2021 Honda Pilot Door Dent
A local dealership had a 2021 Honda Pilot with a dent in the passengerrear door. Because of how new this vehicle was, the dealership was striving to achieve a level of quality that was “like new from the factory.” So when they noticed this door ding they immediately called me to do a repair, after all no one wants to buy a damaged vehicle.
It is a bit difficult to see, but if you look at the reflection of the wheel on this rear door you can clearly see a nickel sized dent (even as a professional Paintless Dent Repair technician sometimes it’s hard to capture dents in photos, so don’t feel bad if you can’t get a decent one when sending photos to get an estimate.) This is a very common repair, however this vehicle has laminated glass (two separate pieces of glass stuck together on a piece of film) and is subject to breaking if not repaired correctly (check out this YouTube video to see what I’m talking about.) So if you’re a DIY guy, I would probably sit this one out. To gain access we used a window wedge and guard, but only pressed the wedge in far enough to get a rod inside the door. On most windows the more room you have to work with the better, but in this case the safest option is to put the smallest amount of pressure on the glass as possible to prevent it from breaking. To be perfectly honest here the safest option is to remove the glass as even putting the wedge in carries the risk of breaking the glass. However we understand that everyone has a budget and this was the most cost effective way to perform this repair. Once we had access we used a double bend tool from Tequila tools to push the metal back into factory position. Due to the sharpness of our rod and the fragility of the window, we had to take this repair very slow and make dozens of small pushes rather than a few big pushes. I would estimate that we pushed over 100 times to repair this dent. The glass is ultimately what we use to gain leverage and gives our pushes strength. So again, it is a big risk to go about this repair without removing the glass from the door, but that costs time and money.
So the strategy on this particular repair was slow and steady. I’ll say it again- Slow. And. Steady. The window guard was also the unsung hero of this repair. Not only does the guard prevent the steel rod from scratching the glass, it also disperses the pressure exerted by the tool. Instead of all of the pressure being put on a single point by the heel of our double bend rod, that pressure is spread out to a wider area and the window guard actually takes on most of the force. The only other thing to worry about is the neck and head of the tool. It was critical to make sure when doing this repair that the top of the rod stayed within the limits of the window guard. The most fragile part of the window is the edge of the glass, so one slip and it would be over.
With all of that in mind, with the slow and steady strategy, and with years of experience we were able to tackle this issue for our local dealership and get this vehicle front line ready.
And here is our finished product! You can view a video of this repair here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGx8y2CQStc
