Paint and Body
Paintless Dent Removal
In short: Paintless dent removal works when the paint is unbroken and the metal has not stretched past recovery, which makes it ideal for hail on a van roof and useless on a creased fiberglass sidewall.
- Typical range
- $500 to $6,500+
- Labor hours
- 3 to 60 hours
- Updated
Paintless dent removal is the most misunderstood service on this list, mostly because it is oversold. It is genuinely excellent within a narrow set of conditions and completely inapplicable outside them, and the useful thing a shop can do is tell you honestly which side your damage falls on.
How it works
Metal panels have elastic memory. A dent is metal that has been deflected out of its plane but, if it has not been stretched past its yield point, still wants to return.
The technique is to reach behind the panel with purpose-made rods and push the metal back through its own deformation path, in many small increments, reading the surface with a reflected line board to see exactly what the surface is doing. Where there is no access behind, specialised tabs are glued to the outside and the metal is pulled rather than pushed.
Done properly the panel returns to its original shape and the factory paint is never touched. No filler, no primer, no colour match, no blend.
When it works
- Paint is intact and uncracked
- Metal has deflected rather than creased
- There is access behind the panel, or the surface allows glue pulling
- The dent is on a panel with enough flexibility to work with
Hail is the classic case, and the reason is that hail produces exactly this profile: many shallow round impacts on flat horizontal panels, with the paint almost always unbroken.
When it does not work
- Cracked or chipped paint. The technique does not restore finish.
- Sharp creases. Metal that has stretched will not return; forcing it produces a wave.
- Fiberglass, filon and moulded caps. No elastic memory. This rules out most Class A and Class C body panels.
- Double-skinned or heavily braced areas. No access, and glue pulling has limits.
- Very large shallow dents in thin aluminium. Can sometimes be improved but not perfected, and honest practitioners will say so.
On a typical Class A the answer is mixed: aluminium roof skin yes, moulded front cap no. We assess panel by panel and tell you which repairs are paintless and which are conventional.
What it costs
| Job | Typical range | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Single dent | $500 to $900 | 3 to 6 |
| Several dents, one panel | $900 to $2,000 | 6 to 14 |
| Hail, van or truck roof and hood | $1,800 to $4,000 | 14 to 34 |
| Extensive hail, large vehicle | $4,000 to $6,500+ | 34 to 60 |
| Fleet hail, per unit | Quoted after fleet assessment | Varies |
Body labor is $210 per hour. There is effectively no materials cost, which is the source of the saving against conventional repair. See the pricing page.
Against a conventional repair on the same damage, expect forty to sixty percent less and days rather than weeks.
Fleet and hail work
A hailstorm across a parked fleet produces a specific problem: every vehicle is damaged, none is undriveable, and taking them all off the road at once is impossible.
We handle those as a programme rather than a queue. Full fleet assessment and documentation up front, a per-unit scope agreed with the carrier, then vehicles scheduled in batches sized so the operator is never short more than an agreed number. Documentation is per vehicle with VIN-level records, which is what a carrier needs to process a multi-unit claim without argument.
Hail damage repair covers the cases where paintless is not the right tool, particularly fiberglass roofs and punctured membranes.
What we work on
Sprinter, Transit and ProMaster vans, box trucks and cargo bodies, aluminium-skinned trailers including Airstream, metal roof skins on coaches, school and transit buses, delivery and parcel fleets, municipal and utility vehicles, and Rivian R1T and R1S bodies.
Setting expectations honestly
A well-executed paintless repair is undetectable. A marginal one is an improvement rather than a restoration, and the difference is entirely in whether the damage suited the technique.
We will tell you which you are getting before starting. Where a panel will end up ninety percent better rather than perfect, that is worth knowing in advance so you can decide between an excellent-value partial improvement and a conventional repair that costs more and gets to a hundred.
Why the assessment matters more than the technique
Every competent practitioner uses broadly the same rods, the same tabs and the same reading boards. The variable that separates a good outcome from a disappointing one is the decision made before any tool touches the panel.
That decision is a judgement about the metal: has it deflected or has it stretched, is there access, is the paint intact under magnification rather than just to the eye, and how many working cycles will this particular panel tolerate before the surface starts to show the work rather than the repair.
Aluminium in particular is unforgiving. It has less memory than steel and it work-hardens faster, so a dent that would take twenty pushes in a steel panel has to be brought back in fewer, larger, better-placed movements. Push aluminium too many times and it stops returning and starts oil-canning, at which point the panel needs conventional repair or replacement and the paintless attempt has made that job harder rather than easier.
This is why we assess with a light board before quoting, and why we will decline a panel rather than attempt it and hand you something worse than what you arrived with. A dent we do not touch is still a dent. A panel that has been worked past its limit is a new problem.
Estimates are $150 and credited back against an authorized repair.