I've been lurking through the forums for the last couple of months and finally signed up.

Bought a '17 Honda Fit EX in Modern Steel Metallic back in late November. Some old man backed into me 15 minutes after I left the dealership and screwed both passenger side doors. Finally got the car back this last week and am finally enjoying it.

 

wow, sorry to hear about ur accident 15min after taking ownership..

my GK (bought it for wife) was in a hail storm on day 2 of ownership. LOL I couldn't help but laugh at my situation. hahaha!

enjoy ur ride!

 

Welcome and enjoy. Hopefully, that incident is all the bad luck you'll have.

 

lol. yeah, hopefully that's it for bad luck for a while. Will be getting some pics of it soon. Thanks for the welcome!

 

When I had my rustproofing appointment. They ended up scratching the paint on the rear door and quarter panel. So it got repainted in those areas. Car was only a week old.

 

yah, my GTI i bought new was dinged on the rear quarter arch line like within weeks of ownership. while it was a tiny ding it distorted the arch line so it was an eyesore. each time light hit it, it was a mess.

I do PDR on my own so I felt under the arch to see if I could access it.. but noticed VW folds over the metal I knew I couldn't reach it with my tools unless I drilled an access hole because I'd need good leverage to push out the ding on a decorative line. since dis is my dd and salt use in the winter, I decided not to drill a hole.

went to a body shop for 2nd opinions and dey too agreed dey would need to bondo and paint the ENTIRE SIDE of car. I was like for a faking 7-8mm ding? lol I mean I trust their assessment but I was pretty pissed cause I didnt want to paint the entire side of my ride.

so ended up spot bondo-ing it myself, sanded, and applied a matte black JDM bandaid decal over it. it actually looks like I put it on there on purpose. did da same on the other side for symmetry. looks good. at least the decorative line is fixed.

 

lol! those band-aid decals are win. great way to hide those bad dings. Sucks tho that the GTI got dinged. I've been wanting a GTI since I first laid eyes on the Mk. 5 many a year ago. <3

 

Hi Kenchan,

Is it easy to do your own PDR?
May I know what tools that you recommend to use for doing PDR on my own?
Thanks

 

was not easy for me. I took a professional training course and fixed literally thousands of dings on used cars before I could consider myself good enough to work on my own cars. you should look into taking a training course if you're serious about PDR even if u only plan to fix your own cars. its an art, kind of like learning how to play an instrument. in the beginning it is easier to let an instructor teach you how to read the ding and access the panels and where to push it out. some folks in the group just could not read the ding and ended up damaging the panels by adding high spots.

I even start to get rusty after a while too if I don't do it for a while. I have a ding on the GK dat ill be fixing when it gets warmer.

as for tools I spent $4-5k and it's only like half of wat the real pro's use.
I dont do this for a living or side business.. I just like to be able to fix my own cars.

 

Oh, wow, it's not easy than ...
need training time, training cost, lots of car to experiment, then still $5k in equipment (half of what pro used)...
hmmm.
Ok I give up... I better let the PDR guy do it for me,
Thanks for the info Kenchan

 

you're welcome.

yah it's a very premative technique. And as more and more cars come out with aluminum panels, da harder it's going to be to PDR as aluminum is brittle.

 

yeah i've heard from many that's it's a difficult technique.

 

yah first step is confirming whether PDR is appropriate for the repair. not all dings can be repaired by PDR. and even if repairable, must consider if the work out weights getting it bondo/repaired at a bodyshop. PDR has its own side effects like scratching paint on the inside of the panels, drilling access holes when needed, etc. it's not perfect.