DIY: Paintless dent removal from my Toyota Innova Crysta

I decided to give a mass market dent puller kit a try, there were plenty of options on Amazon.

BHPian haisaikat recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Sometime back, I got two dents on various occasions on the boot lid of my Innova Crysta. One of them was incidentally right on the T-BHP LTD sticker, not sure what I hit there but may have been also caused by someone at any hotel or car wash having unnecessarily pressed there with all might, while pulling down the lid.

Nevertheless, TKM Service Centre quoted me Rs 11,000 if I go without insurance and I decided to go for the NCB, as only few days were left for renewal.

I decided to give a mass market dent puller kit a try, there were plenty on amazon and I selected this.

The two dents

The Dent Puller kit purchased online

The basic principle is as explained in the video, where the melted glue using the glue gun is applied on the pad and stuck around the centre of the dent to allow drying up with a strong bond. Thereafter using the screw based pressure-bridge we have to try to pull the traction pad outward from the dented panel area in order to restore back the original shape.

As evident from the image of the kit there are traction pads of various surface area for various dent sizes but realized small dents and those around crease lines are not that easy fix with this one. I tried on our Hyundai i10 first over a small dent on the bonnet lid and it worked only partially, although it did improve to an extent.

Now it was turn to repeat the same on the Crysta, but the single glue stick supplied with the 40 Watt glue gun in the kit had almost exhausted more than 60%. Needless to say the remaining 40% soon exhausted while trying to make a few attempts on the bigger dent.

Ordered online another set of glue sticks which came with another gun. The default content of the Dent Puller kit had a 40 Watt gun with an 11 cm stick, but the one I additionally ordered had a 20 Watt gun with 7 mm sticks.

New set of glue gun and stick purchased

While the 20 Watt gun took ages to heat up, these glue sticks proved to be stickier than the default ones, which were failing to create sufficient bonding strength for an effective pull.

Believe me, with the 7 mm glue stick the first time I tried, the bond was so tough that in the highest traction position of the trigger bridge the setup remained as is for almost one minute before pulling out but successfully.

Smile? Not yet. Why?

The traction pad was still stick and was no way coming out, like before. At this stage, I started getting concerned on damaging the paint if I try to make further attempts of peeling off the glue / traction pad.

Suddenly the 'Mentos Moment' happened. I took a hand sanitizer and soaked a few sprays on a piece of cotton and slowly started applying it on all sides, especially around the northern tip of the glued area. I may have just applied for maximum 10-15 seconds and with the subsequent peeling attempt the glue and the pad completely came off. Absolutely no damages to the underlying paint. I did gently rubbed the residual sanitizer dry from the applied area.

The traction pad stuck with glue on the bigger dent, note I had to take off the LTD sticker.

The final state of the bigger dent, as good as new.

The final state of the smaller dent, did not improve much, I let it stay and never bothered again.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.