Roof Dents

[SwervE30]

I have a handful of small hail dents in my roof. I was thinking of taking the headliner out and doing it myself. I was curious if anybody has tried to take dents in the roof out themselves. If so, any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

[E30 Wagen]

My suggestion is to be very, very careful. Successfully pushing a dent out is very hard to do, and it's easy to mess up and make the area look worse. Search for some paintless dent removal on youtube videos to learn more.

[SwervE30]

Thanks, yea being extremely careful was going to be my approach. The dents are so shallow it looks as if you could pop them up with your finger but they’re still noticeable and it bothers me haha. It’s raining now, I will try and get some pictures later.

[TobyB]

If you have a sunroof, it's depressing how little of the underside of the roof you can get to...

...those pop-a-dent guys aren't that expensive, and they have tricks to use to pull, rather than push.

Whatever you do, don't hit it hard with a pointy object. Blunt force is better,
dead blow is good, and finding the cause of the deformation and reversing that
is the crucial step.

hth

t

[SwervE30]

Thanks for the advice Toby, I went and got an estimate from the dent guy, he wants $650 for the roof.

[SwervE30]

Tried to get a couple pictures but it was hard to get the right angle to capture them.

[superj]

you guys get small hail? its the dark little cloudy spots, right? it is hard to tell in the pics, you are right

[SwervE30]

I purchased the car like that. It is from Georgia so I’m assuming it happened there. I took another picture and circled where you can see some. They are all over the roof though not just in that one spot

[AndrewBird]

Try dry ice before you do anything else.

Use a heat gun to gently heat the dent until hot to the touch, but not melt the paint hot. Think sitting in the sun all day kind of hot (this also works). Then rub a small piece of dry ice over the dented area. The sudden cooling causes the metal to shrink and pull the dent out. Repeat a few times for more effect.

I've never done this myself, but there are videos on Youtube showing it work.

[SwervE30]

Try dry ice before you do anything else.

Use a heat gun to gently heat the dent until hot to the touch, but not melt the paint hot. Think sitting in the sun all day kind of hot (this also works). Then rub a small piece of dry ice over the dented area. The sudden cooling causes the metal to shrink and pull the dent out. Repeat a few times for more effect.

I've never done this myself, but there are videos on Youtube showing it work.

I never thought about this. I just watched a few videos, seems like it could work. It might be hit or miss but it could definitely work. Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

[george graves]

I've never done this myself, but there are videos on Youtube showing it work.

Awesome! Youtube hacks! My favorite is how I got 100 AA batteries out of a old car battery. It's on youtube, so it must be true! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_8n2Qgguto

[TobyB]

Yeek. Dimples. It's for speed, like a golf ball.

t

[SwervE30]

I finally tried this today because we had a relatively nice day. For the most part it worked and completely took out some dents. Some other dents it didn’t work as well but it started getting cold out so I’ll hit those tomorrow.

[superj]

sweet. hopefully it ends up popping them all out