2017 Nissan Rogue Crease Repair
A customer came to me with a fairly large crease on the door of their Nissan Rogue. This isn’t your typical door ding or your run of the mill dent- creases present a unique challenge and have to be repaired in a unique way. The biggest difference between repairing a crease and a run of the mill dent shaped like a circle is you have to “connect your pushes.”
As a technician begins this repair the’ll most likely start from the top of the damage and work their was down to the bottom or start at the bottom and work their way to the top. Either direction is fine in most cases, and would have been fine on this repair. However, if the tech hasn’t taken the time to properly connect their pushes the dent will appear to be repaired up close but as you get further away from it the dent will appear to have a stitching pattern to it. Some people call this a zipper effect, but it doesn’t matter, the result is the same. Dozens or even hundreds of push marks all with tiny micro low spots in between them because none of the pushes are connected.
”James, how do you prevent stitching when repairing a crease?” Great question! You have to move your reflection board during the repair. Go back up and take a look at the photo of the dent at the top of the page. See how the crease runs vertically and the line board is positioned vertically? In general thats what a PDR tech wants because it shows the highs and lows and proper shape of the dent and so on. But with creases you have to turn the board somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees to see the micro lows that exist between pushes. In general when working on a crease I repair 1 inch at a time. Vertical crease, vertical board, push up an inch of the crease, rotate my reflection board, connect my pushes, and move on to inch number 2.
Now, thats a lot of information to take in, lets get back to some of the paintless dent repair basics and the repair at hand.
To get started I set up my light close to our damage and gained access through the window. I used a standard window wedge and window guard to protect the glass in the door while I made my pushes.
Before I started pushing the dent out, I had to knock down the “crown” around the dent. It is fairly common for a high spot to form around the point of the impact that caused the dent; crowns put the dent or crease under pressure and need to be knocked down to relieve that pressure prior to any pushes being attempted. I chose to alternate between and blending hammer and a knock down tool with a soft tip to knock down the crown.
Once I started pushing I used a dentcraft double bend with a soft tip. I started at the bottom of the dent and moved my way up the crease slowly rotating my light as I went in an effort to cross check. Once the crease appeared to be repaired I had to move my light further back and repeat the entire repair process from the start. The further a technician sets their light away from the dent the more detail that technician can see. So once my light was set back I returned to knocking down the crown, pushed out my low spots using my soft tip, and ultimately finished the repair with a sharp tip.
This crease repair came out beautifully. If you’d like to watch a video of this repair click the link below.
