What is a Sound Pad?
Let us have a look on a question posed in the Learn PDR Online community about a practice panel that's got a sound-deadening pad on. A sound pad is black and it’s rectangular found to the inside of the door skin. It certainly makes PDR just a little bit trickier. Sound pads can definitely make your repair a bit harder to work with. So we check on this by going through a couple of examples of how we can work in and around a sound-deadening pad right in the spot where the dents are located.
Are Sound Pads Really Efficient?
Quite often l use a tape and wrap up the tool tips and what that creates is a damper so that my tool tip is effectively softer than without the tape. Now that's quite similar to the effect a sound pad will have when you repair. so if you've got a dent and the sound pad is covering that area of the dent effectively you've got a kind of push through that sound pad so depending on what tools you are using. It will just take more force but what you do have to be very careful working with tape. Eventually you will go through the pad particularly if you use a sharp tip like these kind of sharp ends on the reaper tools.
That won't get take too long to get through a sound pad at all so as you start working on the repair twisting your tool it acts as a big damper but you do have to remember that eventually you're going your way through the pad and then you're directly onto that metal so it could certainly take you by surprise if you go for that pad pretty quick so it generally just takes a bit more effort to start with a sound pad then depending on the tool if you're using one that is not quite so sharp then you're able to just to give it a bit more kind of leverage and a bit more force in removing out the dents.
Working in and Around the Sound Pad
Because sound pads are effectively kind of like a sealant you can also heat them up to make it a little bit easier in terms of cutting through. So with different kind of glue cutting tools or like the tools for cutting glue pine braces. Sometimes it depend on the weather and your leverage point you can cut into the sound pad as well or cut away a bit of the pad that's going to allow you direct access to that metal part that you're working on.
In a Nutshell
Sound pads all with different types in different locations around the vehicle can be applied with a bit of heat to help. You can just try different tools and different tips to get them through it. But if you are working and pressing quite hard against the pad remember at some point you are going to go through like you do with tape and the little plastic caps so you just need to be a little bit careful then you're pushing out the dent. Make sure you've got full control over your tool.
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