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Bought a nice low miles 2014 IV but it had a deep door ding

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by B. Roberts, Feb 6, 2020.

  1. B. Roberts

    B. Roberts Hypah Milah! Ayuh.

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    A lady traded in her 2014 Prius IV in awesome condition and we went to look at it. Interior like new. I'm finicky about my cars, but this interior didn't look like anyone have ever been inside the car. I checked all nooks and crannies. Clean. No scratches. Ok, a little dust in the spare tire compartment, but not bad for 27k miles. Maintained at her local Toyota dealer.

    Exterior was almost as nice, except for one deep front passenger door ding about 6 inches behind the side view mirror. The Dealership's Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) guy didn't want to touch it. Too deep and on the door crease. We bought it anyway hoping we'd find someone that would tackle the dent.

    Talked to 4 PDR people and sent them a couple of pictures of the door ding. None would touch it. Then I came across Dentstarz dot com. He's a one man outfit and comes out to your driveway to do the job there. He noted that it would be difficult to mend, but he'd give it a try. After about an hour, I couldn't tell where the dent had been. Extremely hard to spot, even though I know exactly where the ding had been.

    After seeing what he could do, my sister in law wanted him to try removing a crease and dent from the rear section of the rear passenger door, across the top of the wheel well edge to the bumper line. I didn't think this guy would be able to bring that back to anything acceptable. The next afternoon he spent 3 hours on that rear quarter and it came out looking about as perfect as you can get.

    All I can say, is that if you live in the Tampa area (he services a big range of the area out of town) and you have a dent or ding and want it repaired to a high standard, Dent Starz is the one to look up. I'm very impressed with his work. Takes a lot of pride in his work as well.

    Took the dent picture at night because Dent Starz wanted to see it close up. I took a daytime "after" picture right after he was done, but it has a lot of reflections in it. Eventually I'll try to get a cleaner after picture. It's really our same Prius before and after.

    [​IMG]

    Finished product.
    [​IMG]
     
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  2. JC91006

    JC91006 Senior Member

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    nice work, I don't blame the others for not wanting to touch it. How much was the service?
     
  3. B. Roberts

    B. Roberts Hypah Milah! Ayuh.

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    He charged 150 to do this one. It was a bear. Usual small dings a lot less but depend on access difficulty and how far the metal has been stretched. The other PDR rates were in the same range.
     
  4. xliderider

    xliderider Senior Member

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    Did he work the dent out from the back of the panel, or was it strictly from the exterior surface?

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
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  5. B. Roberts

    B. Roberts Hypah Milah! Ayuh.

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    PDR did most of the work from the backside of the door panel. Sorry about the late answer. We lost power last night in the storm that racked the east.
     
  6. ASRDogman

    ASRDogman Senior Member

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    That is nice work. What did it cost you?
    Didn't lose power in Sarasota... Just wind, and some rain...
     
  7. B. Roberts

    B. Roberts Hypah Milah! Ayuh.

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    We had one very strong blast of wind for about 3-4 minutes during last night's frontal passage right before a torrential squall hit. Lights flickered and then went out for about an hour. The temperature dropped 11 degrees in about a half hour. EF-0 Tornado was confirmed in Pinellas park south of our location. Carports reported blown off, trees down on houses, with a few injuries reported. We just had a lot of tree debris to clean up around the yard and driveway this morning. A rough evening for some.
     
  8. ASRDogman

    ASRDogman Senior Member

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    Glad you survived it!
     
  9. Nor'easter

    Nor'easter Member

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    Man that's a great job on a difficult dent in a very obvious spot. Awesome craftsmanship.

    I bought a PDR kit last year. It's pretty easy DIY to turn nasty dings into something between "not terribly obvious" and "hard to find". It's quite challenging to approach perfection. The sheet metal on different cars varies a lot!! We had a Honda Fit. That thing was just about impossible to work on with PDR. All the sheet metal was very thin. When you push or pull on that thin stuff, the tendency was to move much larger areas than you wanted. The Prius Gen 3 has heavier, softer sheet metal that is comparatively easy to work on.
     
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