What Makes Professional PDR So Much Better Than DIY Kits?

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If you spend five minutes browsing the internet, you're likely to find many paintless dent repair (PDR) kits that proclaim to provide excellent results from the comfort of your own home. While there's no question that it's possible to pull dents yourself, these kits can often oversell the ease of the process and the likely results you will see as an amateur.

Poor results may be acceptable if you're working on a project car or a beater, but you're likely looking for more on a vehicle in otherwise good condition. In most cases, achieving these results means working with a professional PDR shop to remove dents, dings, and other problems from your paint. Keep reading for three reasons: professionals will nearly always achieve better results than first-time DIYers.

1. Better Tools

Cheap PDR kits typically include a handful of tools and often focus on the "hot glue" method of dent removal. This method involves smearing hot glue on your paint so that you can attach a puller tool and pop out the dent. Although this might seem like all there is to PDR, professionals will come equipped with far more and far better tools.

In reality, PDR isn't a single technique or tool but a broad category of options for fixing damage to your car. When experts begin working on a dent or ding, they will evaluate the problem to choose the best technique for restoring your car to its previous finish. In most cases, this will mean selecting from a variety of tools to choose the one that's most efficient and effective.

2. More Experience

Ultimately, PDR is about more than just "pulling" a dent out your car's metal. In fact, directly pulling on a dent will often produce poor results. When your car suffers a dent or a ding, the metal physically deforms, and pulling the dent out can leave noticeable distortion or other problems around the affected area. In some cases, you may even cause additional damage.

Professional PDR technicians have the experience to understand how the metal will flow as they work on a problem area. By using this knowledge and experience, they effectively bring the body panels on your car back into their original shape. As a result, repairs by professionals will usually be nearly impossible to spot once complete.

3. Deeper Repairs

Many DIY kits only allow you to conduct skin-deep repairs. In other words, these kits expect you to work only from the outside of a body panel. However, PDR often requires deeper repairs and more access. In some cases, PDR technicians may need to remove body panels to access the dent from behind, allowing them to gently and effectively work the metal back into shape.

If you like to tinker with your car and don't care about the results, a DIY PDR kit might be for you. On the other hand, the advantages of working with a professional technician are numerous, and these repairs will almost always produce far better results than you can achieve on your own. 

For more information, contact a local paintless dent removal service

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21 July 2022

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