What a pain.
So, I've had my current car for 2 years. It's a 2007 Silver Infiniti G35 sedan. About a week after I bought it, I had a dent on the gas inlet cover. Who knows how it got there. It annoyed me, but eventually I got over it.
Then today I find a rather large dent on the rear left door. I figure somebody let a shopping cart slam into my car.
With all the expenditures lately, I didn't want to spend money to get it fixed, so I turned to the online world for DIY advice.
I found a neat trick that semi-works. I let the car sit in the Florida summer sun (yeah, technically it's spring, but here we always have summer, just in different levels of severity). After it heated up quite a bit, I applied dry ice to the dent. The idea is that the rapid temperature decrease causes the metal to contract, pulling the dented metal back to its original state (flush with the other metal). It kind of worked... the dent is only 30% its original size. I could have gone all the way, repeating the procedure, but I noticed a negative effect not mentioned online (and that I feared might happen). The paint underneath the clear coat shriveled up slightly, making it appear that the area has a series of smal scratches, when in fact there are no external scratches.
So, I'm a little peeved about that now. That's fixable too DIY by sanding down the area and then repainting. I decided to cut my losses and will just live with the perceived scratches.
I guess the moral of the story is that car dents and scratches make me mad.
So, I've had my current car for 2 years. It's a 2007 Silver Infiniti G35 sedan. About a week after I bought it, I had a dent on the gas inlet cover. Who knows how it got there. It annoyed me, but eventually I got over it.
Then today I find a rather large dent on the rear left door. I figure somebody let a shopping cart slam into my car.
With all the expenditures lately, I didn't want to spend money to get it fixed, so I turned to the online world for DIY advice.
I found a neat trick that semi-works. I let the car sit in the Florida summer sun (yeah, technically it's spring, but here we always have summer, just in different levels of severity). After it heated up quite a bit, I applied dry ice to the dent. The idea is that the rapid temperature decrease causes the metal to contract, pulling the dented metal back to its original state (flush with the other metal). It kind of worked... the dent is only 30% its original size. I could have gone all the way, repeating the procedure, but I noticed a negative effect not mentioned online (and that I feared might happen). The paint underneath the clear coat shriveled up slightly, making it appear that the area has a series of smal scratches, when in fact there are no external scratches.
So, I'm a little peeved about that now. That's fixable too DIY by sanding down the area and then repainting. I decided to cut my losses and will just live with the perceived scratches.
I guess the moral of the story is that car dents and scratches make me mad.
