In this video today. We're looking at the Sharp dent on the tailgate of this Pegueot, and I'm going to talk you through my process of how I approached the dent. But most importantly, how I read this type of damage with my line board.
Assessing The Damage
So to repair this dent, only working from the inside of the panel. So I've removed the inner tailgate trim. I've got plenty of access. I'm gonna go through this area here. Now, the dent itself is only about a foot away from the edge of the panel. So thankfully, it's nice and accessible.
So along with assessing in my dent. I'm also choosing my tool. Now for a repair like this, I like to use my double bend bar. It's really strong, sturdy, it doesn't bend. And on the dent this far away from the access point, it's going to give me some great leverage.
So this is the bar I'm going to use. But I'm not going to use this tip. Usually I love the R4 for pushing out dents, but when you're using it in a twisting motion, the little cherry caps have a tendency to pop off. Before you know it you're then working metal to metal, and if you slip, you put a dirty, great, big high spot in the middle of your repair. So I'm going to use this tip instead. It's still got a cover on, but due to the shape and design, it's less likely to slip off.
To help stabilise the tailgate. I'm using my ratchet ropes set up with a prop, and that's really going to hold the tailgate in place while I apply a lot of pressure to remove this dent. So usually, when I'm reading a dent, I've got my head kind of side onto the panel, looking along the panel itself. But when you work with sharp damage or deep dents, it makes it quite tricky to see the centre. So by repositioning yourself round, almost looking straight on at the dent, I think it makes it much easier being able to see that centre point.
So from this angle, the dent can look quite large and make it tricky to see the centre. But by moving your body position around, looking at the dent almost square on, it makes it much easier to see the overall shape of the dent. And because this is a sharp dent, I'm only really trying to hit the centre point, so the reason this helps me is as I'm trying to hit that centre. It makes it clearer for me to see if I'm slightly off, so it's easier for me to tell if my tip is slightly to the left or the right, above or below, and from this angle I can easily make those fine adjustments.
Now, I have used a fair amount of heat during this repair. I'm applying quite a lot of pressure, so it's important to use heat to make sure that we're looking after the paintwork. Now what I'm trying to do at this stage is bring up that centre part of the dent, the middle of the low. So I'm applying a fair amount of pressure. I've got that soft tip on trying to lift the low up. Now during this process, it does create a high area also known as shoulders. So I'm gonna open and close this dent a number of times.
Each time I open it up, it makes a centre point a little bit more accessible. So currently this tip has got me this far and it's really helped me lift up the centre point quite quickly and cleanly, but it's not going to help me get to this last little micro low. So I'm gonna change down in my tool tip size. I'm gonna go for a sharper tip, and that's going to allow me to really get some pinpoint accuracy to pick out the low. But before I do, I'm gonna tap down the shoulders and open this dent back up again. This makes the centre part of the dent more accessible, makes it easier to read. And now, when I assess my dent, I've got a much smaller, shallower, manageable dent to repair.
So I'm now going to move on to a smaller, sharper metal tip. And what that's gonna do is really allow me some pinpoint accuracy to pick out the lows and move less metal with each one of my pushes. So but open up the dent. I've made that centre point more accessible. I can now read the centre, which allows me to get accurate pushes, bring up the dent, and as I moved down my tip size on my bar, I'm also reducing the tip size on my knockdown. Again, it just allows me some pinpoint accuracy for picking out the micro lows and the micro highs. So I bring up that repair area once again and then repeat that tap down process until all of my lines read true.
Now, whilst this repair video is only about five minutes long, the repair itself took closer to an hour. So for the full breakdown tutorial and all of the tips tools that I used to repair this dent. And if you're interested in learning a little bit more about myself and PDR training, you can visit learnpdronline.com. Thanks for watching