Ok, I couldn't resist. I had to try this.
I purchased one of the Dent King kits. I think it was $18 + shipping.
So I had a small dent in the right front fender. Most likely someone was leaning on the car and dented it. I hear that Honda uses pretty thin metal for the body panels. Anyhow, it measured about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. The dent was small; it did have a crease in it, but otherwise didn’t look particularly nasty, so I figured I would give DIY dent removal a try.
The kit from Dent King included a hot glue gun, three large "special" glue sticks, a dent puller with two types of attachments (small/oval and large/circular) and some "special" cleaning fluid to prep the dent. I assume the prep/cleaning fluid helps the glue bond to the car. The box also included two extra items that were not mentioned in the instructions or item list. One was a yellow spatula looking thing that looks like it could be used to scrape glue? The other was a "crayon" shaped molded white plastic piece. Not sure what this is for. I didn’t use either of the mystery items.
Ok, the short version is that it did seem to work "OK" for me but not as good as a pro could do (duh!). It required four applications (glue, pull, release, etc.). I was actually amazed when I did the first few turns of the knob and was able to see it start to pull the dent out. I used the small oval adapter since the dent was small and the instructions suggested using it first. After two "pulls" I had the majority of the dent out. The dent started out with a small top to bottom crease in it and after the first two pulls I could see the remnants of the crease as well as two pea sized dents along the middle of the crease. I did two remaining pulls on those two small dents, but used a much smaller amount of glue so that I was pulling on the small area only.
After the four pulls, I decided it was good enough and that I should stop as I was afraid any additional work by me would screw it up. It is not 100% gone. If you look for it you can easily see it. I am guessing that a pro could easily do the rest with other more specialized tools.
Would I do it again? Yes, depending upon what the dent looked like and how "good" I wanted it to look when I was done. You can't expect perfection with just this tool. I can see that if you practice with it you could get much better and with more tools, even better, but that is probably what separates flunkies like me and the pros (tools, experience and the ability to charge for your services). Anything more serious than the dent I had I would have a pro do it, especially if I “needed” the results to look good.
If I had a beater with dents, I probably would be all over it with this just to see what all I could do.
Bandwidth friendly (hopefully) photos below. The dent (both before and after) actually looks worse than it does in these photos...
The kit...
The dent (before)...
Glued on...
Ready to pull...
All gone! Ok, mostly gone. If you look closely you can still see it...
The glue (removed from car/puller). Two large ones for the main dent. Two smaller ones to finish up...
_________________
Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.comMoney can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.
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