If you leave your car parked out in the open during a hailstorm event, the vehicle could end up suffering damage to its exterior. The severity of damage to your vehicle may vary depending on several factors, including the intensity of the storm, how long it lasts, and the size (and density) of the hailstones.
Depending on how much hail damage your car has suffered, a panel beater may recommend one or a combination of repair services, including but not limited to the following.
Paintless Dent Repair
This auto body repair service is designed to help fix small dings and dents that may form on your car following a hailstorm. As the name suggests, it's used when the paint on the vehicle is still intact, thus eliminating the need to touch up paint. There are different PDR techniques available for removing dents caused by hail damage but generally, the repair process involves popping out dents by applying heat or gentle force from the backside of the dents.
Done correctly, it should fix the minor dings and dents on your vehicle exterior. If the cost of dent repair exceeds the cost of panel replacement, your panel beater may recommend that you get new panels.
Applying Car Body Filler and Repainting
If the dents in your car ruin the paint coating, your panel beater will strip the old paint, sand down the damaged area to the bare metal, and then clean the dent in preparation for body filler application.
Once the damaged area is clean and dry, they'll mix and apply the body filler, spreading it nicely until it fills the dents entirely. Once the filler has cured, they'll smooth it out with sandpaper, making the ruined surface clean and smooth enough to allow a quality touch-up of paint.
The paint used on your car should match the colour and quality of the vehicle's original paint.
Panel Replacement
In situations where the damage to your vehicle's panels is so severe that any form of repair can't be done, the damaged panels will need to be removed and replaced with new ones.
Most signs of hail damage to cars are obvious even to the untrained eye. When you take your car to a panel beater for hail damage repair, they'll inspect the vehicle in optimal lighting conditions to know the full extent of the problem and then offer you the appropriate repair service.
For more information, contact a local panel beater.
Share25 February 2021
My name is Donna, and I love my toys! I have an ATV, a caravan, a boat and a range of other "toys". I find that there is a lot of information online about auto service but not that much about servicing fun types of vehicles. Inspired by the phrase "be the change you want to see in the world", I decided to start a blog full of information that is usually hard to find online. I will write about servicing toys, vintage cars, sports cars and a range of other topics. I hope that you like these posts and that you learn from them. Thanks for reading and enjoy your toys.