PDR

AZjeff

$50 Site Donor 2023
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Messages
8,622
Location
in Az where the Deer and Antelope play
So I did something stupid and got a dent on the tailgate of the new truck. I set a battery pack from my drill on the bumper while I was hooking up the trailer in the dark, forgot about it and lowered the tailgate resulting in a quarter size dent. I couldn't live with it so called the guy I know at the GMC dealer and got the number of a PDR guy they think does the best job for them. He came to the house, took the tailgate off and set it in the bed to get access to a hole in the bottom and massaged the dent out. These tailgates are aluminum so he had to work at it for a while and heated it up some to help the paint and maybe help the aluminum move easier. It's pretty amazing, definitely skill and art involved. In the end the dent is gone except for a tiny little flaw in the paint that I really have to look for to find. The dent photo makes the paint surface look pretty bad but it's not, must have been the angle or something. I know lots of people wouldn't bother but this is the only vehicle I'll ever order and probably the last new one, and I'm just fussy.

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Like all other pdr techs i hate it, however you adapt or you die. Aluminum has 0 memory so you have to work the entire unit of damage. Personally i dont mind door dinging aluminum but hail repair is ruff. Repairs generally take twice as long but pay little more than steel. He did a good job. Tailgates seperate the men from the boys. Those skins are super tight and access is very limited.
 
Interesting. This is one of those GMC tailgates with the fold down step thing. We took it off and laid it in the bed but had to be careful because the wiring went into the center of the bottom and can't be disconnected. He went in through a small hole in the bottom and had to work around a hinge.
 
Nice! Had a PDR guy work on a dent in the Jetta that it acquired with only 1000 miles! Looks good as new.
 
I first noticed how close the houses are to each other.

Compared to living way out in the desert we're packed in like sardines. We're on the outside of a turn so one side is probably 12' and the other is 30'. Doesn't bother us a bit. We lived out in the country back in Pa, I'll take water and sewer and paved roads over living out all day long now. My days of pulling a pump out of a well or working on septic problems are done.
 
Oh, this is as good a time to tell my PDR story as any. Keeping it short this time:

I closed the 60 foot, bi-fold hangar door on my Jag X-Type. The roof caved in, the tires flattened and the rims bent. I was so angry I punched the roof from the bottom and it popped up and I drove the car home. I pushed the door jam back up with a floor jack and some pipe and wood. I called various PDR guys to look at it to see if they could "knock it back into shape" so at least it would be usable. One guy said yes. He started out drunk and 6 hours later, he was sober and the roof looked fantastic!!!

He used a long stainless T rod with a golf ball on the end. Tied a rope around the top of the door as a fulcrum, window open, headliner out, and went to work. The door jam was still creased at the top despite my pushing it back into place with the jack, so he drilled a few holes, and used a punch to carefully work it back into shape. That also came out really good.

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My dent was a little thing, what amazes me is how far paint can flex getting dented in then pushed back and and still sticks to the metal like nothing happened. Some of the PDR jobs you see on YouTube make you think NO WAY.
Well known in the industry that you dont trust videos. Dont get me wrong, there are amazing PDR techs out there, but its easy for guys to live a lie on film. Easy to do a before and after on a crunched up repair and make it look great by simply moving your light around or by taking pictures outside in direct sun light. . Remember that everything looks good in pictures. I watched a world renowned tech, whom sells his own high end blending hammers, demonstrate blending techniques on rails that left me cringing. He wrapped it up with “this is an industry acceptable repair”. I went back and watched the before and after pictures along with the recorded video, and on film it looked glassed out and amazing. In real life…..not so much. Attention to detail and consistency is key to quality PDR. Very rarely are the repairs “perfect”…..im stupid picky though :cool:
 
I would not say my roof is perfect, clearly it has some flaws. However, considering the damage I did, I'd say it was a resounding success!
 
I had PDR done on a E46 coupe, a trolley jack had came loose (a commercial one) in the boot and the half handle was still on. it span arround and the round handle end hit the inner side of the rear quarter in 5-6 places right on the body line. I had the guy that came into wear I worked have a look, he quoted me a price do I set him to work. He came to find me about 20 mins later and said he‘d done the best job he could but wasnt going to charge me as it wasn’t perfect/ he could still see it. I couldn’t believe him it was perfect nobody could ever tell what had happened. I think he just didn’t want to charge me which was nice of him as I had tried to pay him anyway as I was more than happy with his work.
 
A PDR guy is worth his weight in gold when you're in the car business. We have an older guy that comes by and does work for us and he does an amazing job!
 
Thanks for sharing, AZjeff. I posted my PDR results back in August 2020. My highest respect to those guys!
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