2021 Ford Bronco Side Swipe
The Hampton Roads area has a pretty decent tourist industry in Virginia Beach and in The Outer Banks of North Carolina. A customer called me with damage on the quarter panel and rear bumper on their 2021 Ford Bronco, and when I asked what happened they told me that they were enjoying a day at the beach and came back to see their car had been hit while they were relaxing in the sun. No clue who did it, no note, no phone number, nothing- a story I’m sure we’re all familiar with and certainly not the first time I’ve heard it.
So as you can see from the photo, the drivers quarter panel had been hit right where it meets the rear bumper of the vehicle and there was a dent on and around the seam/edge of the panel. The rear bumper had some paint taken off as well, but there was no dent to speak of, and that isn’t something a Paintless Dent Repair company typically repairs (I mean “Paintless” is in the name) but in this case I wanted to do what I could to help this customer. So I got in touch with a local painter that I know and asked if he wanted to tag team this Bronco- I do the dent repair and he handles the bumper and whatever it takes to paint it- and the painter agreed to it!
The only other damage that wasn’t addressed yet was the damage to the plastic trim above the wheel well on the quarter panel. Unfortunately textured plastic pieces don’t usually repair very well if at all. But in order for me to push the dent out of the quarter panel I would need to remove and reinstall the trim anyway, so I recommended that we replace the trim as well. The customer agreed and all it took was me ordering the trim from the local Ford dealership that I already service every week and everything was in place. We had the new trim, I was in line to repair the dent on the quarter panel, and a local painter was in line to repair the bumper.
Now, onto the dent repair itself. As you can see from the photo above, the quarter panel has multiple access points on it behind that damaged trim piece. These access wholes that are designed to allow the trim to clip in and hold in place also allow Paintless Dent Repair Rods to slide in behind the damage and push the dent out from the back side. Access on this particular dent was tight and narrow since it was so close to the edge of the panel so I opted to use a flat blade round tipped rod from dent magic tools to slowly and gently massage the metal back into place. I quickly found that the metal to metal contact was a bit too harsh for such a tight area and needed to soften my contact a bit. For this I chose to wrap the end of my tool in duct tape, which I know sounds a bit barbaric but it works like a charm.
It’s a bit hard to see, but if you look closely you can see the light bend around the damage as the dent begins and the reflection seems to change color a bit. This is actually a crown, a high spot that was formed when the quarter panel took the force of the impact. As I pushed the low spots of the dent up I noticed the metal was resistant to movement and it was caused by the tension being put on it by the high spot next to the dent. So I began the dance of knockdown to relive pressure and pushing the dent to continue the repair. In total I used 3 different knock down tools, each smaller than the one before (you can check out each one here here and here) As that high spot gets less and less severe your knock down needs to get smaller and smaller. And it was this general back and forth that allowed us to repair this quarter panel without painting it. Once my part was complete I installed the new trim and handed the vehicle over to the painter for the bumper work. I was so excited about how this one turned out and you can see the final results below.
