Mobile Tech Expo 2009, Common Signs of Good Training, and How to (Safely) Repair Dents in Doors

My son Derek and I went to the Mobile Tech Expo in Florida in January. I also convinced a recent student, Aaron Smith to go with us, too. Aaron and Derek have become my “go to” guys for hail and they both have about a year and a half experience fixing dents.
I asked them to be my champions in the Dent Olympics.
The Dent Olympics started eight years ago and its put together by Terry Siegle and Sun King Publishing, the people who print the Mobile Tech News Digest.
This year the competition was tough. More than 50 techs from several countries came to throw down on some dent repair.
There were competitions in paint repair and upholstery as well.
It was a cool setup, and my hat’s off to Terry and others who worked very hard at making it fair.
They rented two late model Chevrolet Impala’s, both red in color and about the same age. Since we had a booth this year, we were able to go in early and see the setup. I was surprised to see a dent tech walk around the cars and take out the door dings in both cars.
Then…

They put more dents back in them!
Like I said, Terry really strives to make it a fair contest, so they used a towel wrapped golf ball and whacked it with a hammer, hard.
These dents were bigger than a half dollar and very stretched in the center. Each car had eight dents in all four doors and all the dents were in the open, that is, not behind a brace. There was a row of four in the upper part of the door and four below. Numbers were written above the dents and once signed up, the competitors drew a number from a hat and that was their dent.

Each tech has 45 minutes to finish their dent and a warning is given at 35 minutes. Derek and Aaron both used all the time allowed.
Like I said, these dents were stretched and the judging was based on how “flat” the dent was at the end of the repair. You know the deeper and more stretched a dent is the tougher it is to shrink.

I looked at both my champions’ dents and would have no problem delivering them as they were to a customer. You had to look hard to see a flaw. In fact, many of the competitors work was clearly a sellable result.
But this was a contest.

Like a foot race, the difference in placing and not placing is a tiny margin.
So, even though Derek and Aaron did not place, I am still proud of the results and the fact they even tried.
The Dent Olympics really drove home to me how difficult it is to fix a dent with stretching in the center.
All your pushes have to be in the center, and to shrink, you are going to have some visible pushes at the start. The key to these dents is to bring up the center first with a taped tool or even better, the newer soft caps from Ultra dent tools or A1 or Dentcraft.
Once the dent is up a bit, you can read the light better and begin to make shrinking pushes with a sharper, uncovered tool.
The winner, I think, is the fellow who can make these shrinking pushes as tiny and as numerous, and close grouped as possible, but do it quick.
You can not sand and buff in the Dent Olympics so tiny pushes rule the day. Any dent which is stretched has a tendency to be high at the end. This is where the shrinking is so important.
From what I saw at MTE the best tech is the one who sees his pushes earliest as he makes them, even when the dent is still very deep.
If you’re like me, you might have expected to see a great variety of lights. There wasn’t.
I didn’t watch every tech, but I saw no one use a multi-striped line board, and only a couple of contestants used a sprayed fog.
The overwhelming winner in the light category was the reflected fog, or bare bulb shadow.
Lots of folks used a curved wing suction cup light similar to the MTS-18 from pdrtool.com. Many of them used two of these lights, one close and one further back. Or they would set one down low at a 90 degree angle to the other for cross checking.
We took our new LED-36 from A-1 and the yellow tape over the LED’s cast a good glow on the red competition cars.
There was also a glue pulling competition this year.
They took the same golf ball technique and whacked the roof rails of these rental cars. Again, a very tough dent to glue pull, especially in a time limited setting. Only a few techs tried glue pulling and I saw some very rough work and only a couple of clean repairs.
In case you are wondering, these cars are re-worked after the show so they are returned in good condition.
My hat’s off to Terry and the other fellow’s who helped out in judging and setup. It is a lot of work.
It takes a lot of courage to compete, but there is much to be learned from working around or in a competition with someone better than you.

Meeting with Friends
I was very pleased to meet some students of the Paintless Mentor System. Three I expected to see, and some others surprised me.

I was happy to meet Charlie Cottam from Janesville, Wisconsin, USA. He showed up with John Yeager of Saint Louis, Missouri. Both these guys are trainers with IQ learning systems. They teach PDR to auto plant workers. It was a pleasure to visit and enjoy a meal with those guys.
I also met Tim Lebbert, Mike Scarborough, Ahmad Haweit, Kelly Kovari and Ted Schneider.
Yvan LaCroix and Sam Feil from Canada, and Carlos Jacobs from London, England were there as well.

The real take away for me was realizing people put forward a side of themselves online which may or may not represent reality.
People say stuff online which they would never say in person.
Also, there is almost always a back story. What I mean is, we all put on our best front and hide our flaws, right?
You know this is often greatly exaggerated online. It is way easier to pretend online than in real life.
How can you protect yourself in a forum or social media?

Always look at a poster’s profile and find out who they are.
If they post little about themselves, their time in the PDR business, and especially who trained them and when, you can assume they are new. Or at least newer than they want to reveal.
I’ve always lived by the credo, “No one knows what you think they know.”
But I have still been duped and deceived by individuals claiming more experience than they truly have.
Its like dog years. If a tech has one year experience, he claims seven.
I have great respect for honest techs who wear their newness as a badge of honor. I was talking to one fellow I met at MTE and he was very proud to tell me, I’m definitely “new school”!

The Mobile Tech Expo opened on Thursday with classes about business and some technical information as well. There were classes on detailing and PDR.
The PDR classes were taught by members of the NAPDRT or National Association of Paintless Dent Repair Techs.
I especially enjoyed the hour on fixing big dents.
Mike Wahl the instructor showed some very large dents he had fixed. When someone asked, how do I fix these, he encouraged advanced training. Then he said something near to my heart: “First in, Last out”.

Signs of good training

I had the pleasure of meeting some techs who have been around for a long time. I made it a point to ask who trained them and when. When I told one tech I was trained by a Dent Dr. franchisee, he gave me an interesting perspective.
“Dent Doctor used to be on top because they had better tools. They could get out dents the rest of us left behind. Once the tool companies caught up with them, everyone else was better able to compete.”
This was interesting because from 1992 to 1995, I kind of hid in my little corner of Tulsa, meaning, I didn’t have much contact with other techs. So hearing his point of view was of high value to me.
In 1998, the former tool maker for Dent Dr. put me in contact with a hail broker and I went to Minnesota for 2 weeks work.
This broker told me he had been through no less than a hundred techs. I just realized the commonality of the six techs he had at the site I was at, all of us were trained by Dent Dr. or a representative of them.
Even though none of us had worked together before, we all did the same level of quality work.
So, I thought it would help you to know the common things we were all taught which made us consistently good.

We all used a striped light.
Yes, the shadow is much easier now, and it is my preferred method, but a stripe still shows flaws on the paint level and can be useful for final checking.

Cross checking.
We were taught to check our dents from multiple angles by moving the light.

Tap downs.
All used them as little as possible.

Wire tools
Remember, this was before glue pulling and whale tails, so we had to have some smaller tools to get into tight places. Now, wire tools seem almost obsolete.

Drilling
We would drill, but only when absolutely necessary, and we tried to hide it if we could.

Tenacity for getting the dent out.
Around this time, Dent Wizard put together a book which detailed all the trouble spots on the different makes of cars. The spots were shaded as either open, difficult to access, or impossible to access.
I thumbed through it thinking, “I fix dents in this spot all the time. How can you do a repair and not fix all the dents?”

Today, many of these issues are now just standards for a good repair.
What is interesting is what has made them to be so. It is none other than competition.
When the DW techs were using their book as an excuse to leave dents, we were getting them kicked out of body shops by showing we could fix them.
Of course DW now fixes them too. Why? They had to change to compete.
So, remember competition makes us better, and the absence of it is not in the customer’s best interest.

Working on Doors
“Tim, you don’t show or talk much about working doors. Do you have more information about dent access and working through window openings?”

Much can be learned about doors by exploring through the window opening.
Some cars are very tight here, so you must use your wedge carefully to open it wide enough
to place your shield in, then also a tool.
Couple of things to watch out for:
Laminated glass and double pane windows.
The above used to be reserved for luxury cars only, but laminated glass is becoming more and more common.
No doubt the noise suppression is the reason.
Before you roll the window down, look for lettering in a lower corner. If laminated, it will often say so.
It might be a company name like “Lami-Safe” or just say Laminated.
The second test you will do requires rolling window about half way down.
Now you can look at the top edge of the glass.
If the glass is laminated, you will likely see the sandwich of two glass panes with a thin plastic film between.
I recommend using these testing methods on every door now. More and more cars are going to laminated and it is not as strong as tempered safety glass.
Checking the top edge may also show a double paned glass with a wider gap.
This is often the case on higher end Mercedes and usually it is still tempered glass, just two sheets of it with an air gap between.
Tempered glass is stronger than sheet glass, but it can still break. The difference being there is much more surface tension on tempered glass.
Typically to break it, you either have to hit it on the edge or whack it with a very sharp tipped hammer or punch.
This is why its also called safety glass and is required in homes and buildings near entryways. If a person runs into it on accident, it will not break as easy.
When tempered breaks it “explodes” in a way. usually into a million small pieces.
Laminated glass can be cracked and you not even know until you roll the window up.
The plastic film between holds it together.

Knowing there is risk of breaking glass should cause you to be careful, but it shouldn’t stop you from using the window opening for checking access and even working through with your tool.

Using a flashlight, be careful with your wedge and be certain you are on the outside of the glass with it. Also, avoid jamming it between the two sheets, if it is douple paned.
Wedge it just wide enough to get your shield in. Once your shield is in, now move your wedge to be on top of the shield.
The shield not only protects the glass, it spreads the force of the wedge or your dent tool over a much wider area.
Plastic shields are fine, but a metal shield is better for laminated glass.
Plastic can flex too much and could crack the laminated pane.

Now you have an opening, start exploring using a thinner, smaller diameter tool (5/16″ or less) with a 3 inch or more throw on it.
The throw is the distance between the tip and the shaft of the tool. Since a door is typically wide, the longer throw will give you more leverage when you twist it.

Trouble Spots
When you look at a door, three areas will give you trouble.
The first two are horizontal.
The top edge 3 to 8 inches below window, and the middle section where the intrusion beam runs horizontally from front to back.
This is usually, but not always halfway between bottom and top.
You can open the door and look for spot welds in the jamb, and this will usually indicate where the beam has been welded. Sometimes the welds are hidden below the rubber weather stripping. You can feel them with your fingers if you cannot see them.
The third trouble spot is the very front or very rear of a door, close to an edge. The width of the door typically closes down or narrows here so dents can be more difficult. Sometimes a whale tail is your only option here. I will often work these through window opening using whale tail, unless it is closer to bottom of door. Then I try to find a drain hole in the bottom I might use to go “up” through.

If a dent is in the middle of the door and the intrusion beam is in the way, again, a whale tail might be just what you need.
If it is just below, you’ll want to use the throw of your tool to go down and around the beam. If it is just above, you can angle it to work above the beam.

Some dents will be partially above and partially below. These you will have to work with more than one tool, of course. Try to bring the dent up evenly, and not get too far ahead with one tool. This can cause tension and possible paint cracking.

For dents in the top section below the belt molding and glass, we have to work a little harder.
If you are working a hail damage car, this area will often have dents in it and they can get pretty big.
Is the molding damaged? Will it be replaced anyway? If I know it is going to be replaced, I will be more aggressive in removing it, not worrying about the clips too much, since the new molding means new clips (usually).
If I know I have to put it back, I’m going to be more careful.
Sometimes there is a screw at one end of the door or both. Look for these first.
Once you have the screws out most belt moldings lift off. This is easiest with window down.
The reason for removing the belt molding is to gain access to the holes in the back of the upper brace that might be hidden. These can give you access to the dents you might not otherwise have.

If the molding can’t be removed, or there are no holes, Glue pulling may be your best bet. Remember if the dent is chipped, glue pulling can cause more paint to come off, so proceed with caution and get full permission from owner.

To me, removing the door panel is a last resort, but sometimes unavoidable.
Many car owners are deathly afraid of rattles caused by removing door panels.
I have comforted many car owners when they found out we wouldn’t have to remove the door panel and could work through the glass opening.

But if its the only way, you will have to allay their fears. Give them a guarantee you will not cause rattles.
If you do cause a rattle, you will do whatever it takes to fix it anyway, right?
Exercise caution when removing a door panel.
Each car is different, so this will be a period of discovery for you.
Best is to start with any screws on the door. These can be hidden behind plastic covers so a small flat blade screwdriver can help remove these.
Most doors will have two large screws or bolts on a door panel about the middle and close to the handle most used to pull the door shut.
You may have to pull or slide off an arm rest to reveal them. They can also be underneath and you’ll see the holes, or they may have plastic covers on them.
A flashlight is helpful here.

Once all the covers and screws have been removed, all that is left are the plastic retainers. Most cars use a clip which goes into a hole in the metal of the door. These can be removed with a clip tool by prying the panel away from the door.

Please exercise caution here as recently, some automakers are using a clip which releases only when lifted. I find it a best practice to try lifting the interior trim panel first.
If it won’t lift, try prying, but see if you can separate the door panel enough to see the clip. Its best to be sure, since prying out on the lift off style clip will break it.

Once the door panel if off, there is a thin plastic barrier usually glued with a messy soft black stuff called butyl. Carefully peel this back as you will want to be sure and put it back later.

From here, you’ll have new ways to access dents.
It may also be necessary to remove the window or speaker or other pieces to get to the dent. If you are a technical person and can put together what you just took apart, go for it. Some cars are very easy and others are hard.
Fortunately, the same methods used to put a car together quick in the factory, also help us in pdr.
For example, many windows are only “clamped” in place between two pieces of plastic with a 10mm bolt holding them together. Loosening this bolt is often all that is needed to free the glass.

Getting the glass out of the door can be a bit more tricky. Most glass is curved and can require the removal of other pieces or moldings in the door to get it out. Most of the time the glass will be removed toward the outside of the car. Be patient, you will have to experiment, but there is some angle to move the window which will release it.

Be sure to store it in a safe place once its out.

To conclude, the most important part of fixing a dent in a door is the discovery process you will do at the start.
Rolling the window down, checking the glass and cautiously probing with a tool will give you most of the story.

Often, there is enough gap to look down with a flashlight as well.
Some things to watch out for:
BMW’s and german cars often use a cable and pulley system for raising a lowering the glass.
Sometimes these cables can be on the outside of the glass, right where you will stick a tool. Be careful in your probing as it is possible to knock the cable right off the pulley. It happened to a trainee in my shop once. I don’t want this to scare you, as it took some major man handling to tear it up. I only tell you this to encourage you to be gentle.
Also, the demand for quieter cars has given us some challenges as well.
VW cars sometimes have large blocks of what looks like styrofoam hidden in the door cavity. If you have a dent in this area, you are forced to do some tear down, and remove the door panel, if it can’t be glue pulled.
You might also find a patch of sound deadener glued to the back of the panel.
Sometimes its tar or asphalt based and you can push through it. It might have a foil or tin backing on it, too. This type is much more difficult to push through. Sometimes you can drag a sharp tool around the dented area and open up a spot in the foil.
The third and most frustrating is the fiberglass sound deadener.
These are applied like a cast for a broken bone from the hospital. Once its dry and cured its like a rock. The worst part is, the woven surface will grab your tool and let it poke through in some areas and not in others. This can really affect the outcome of the repair. Your pinpoint pushing accuracy is now gone.
I wish I knew a good way to remove it, but I don’t. If you do, please share.

The best way to tackle a door is to jump in and do it. Taking action will teach you a great deal.

Marketing your PDR business
On Saturday night, we all gathered in Tim Lebbert’s suite for a session on building business and keeping it. If you want to hear it, go to the members section and listen in.

Happy pushing,
Tim Olson