My car is in service for paintless dent removal and one of the panels involved is the hood. I just received a call from my advisor stating they’re not able to remove the dent on the hood because reinforcements are glued to the hood throughout the entire hood backing and they can’t drill an access hole. The dent is in a place I would think would be readily accessible. With the hood being highly susceptible to hail damage, etc., it seems crazy they’re not able to take care of this! Has anyone ever heard of this before? Thanks.

I did a quick google search. Apparently they can use something called a "whale tail". You may need to take your car to a PDR specialist.

Glued? Anyway, take pics of dent above and below (perhaps circled at spot below), and send via emails to the top rated PDR guys you find on Yelp. Admittedly, dents are extremely hard to capture because the camera does not know where to focus. For the underneath, I believe this is overkill, but let's pretend your adviser has some sort of valid reason, even this is the first I've heard of this. I've never heard of a hood that couldn't be fixed. Picking the brain of my PDR guy, IIRC, he said he hated Cadillac hoods the most because their bracing is a honeycomb style. His set of tools is a big box with many tools, and if I didn't know any better, I'd swear they were designed for exquisite torture. They can attach hooks of sorts to some underneath bracing, IIRC, and use that as a leverage point to massage out the dent. The "artistry" of a PDR, the final touches, is matching orange peel.

I bet it can be fixed. Use yelp, your camera, it can be just as convenient since many of them will come to your home.

dbs600 said:

My car is in service for paintless dent removal and one of the panels involved is the hood. I just received a call from my advisor stating they***8217;re not able to remove the dent on the hood because reinforcements are glued to the hood throughout the entire hood backing and they can***8217;t drill an access hole. The dent is in a place I would think would be readily accessible. With the hood being highly susceptible to hail damage, etc., it seems crazy they***8217;re not able to take care of this! Has anyone ever heard of this before? Thanks.

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Thanks for the propt replies, Gentlemen!

Chris, please post how you discovered the 'whale tail' tool applies; I'd love to e-mail my service advisor same before I pick up my car!

Lovemycar, Thanks for the insight! I'd really like the dealer to take care of this, as I'm in a loaner, but if they can't / refuse, guess I have no recourse. Can't take an exact photo at this time, as the car is at the dealer, but the dent is where I've noted in the attached photos, but on the driver's side. It’s very very very minor, but annoys me. Any additional insight from your PDR guy would be great.

Thanks again!

Here you go - http://www.paintbull.com/WhatyoushouldknowaboutPaintlessDentRepair.aspx

I'd look for someone to try and do a "glue pull" pdr first. Should cost no more than 35-50 bucks. Always offer to pay cash, typically someone will come out to make a quick buck. If a glue pull doesn't work, then talk to someone about drilling to get an access point, but I wouldn't recommend it as you can always see ripples in the hood because of it's material. I 2nd the Yelp lookup. It'll be quick and easy to find someone qualified. I'd never use a dealership to do PDR. Very rarely will they do it in house, and they typically just charge 50-75% more to take it down the street. Any city I've ever lived in I just find a young service adviser and start "shooting the ****" with them. After 5 min switch the conversation to minor paint and ding repair, ask who they send their service drive daily repairs to and there you go. You'll have the name of the people in no time and will save 50%. Typically MB, BMW, Porsche, Audi, Bentley, etc. use the same centrally located PDR/paint touch up place for service drive cars that might get dinged or bumped into while in service. In the 5 times I dropped off a car in Dallas, TX to get some PDR repaired, I would always ask about the car before me. 4 out of 5 times it was a customer's car from any of the above named dealerships who had dropped off for service and had gotten a door ding, small scratch etc while being in service. They'd fix in under 24hrs and return to the dealership.

Sometimes on Yelp I feel like people give automotive detailers etc. 5 star reviews for service I wouldn't consider 5 star. Expectations are higher for those of us that spend this kind of money on cars.

When it comes to PDR and paint correction, there are some real pros on this forum:

http://www.luxury4play.com/detailing/

Most are used to working on very high end cars and realize perfection is expected. I've seen quite a few posts on difficult dents (such as on the angled crease we have that runs across the length of our cars) being removed flawlessly.

Got my car back from the dealer and took the following photos; the dent is on the opposite side of the circled area of the second photo. It's definitely more difficult to find/see than before, which is good, but still there (I wasn't able to capture it on camera). Nevertheless, the PDR tech obviously attempted a repair now that I have scratches, as shown. I'm somewhat upset that my service advisor didn't state the tech at least attempted a repair. Anyway, I think it's satisfactory.

There is a guy who did some work for me who is really good. He is in the NYC area.......his phone number is 347-723-6981

dbs600 said:

Anyone have any recommendations for paintless dent removal on Long Island near JFK Airport? What has everyone seen as far as pricing? I'm wondering if there's someone good out there without having to go through a dealer / body shop, which sublets the work and marks it up accordingly.

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