After hail: when a dent can be fixed without touching the paint

A hailstorm does something unusual to a vehicle. Instead of one area of heavy damage, it leaves many small dents spread across the horizontal surfaces, the hood, the roof, the trunk lid, and very often it does all of that without breaking the paint anywhere.

That combination, plenty of deformation and an entirely intact finish, is the specific case paintless dent repair exists for. It is worth understanding before you assume a hail-damaged car needs repainting, because in many cases repainting would be the worse outcome.

What paintless dent repair is

Paintless dent repair works the metal back into shape from behind the panel, without filler and without refinishing. Because no finish is disturbed, there is nothing to match afterwards and nothing to blend.

The requirement is that the paint is genuinely unbroken and the metal has not been stretched past what can be worked back. Where those hold, the panel returns to shape carrying the finish it left the factory with.

Why keeping the original paint matters

Factory paint is applied in conditions no body shop can reproduce, on a bare shell, before the vehicle is assembled. A refinish done well is an excellent repair, and we do a great deal of it. But it is a replacement for something that cannot be put back once it is gone.

So where the original finish can be preserved, our recommendation is to preserve it. That is a better outcome for the vehicle than any refinish, however good the refinish is. It is also usually the less invasive job.

When it is not the right method

Paintless dent repair is not a universal shortcut, and a shop that offers it for everything is not doing you a favour. Whether it applies is decided by looking at the actual damage rather than by preference.

• If the paint is cracked, chipped or broken anywhere across the dent, the panel needs conventional repair.
• If the metal has been stretched, working it back from behind will leave a high spot rather than a flat surface.
• Some dents sit on a body line or too close to a panel edge to be accessed properly from behind.
• Very deep dents can be beyond what the method can bring back cleanly.

Forcing a dent through paintless repair when the finish will not take it does not fail immediately. It fails later, as cracking or as a high spot that shows up in the reflection, which is a worse position than simply having done the conventional repair first time.

Careful inspection is what confirms which of the two methods your damage needs. Being told plainly that a dent needs the longer job is more useful than being told the answer you were hoping for.

What to do after a storm

Hail damage is easy to underestimate from a distance because the dents are shallow and the paint looks perfect. Look along the panels rather than at them, from a low angle, and the count usually goes up considerably.

• Look at the hood, roof and trunk lid along the light, not straight down.
• Photograph the vehicle while the damage is fresh, including wide shots that show the whole panel.
• Get the damage assessed before deciding what kind of repair it needs.
• If a claim is involved, the assessment and its documentation go to your carrier together.

Storm seasons also bring a certain amount of door-to-door repair activity, and quality varies enormously. The checks in our piece on spotting a good repair apply here as much as anywhere: follow the body line, watch what a reflection does as it crosses the panel.

The point of the inspection

The useful thing a shop can tell you after hail is not simply how many dents there are. It is which of them can keep their paint, which cannot, and why. That decision is the whole repair, and it is made by looking at your vehicle rather than at a category.

If your car has been through a storm and you are not sure what you are looking at, bring it in. We would rather assess it and tell you it needs less than you feared than have you assume it needs a repaint.