that's seen some rough handling – like mine has – don't be afraid to take it to a professional. Trust me, they'll get the job done in no time.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- I hate this.This is like more annoying than my hair.Can $200 worth of dentremoval tools do betterthan $600 worth of professional work?Let's see if I can fix these dentswithout ruining the paint.Should I DIY, or should I don't?♪ Do it ♪♪ Don't do it ♪- Thanks to carparts.com forsponsoring today's video.Everyone struggles with relationshipsand your relationship withyour car is no different.So what brings you in here today, Jobe?- Well, listen, Miatajust doesn't trust me.Every time I leave the garage,it acts like I'm gonna abandon it,just like all it's previous owners- But Jobe, I caughtyou looking at other car sites.So admit it, you're looking to replace me.Just like everyone else.- No, I'm not!For the millionth time,I was just on those sitestrying to find some cool newparts for you to make you happybut everything's justso expensive nowadays.- You see, it was alljust a misunderstanding,which shows how important communication bein car relationships.And I'd like to communicatesomething to you, Jobe.Check out carparts.com.Carparts.com is the smarterway to shop for auto parts,connecting you with the rightpart at the right price,hassle free.Plus carparts.com has alifetime replacement guaranteeon parts, so you can placetrust in your relationshipwith your car for a life time.- I didn't know any of that,I'm sorry I made you feel that way.- I'm sorry, too.I guess I've been a littlesensitive ever sincesomeone put a We Buy JunkCars card in my wiper.- Listen, you're not junk.At least not to me,okay? You're beautiful.- Ooh, go on.- Get the right partsright now at carparts.com.Check it out and maintainthe love with your car today.(groans)- Welcome to DIY or Don't.Today we're gonna tacklepaintless dent repair,and find out whether or notit's worth trying to do yourselfor if it's a job best left to the pros.Sure, sometimes doing stuffyourself might save youa little money, but you gotta consider:the effort it's gonna take,the amount of time it's gonna take,and at the end of the day,are you gonna be able to do asgood of a job as a pro could?Today, we're gonna be usingtwo cars you may recognizeand try to fix some dents.We've picked out two dents on each carand we've got ourselves a proand he's gonna tackle the Miata,while I try my hand at the E36.That's not the rightamount of heat, I guess.Dent repair seems easy enoughif you watch enoughinfomercials and TikTok videoswhere they just pour somehot water onto a dentand it pops right out,but is it that easy?The biggest thing youmight stumble on with dentsis that like people,they're all different.Each dent is different and youneed to treat them as such.And if you don't treat 'em right,you might wreck your paint.There are a lot of differentmethods to fixing a dent.The old drill and pullmethod, body filler,but some dents can even be fixedwithout affecting your paint.Paintless dent repair usesheat and an array of bendingand pulling tools to flexthe metal back into place,slowly reversing how the dentwas made in the first place.It doesn't work for every dentbut you'd be surprisedhow severe a dent can beand still be saved by apaintless dent repair pro.You gotta check and see what materialyour dent is actually dented in.Is it plastic on the bumper,or metal on somewhere else on the car?Is it super deep? Are therecreases? Is it on a body line?All those things are gonnamake it probably more difficultto deal with and gonna take some tricksthat you might not have up your sleeve.So how do I make sure that my paintdoesn't just end up as apile of flakes on the floor?Well, our pro Jason ishere to tell us just that.This is Jason, our pro today,he's a paintless dent repair wizard,and he's got a mobiletruck that he can come toyour place of work, yourhome, wherever you are,and fix your dent withoutneeding any body work.- So being mobile, you haveto be prepared for anything.Top drawer these are all differentknockdowns you would use.- These are like kind ofa punch that you would useto knock down material.- We're gonna take your carapart, any panel tool needed.- Is this a battery powered hot glue gun?- It is.- That's awesome.All right, so I see yougot a bunch more rods.How much do these things cost a piece?- To make an average,they're about $100 a piece.- I spent a hundred bucks on my whole set.- We'll see how that works out.- Yes we will.So when you show up to a customer's houseand they got a dent, how do you determinehow much you're gonnacharge 'em to fix it?- Well, if aprofessional dent guy shows upto do the repair they'll beusing a pricing guide like this.It's based on size, andthen if there's any factors,which is on the back.- All right, so what's the damage?What's the total value of all these tools?- Roughly 25 to 30 grand,after you have all the tools, the lights,glue pull stuff, tabs,the other tools to do the job properly.- Well, you seem to be prepared.Let's go see how prepared I am.Okay, so I spent about 200bucks total on two tool sets.First, I got these rods,basically $100 here.And then for another $100,I got this dent pullerhot glue assortment of tools.What do you think?- This is a good beginnerset, I would say,- Hey!- They feel like they'repretty good quality.- Now what about this stuff?Do you think, I'm evengonna use any of this?Is it good to have?- This is dangerous, in my opinion.- Ooh!- Glue pulling,you can pull paint right off of a car.You can make the dent way toohigh and stretch the metaland not be able to recover from that.I have had customers call methen they've stretched the dentto where I could not repair it,because they boughtsomething similar to this.- So I guess that's the risk you run.Well, I wanna see you fix thesmall dent on the Miata first,so I can kind of poke, prod,ask you some questions,see what you're doing.- You got it.- Then I'll try a small dent on the E36and then we'll go head tohead with some big dents.- Let's go.- We got the car jackedup, you got some room,got heat going on the dent. Now what?- We'll put up light,stick the rod in there,and we're gonna start workingthe center of the dent first.These are all screw on tips.And then as the dent starts to come upand it's closer andcloser to being finished,you graduate down smaller tip,eventually to something super sharpand make it look just like orange peel.- Like how long do you expectthis dent to take you to fix?- An hour or under, weshould be done with it?- Timer starts now.These rod tools are made topress on the dent from behind.A simple turn of the handlepresses the tip of the toolinto the dent, but you needsomething to lever off of.- So as the dent starts to shrink up,the tip of your tool will go accordingly.See this little pin spot?This tip is too big for that.- How can you tell that it's too?- Cause I can see the tip ofthe tool moving in the light.And right when it's inthe center of that dent,it's pushing up the sides of it also.- Yeah, I can see that. Okay, cool.- The dent started to get mounded upas we were trying to getat the center of the dent.So we just knocked down what we've done,start the process over.We've got the dent down to very little.It's time to get into the center of thatwith the sharp tip tool.Okay, so we're done with the dent.We move the light as far backas possible to get a good viewof the top part of the fender.And now we're gonna telleveryone when we're done.And we're done.- All right, Jimmy, stop the stopwatch.- One hour, 37minutes, and 22 seconds.- Not too bad, so you said about an hour,but we were bugging you andmaking you talk to the camera.So I'd say that'd probably be an hourif you're out in the wild.Well, let's see how you did.Where was it? It was like here, yeah?- Yes.- Well, good work, sir.- Thank you.- Yeah I mean you literally,I can't tell where it was at all.Pretty impressive.I don't stand a chance, do I? Find out.(upbeat music)So the point here is thatI can look at my dentwhile I try to fix it,and I see these linesreflected in the dent.Now where there is dent,the lines reflect all wonky.We gotta unwarp those lines.At this particular moment,I'm regretting how low the E36 is.I don't have a lot ofroom to get through here.The wheel like that's probablyas good as it's gonna getfor us, so I'm gonna lock it down there,put some heat to this thing,and start pushing some metal.Well, I think it's been about 10 minutes.I've made 0% progress.Starting to wonder ifI'm gonna be able to fixany dents at all.The hardest part is just likegetting the tool on the dent,keeping it there, andactually pushing against it.The whole thing that you gotta do.I took the wheel off so Ican get a little bit more ofmy head in here and actuallysee the back side of the dent.I'm just leveraging offthe unit body in here.I think we actually might beable to make some progress now.A dent inside a fender isprobably the easiest dentI could have started with.If this dent was on an Apillar or a quarter panelor some thing difficultto get the tool behind,it would be even harder.This sucks.I hate this. I hate this.I mean, listen, thedent is way less there,but I don't know if it looks better.It looks like I stabbedit a bunch of timeswith a screwdriver from the back.Okay, so part of the dent, Ithink I went a little too far.These are basically littlepunches with replaceable tips.I'm gonna use 'em toknock down the high bits.If 100% is like this dent never existed,I think we're probably gonna be somewherein the 60 to 70% range.- Let's check it out.- I've got most of thedent pushed out, I feel like,but you can see a lotof little tool marks.- When you're working a dent like this,you can see those little pushmarks that are the high spots,those have pushed past andbubbled the paint a little.It's not cracked.So to get rid of those,tap down the high spots,work it up a little andknock the sides out of it.- This definitely seems likesomething you get better atwith time.I think I could realisticallyspend the rest of the dayjust on this dent.But I think for the sakeof time and our sanity,we should probably move onto our head-to-head portionof this, where we'reboth gonna do a big dentat the same time.You're obviously gonna win,it's not a competition like that.But you know, we got somebig dents that need--we got some big dents that need fixed.So let's get to it.Okay, Jimmy, start that timer.- All right, we're gonnatake the taillight out now.So let's set up our light and go to work.So by tapping the crownthat's around the dent,we're gonna relieve some pressure,and then we'll start pushing.After looking at this dent,we can tell that this part right hereis in an area that doesnot have access for tools.It is where the outer andinner panels are weldedand glued together.So we're gonna work everythingthat we can get a tool on,try and do a little glue pulling in hereto see if we can make it better.Let's see if we can relievesome of this pressure.♪ Jason the professional knowsevery dent is different ♪♪ He's strapped for any type of day ♪♪ He's got the right equipment ♪♪ And he's got the knowhow for any situation ♪♪ Look at the flick of the wrist ♪♪ Damn, that's coordination ♪- So I'm really wonderingif I should pull out the ol'hot glue dent puller andhit it right in there, just.(clicks)I feel like I should.So the transparent gluestick is for Japanese carswhich have thin paint,but the yellow glue stickis for European and Americancars, which have thick paint.But they only came with moreone color of glue stick.So that's the color we're gonna go with.Just glue that right thereand yank that sucker out.I don't know if I'm gonna beable to get all these dents outthough , I don't havethe correct attire on.It seems leather pants and high heelsare just what the doctor ordered.If I rip off the paint,you're gonna see me cry.If I'm being honest,that's what I thought it was gonna happen.Well I hit the paint with some Goo Goneand the glue seemed to stick a lot better.Possibly to my detriment.There's definitely less dent there,but there's also a lot more glue there.I don't know if this is saving me time.I mean, I think this is helping.There's so much hot glue in the area,it's kind of tough to tell at this point.Well, after the hot glue treatmentand pulling the dent outwith the slide hammer,there's definitely lessdent, but it's still dented.There's still dent to be fixedand I guess really thehard work comes now.We're gonna pull out the rods nowand try to work the rest of this dent out.That said, I don't think I'mgonna be able to do a whole lotabout this little area right here,where we're right on the lip.I'll give it a shot,but I expect that's not gonna get perfect.Well this, so we've got thiscrease on the body line there,and so it's dented inand then you can see howbadly dented up this is.And I just don't knowwhat to do about that.- So it's a give and take. Tapdown a little, push a little.But this really is gonnabe really hard to get out.- Well, I don't thinkI'm gonna win this one.I've known that for some hours now.But I would like to see how you didon the ol' Miata, wanna go take a look?- Yeah, let's take a look.- Wow!It looks way better.I knew that was gonna be areally tricky area to get into.But I mean this wholecorner looked terrible.I backed into myroommate's car a while ago.Well, dang, I mean, itlooks like you've gotthe tools for the joband because of that andyour experience and skills,you did a lot better job than me.I think I'm gonna go aheadand take my Ls on this one.(audience aw sound effect)- I think you did a greatjob though. (audience ooh)- Well, I do appreciate that,but I guess that's why you pay a pro.You've got the skills and experienceand you can show up and makeit happen without any question.Without the sweat pouroutta your own head.Okay, so let's hash this out.First let's start with cost.He would've charged us about$600 to fix the two dentson the Miata.And I spent about $200 on tools.So the cost saving seems pretty good.But the problem is that I can'tbuy skills and experience.So that brings me tomy next point, effort.I was like a blind squirrel over heretry trying to find a nut.And he obviously knew what he was doing.And on the other sideof that coin is time.This can take me literally days and days.And as those days go on,sure I'd get better at it,sure I'd develop the skillsand get a little bit of experience,but it's gonna be a long time.It's gonna be a long, cold winterbefore I've got the experienceand skills of a pro.Okay, now let's talk outcome.I mean, what do you guys think? Did I win?No! I mean, you can still see my dents.The dent on the fender cameout like it was never there.My dents did not.I lose.The pro wins.I hate this.- Check out Donut's newbadass We Buy Junk Cars shirt.Get it in this nice black and yellow.Or this luxurious white and warm red. Mm.Plus, if you order right now,we're gonna include these:Limited edition We BuyJunk Cars business cards.So you can help spread the word. Junk.And unlike these junk cars,this shirt is quality that lastsat the low price of 29.98,which is much cheaperthan buying one of these used junk cars.Yeah, that's a great piece of junk.So go to donutmedia.com to pick upyour junk car shirt today.This thing is sick.- You know, it's worth remembering thatif you do take a crack at this, well,you can do worse than justdoing not that good of a job.You can actually ruinwhatever part of thecar you're working on.So if you do, if you wreck a fenderthat you're trying to fix a dent in,you can head on over to carparts.comand get yourself a new one.Thanks to them forsponsoring this episode.Also huge thanks to Jason from NeverDentfor coming out and playing with us.You can follow him onInstagram @NeverDentOfficialor hit his website, neverdent.com.As for myself, you can followme on Instagram @ZachJobe.You can follow Donut @DonutMedia,and of course like the videoand subscribe to the channel.Thank you guys for coming to this one,we'll see you next time.