tuscarora dave
"Luck" Residue of design
My room mate ran his uninsured harley into my car some time back. This Easter my brother gave me a Simoniz Pops-A-Dent kit. I normally don't mess around with as seen on TV kind of stuff. My scheduling got all messed up this week so I had some free time and decided to give it a try and give a little review with photos.
Here's the kit being reviewed.
I have never tried any PDR work before so the results are definately lacking.
Here's the dent I worked on.
I started by setting up a little work station so I didn't have stuff rolling down the driveway and in to the road.
I layed out the contents of the kit on my little table and cleaned up the dented area to be worked on.
The dent is kind of 2 dents inside a big dent, where the bike hit the car the metal is scraped and it is also stretched. I do intend on replacing the door but was attempting to make it more tollerable for now. Here is a few pics of the scraped and stretched metal.
Ok all set to get started so the first thing was to plug in the hot melt glue gun and load the glue stick. The kit instructions say to allow the glue gun to preheat for approximately 5 minutes.
All heated up so here goes the first pull. The instructions say to be sure to fill the holes in the pull tab with the hot glue and to put a generous amount of glue on the face of the pull tab and then stick it on the dent and wait 3 to 5 minutes for the glue to cool down before pulling. The instructions say to not let the glue tab glued to the car for more than 8 minutes.
The instructions say after the glue cools for a few minutes to install the flex bridge device and simply screw the knob down until the glue releases from the paint.
Well it seems that just cleaning the area with APC isn't sufficient as the first pull came off easily without pulling any part of the dent.
At this point I thought to clay the dented area with Clay Magic Red to ensure that all the wax and sealant is removed and cleaned with APC again. After claying the area I peeled the glue off the pull tab and reglued it making sure I placed it in the center of the stretched area.
It seems that claying isn't working either so I lightly wet sanded the area where I need to glue the pull tabs.
Well I found that the flex bridge tool made a new dent for me to try to pull as I tightened the knob down. This pic is after wet sanding and after pulling the dent that the flex bridge tool made.
First the glue wouldn't stick at all now after wetsanding it is sticking too good but it is working now to pull the dents out. I used a little Prep-All to remove the residual glue after making the remaining pulls. I didn't want to make any more dents so from here on out I screwed the knob on just a few threads and just pulled outward on the flex bridge with my hands.
The kit came with 3 different sized pull tabs and the 2 larger sized tabs both broke.
I was still able to use the broken pull tabs. I had a few other areas to pull in addition to the large dented area.
Overall i would say that the Simoniz Pops-A-Dent kit is consistant with most other as seen on TV items. It doesn't really work as directed without causing more damage to the thin metal on todays cars. Now I have to take into consideration that the particular dent that I worked on with the stretched metal was just not the type of dent that the Somoniz Pops-A-Dent was designed to pull. I think this kit would work well for smaller easy to pull dents.
While the door panel on my car is still an eye sore, I think it is better than it was before I tried out this kit. I may in the future pull the inner door panel and try to work the rippled area from inside with a screwdriver handle or some other tool I can fashion. Here are 2 pics of the results I ended up with today after polishing out the sanding marks. Thanks for looking, TD
Here's the kit being reviewed.
I have never tried any PDR work before so the results are definately lacking.
Here's the dent I worked on.
I started by setting up a little work station so I didn't have stuff rolling down the driveway and in to the road.
I layed out the contents of the kit on my little table and cleaned up the dented area to be worked on.
The dent is kind of 2 dents inside a big dent, where the bike hit the car the metal is scraped and it is also stretched. I do intend on replacing the door but was attempting to make it more tollerable for now. Here is a few pics of the scraped and stretched metal.
Ok all set to get started so the first thing was to plug in the hot melt glue gun and load the glue stick. The kit instructions say to allow the glue gun to preheat for approximately 5 minutes.
All heated up so here goes the first pull. The instructions say to be sure to fill the holes in the pull tab with the hot glue and to put a generous amount of glue on the face of the pull tab and then stick it on the dent and wait 3 to 5 minutes for the glue to cool down before pulling. The instructions say to not let the glue tab glued to the car for more than 8 minutes.
The instructions say after the glue cools for a few minutes to install the flex bridge device and simply screw the knob down until the glue releases from the paint.
Well it seems that just cleaning the area with APC isn't sufficient as the first pull came off easily without pulling any part of the dent.
At this point I thought to clay the dented area with Clay Magic Red to ensure that all the wax and sealant is removed and cleaned with APC again. After claying the area I peeled the glue off the pull tab and reglued it making sure I placed it in the center of the stretched area.
It seems that claying isn't working either so I lightly wet sanded the area where I need to glue the pull tabs.
Well I found that the flex bridge tool made a new dent for me to try to pull as I tightened the knob down. This pic is after wet sanding and after pulling the dent that the flex bridge tool made.
First the glue wouldn't stick at all now after wetsanding it is sticking too good but it is working now to pull the dents out. I used a little Prep-All to remove the residual glue after making the remaining pulls. I didn't want to make any more dents so from here on out I screwed the knob on just a few threads and just pulled outward on the flex bridge with my hands.
The kit came with 3 different sized pull tabs and the 2 larger sized tabs both broke.
I was still able to use the broken pull tabs. I had a few other areas to pull in addition to the large dented area.
Overall i would say that the Simoniz Pops-A-Dent kit is consistant with most other as seen on TV items. It doesn't really work as directed without causing more damage to the thin metal on todays cars. Now I have to take into consideration that the particular dent that I worked on with the stretched metal was just not the type of dent that the Somoniz Pops-A-Dent was designed to pull. I think this kit would work well for smaller easy to pull dents.
While the door panel on my car is still an eye sore, I think it is better than it was before I tried out this kit. I may in the future pull the inner door panel and try to work the rippled area from inside with a screwdriver handle or some other tool I can fashion. Here are 2 pics of the results I ended up with today after polishing out the sanding marks. Thanks for looking, TD