DIY PDR - What should I know?

[Li'l Work Truck]

My truck's body's got a little damage. I know, whose doesn't, right? Mine's got a bit of hail damage on the hood, a subtle long, shallow indentation that's not quite a crease going down the driver's side between the rear wheel arch and tail light, and a pretty solid dent in the top of the tailgate that I think I could fix with a C clamp and some metal plates. I'm not great with camera settings, so all I could get were kind of a general idea, but the dents are not deep. I was thinking about getting this kit from Harbor Freight because it looks like it has what I need, but...

I have 0 experience with body work, and I don't want to turn a pretty damn good example of an older truck into a solid payday for a professional body shop. What should I do? I'd really appreciate some advice from people here who know more than I do. I have thought about getting my hands on a loose body panel at a junkyard and either putting small dents in it to fix, or find one that already had different kinds of damage to try my hand on before going mano e mano with Truck Norris.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So, I’m going to move this to the appropriate section…

Body hammers and dollys are not PDR tools for the most part. People that do PDR repair mostly use different probes that they can reach the back side of panels with and massage out the dent. Usually some rubber or plastic faced hammers too on some dents.

That bed rail smash is not a PDR dent. You can already see the cracked paint.

I have a book around here somewhere on the key/art of metal “bumping” which explains about how to work dents out by understanding how the dent was made and basically working backwards to remove the dent.

 

[Li'l Work Truck]

So, I’m going to move this to the appropriate section…

Body hammers and dollys are not PDR tools for the most part. People that do PDR repair mostly use different probes that they can reach the back side of panels with and massage out the dent. Usually some rubber or plastic faced hammers too on some dents.

That bed rail smash is not a PDR dent. You can already see the cracked paint.

I have a book around here somewhere on the key/art of metal “bumping” which explains about how to work dents out by understanding how the dent was made and basically working backwards to remove the dent.

Thanks for shifting this over. Seems I have a lot to learn.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Thanks for shifting this over. Seems I have a lot to learn.

Despite all of the stuff I know, I still have a lot to learn.