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YOUR RESEARCHDIY: Dent repair with Dry Ice
Leading reported evidence
Use heat gun
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Suggestion · Original poster
So $3 worth of dry ice and about 30 minutes saved me several hundred dollars for a paintless dent repair guy to do essentially the same job.
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Suggestion
I have way too many little dings and dents and have been planning to take the car to a paintless repair shop.
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Suggestion · Original poster
Here is the what the test door looked like before the test.
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Suggestion
(...but given the reflection, it's hard to believe you'd actually use a car cover on your 996...trying to keep it nice or something???
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Suggestion · Original poster
Next blow hot air onto the dented area using a hair drier or a heat gun making sure that you don't heat the sheet metal to over 195 ~ 200 degrees as you can damage the paint by heating any more than that.
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Outcome without a verified action link
I next tried this technique on the 996 which has a small ding on the left rear quarter panel, and it worked perfectly.
I had heard this urban legend that you can repair door dings and dents by rubbing dry ice over the dent and then heating it with a hair dryer or heat gun.
It seemed simple enough, so I decided to try it on the wife's urban assault vehicle which has its fair share of door dings. I went over to our neighborhood grocery store and got 2 pounds of dry ice for $3.
Here is the what the test door looked like before the test.
Essentially the process is to take some dry ice (while wearing gloves, as it is very, very cold), and simply run the dry ice back and forth over the dent until the metal has cooled to the temperature of dry ice.
This shrinks the sheet metal, and pulls in the dent. Next blow hot air onto the dented area using a hair drier or a heat gun making sure that you don't heat the sheet metal to over 195 ~ 200 degrees as you can damage the paint by heating any more than that. This will expand the metal and further smooth the dent. After you have the sheet metal hot, then run the dry ice over the dent again until the metal is cooled to the temperature of the dry ice again. It takes about 3-6 times of this hot-cold-hot-cold routine to get complete results, but you will start to see the dent go away after the 1st cycle. Repeat this process until the dent is gone to your satisfaction.
Your end result should look like this:
This trick works even better with aluminum panels, does not scratch, discolor or harm the paint because the face of the dry ice on the sheet metal has a thin layer of Carbon Dioxide gas that is boiling off from the frozen dry ice.
I next tried this technique on the 996 which has a small ding on the left rear quarter panel, and it worked perfectly.
So $3 worth of dry ice and about 30 minutes saved me several hundred dollars for a paintless dent repair guy to do essentially the same job.
I like that this might be a simple, but effective remedy for dents and dings. However, I can't see the damage in your first picture. So, I'm not sure how the final result compares to the damaged panel.
pellets will not work since their surface area is small. I have never tried it with a block. The next time we get chunks i will try it.
I would make sure to not rub the ice back and forth on the surface as it may scratch the paint.
I am definitely going to give this a try. I have way too many little dings and dents and have been planning to take the car to a paintless repair shop. Great DIY
I saw a video on this technique on Youtube a couple of years ago, but was too scared to put the heat of a hairdryer onto the paint.
Yeah, I know. I hate to admit this... my wife is the one that normally does the grocery shopping, so when I arrived down here in NC this afternoon I was totally lost when I had to wander around the grocery store to get food in for the week... I'll have to remember how to be a bachelor again for a while.
Awesome! Thanks for the post!
As for the carbon emissions...... Working in cement plants when you make cement you produce 2 tons of cement from 3 tons of rock. The remainder is expelled as CO2. Obama wants to cap this emission. So we will have to get our cement from china, where apparently their process doesn't produce CO2 (?)and then we have to ship it over via a diesel freighter so that we are greener people..................
It can scratch the paint and i have done it using pellets on an old dd. The gas is not like a magnetic field where you can't touch the block of ice to the metal.
Never worked for me but I see you have very shallow dings.
I always tried on dents and the metal was simply too stretched.
That would work great as your picture shows on wavy panels to straigtening them out.
I've got a couple small pressure dents similar to the OP's dents, for $3 I'm giving it a go.
I;ve got some other wicked dents that dry ice will only work if you repeatly knock the dent out with the block of ice.
That is why you don't use pellets, but rather a block, and don't apply any pressure.
a block piece of dry ice lightly held on the dent will not cause scratches.
This is a gradual process, like working with an English wheel. I have found in addition to the hot/cold shrinking, that a small suction cup helps the process, especially for larger dents.
Great post...thanks.
(...but given the reflection, it's hard to believe you'd actually use a car cover on your 996...trying to keep it nice or something??? :-) )
- did you use a hair dryer or a heat gun?
- did you guess how warm the metal was getting, or did you measure it in some way?
- what kind of suction cup have you used in the past?
- at what point in the cycle did you use it? (e.g., wait for the metal to cool just enough so it wouldn't harm the suction cup?)
Thanks,
James
(A person with more questions than conclusions)
The car under the cover is a Golf GTI, the Porsche gets its own garage (and cover)
Good questions, Here are some answers:
- did you use a hair dryer or a heat gun?
I used a heat gun
- did you guess how warm the metal was getting, or did you measure it in some way?
I measured it with a IR thermometer keeping the sheet metal temp below 200 degrees F.
- what kind of suction cup have you used in the past?
I have a glass installation suction cup that is 4.5" in diameter. i spray a little detailing spray on it, put the edge of the cup on the center of the ding, and then slide it along and past the ding, pulling up on the suction cup as I go by the ding.
- at what point in the cycle did you use it? (e.g., wait for the metal to cool just enough so it wouldn't harm the suction cup?)
I would use it after the cold shrink cycle.
Hope this helps.
i will have to try this with the block of ice. I believe the rubbing back and forth to cool the area is what scratched the surface. At least with your method it covers a big area and you don't have to move it back and forth.
Bawhahahahah!!!
I started to laugh out loud when I read that ^! Normally, that's not a bad thing, but I am at work so I had to hold back the laugh...... almost choked myself to death.
This is an age old technique that is popular in the mid-west to deal with hail damage to car bodies. Supposedly you can place a small piece of it on the hail depression on a hood and allow it to pop the metal back to normal.
This is really neat.. The only concern I have is what long term effect is this going to have on the paint? can it possibly make it seperate from the surface? Make it crack? The damage may not show up till the cars runs through all 4 seasons
I've heard of this before. So, i figured hey ill try it and see for myself. It does remove part of the dent but not to the point where it isnt noticeable. Waste of time.......
Welding supply distributor with a name like Gas Pro that sells gas and has the big tanks. One of the gases besides argon, nitrogen and others is CO2
.
They probably supply to guys who ship groceries and such. Yellow pages might help. A refinery might be able to tell you. Maybe ask who they sell off gasses to thats a welding supply company. Be sure to tell them it's dry ice you are looking for because they might know exactly where to get the bricks. Grocery stores the deal is it comes in some boxes of stuff under styrofoam to keep produce cold. Might be best to ask a produce distributor while you are at it. At your local grocery store try asking the guy in charge of the greens receiving. If you are lucky some of the dry ice has survived and he can store it for you to buy.
Only poking fun at ya! I was thinking last week when I was putting in the gearbox how you did it in the winter....I hated doing it as it was, let alone with a frozen floor....
Especially EXSTREEM cold like dry ice and applied FAST.. what if the paint contracts faster than the metal? Its going to pull from the metal or its going to crack.
I know.... Just tossin in back!
if popping dents out from an area once or twice you should be safe. If continually doing it can result in damage. I have a metal garage door at work that has liquid nitrogen spraying on it when filling. After a few years the paint has peeled off only in the spots where the liquid hits it. But then again liquid nitrogen is -320 f
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