Bah. It's been a hellish month at King-Evans Towers - I managed to knacker my car not once, but twice.

I lost control of my car and hit the curb at speed, denting the wheel into the tyre. New wheel, new tyre, fix tracking - £180. Ouch. My charming boyfriend is calling it stupidity tax.

Now, the day after (I kid you not, the DAY after) I did this, some... person... dented my car while it was parked.

The dent is long, like something has hit it while moving - it's around 20cm. The paint isn't broken and consensus is that I can have the dent knocked out.

Any idea how much that's likely to cost me?

Thanks,

Felicity

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Felicity King-Evans, Deputy Site Editor
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Felicity

Why Insurers offer lower premiums to women drivers I don't understand. The rear view mirror is not for checking your make-up!!!

There is a company called Chipsaway that offer competitively priced repairs. They must be cheap as I see a lot of local car dealers use them, rather than get their mechanics to bodge the job.

It depends on the dent, but many can be pulled out, without leaving any damage behind.

Perhaps you should post your driving schedule each day, so we know which roads to avoid.

Huckster

Main dealer or rip off merchant - £300

Decent mechanic - £50 or less if it's a standard paint.

Small dints can usually either be filled or knocked out. Maybe a couple of hours work plus a little time waiting for things to dry.

It's worth saying that you don't want rust coming through in a few months time. This isn't difficult to avoid with the right treatment but it easier not to bother.

*ahem* Huckster I am choosing to ignore your comments! (Although I did just read them outloud and all the men in my office laughed. We women are fuming, though).

Maxsteam, it's more a long dent than a scrape, so I'm optimistic rust won't be an issue. Maybe I should get some protective treatment for a few months though, just in case.

I'm hoping to hang fire on getting this fixed until after Christmas.

Poor car.

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Felicity

I was only joking ( or was I ?)

If you do a google for DIY car dent puller, there are some products which may do the job. I have seen some of these demonstrated and they do appear to work quite well.

There is one advert on ebay for the DING KING Dent Puller for £14.90 including P&P. I think this is the one I saw being used. It might be worth the investment.

Huckster

Heh, so I'm looking at anywhere between £14.90 and £300? Let's hope the ding thing works!

This hasn't been the cheapest of months for my poor car.

Thank you both for your tips :)

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A fair few years ago I borrowed mum's mini for a night out. I parked next to York's historic wall (on which people are encouraged to climb). When I came back to the car the roof, which had been convex when I left it, was now concave with a dusty footprint in the middle. Obviously I didn't want to go straight back to show mum as it felt like my whole world had caved in as well as the roof. I went round to the local police station and a PC came out to view the damage. He opened the door, put his arm inside and, with one big thump with his fist on the middle of the roof, everything popped back into place and mum never knew.

Yes, it could be anything between those figures. If you are getting a garage to look at it though, remember that they will add something on to the price if you look as if you want to make a big deal out of things by using phrases like "The dent is long". Some garages are better at this type of "customer service" than others. When choosing a garage, if the DIY dent puller doesn't do the job, someone advertising body repairs on an industrial estate would be a good place to start. If you feel like they are going to take you for a ride, simply drive away. There are plenty of such place to choose from.

Good luck.

To be fair, them cheap dent pullers probably wont go near a 20cm long dent so I would be inclined to save my £15. They're designed for 10p size 'dings'.

The cost will most likely treble if you have to go through a garage but if you can find a local Mobile Paintless Dent Removal firm (a quick google of 'dent removal <city or town>' will show up loads) and he can gain decent access to the rear of the panel, then it should cost about a hundred quid-ish in my experience. It's quite a skilled job nowadays with the types of paints used and thinner metal used on modern cars, it's easy to make it look worse and even break the paint with a DIY attempt...

Best for "<<DENTDEMON>>" (eg...) to see if he can do it first than head to your local bodyshop or get the toffee hammer out I would say...

JJ

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You gotta tie yourself to the mast my friend, and the storm will end.

Indeed. It's possible to talk the cost up to any figure you want. Some mechanics are better than others at doing this. The dodgy garage will also tell you, when you go in for a small job, that they noticed that an integral bush was about to give way the next time you went round a bend and it had to be fixed but £00s is a small price to charge to save your life and so on...

We are talking about a maximum of a couple of hours work plus perhaps pennies for materials. If it's going to be fixed by someone other than yourself it's worth getting it done somewhere that regularly does body repairs so that it is likely to get done properly, but it isn't brain surgery.

It's sometimes worth paying the mobile mechanics extra for the convenience because going to a garage may well take up more than a couple of hours of your own time.

One option to consider is to leave things as they are until the car is in a garage for something else and find out the cost then.

My daughter paid £80 recently to a small specialist repair garage to have a quite substantial dent/scratch removed from her Corsa rear wing. Looks like new now ..... main Vauxhall garage had roughly estimated £350 !!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for your advice, stories and humour - it's been really helpful.

I'll probably be leaving this for a couple of months until after Christmas but then I'll let you know what I paid and whether my car is its former beautiful self!

Thanks again,

Fliss

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Morning Fel...

Is this the new car that you have pranged? Are you still pining over the loss of Scratchy to such an extent that you want to rebrand the new one into Scratchy 2?

Oi! Scratchy was scratched, Denty is dented. Damn you for making that the obvious name for my new car - it's bound to stick.

Anyway, Scratchy has gone to the big car crusher in the sky.

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