ANSWERS: 1
  • No matter what region of the U.S. you live in, it is virtually impossible to escape acts of God that can affect your car's appearance. In some Midwestern states, hail is a real problem and is the cause of excessive damage to vehicles. If you have good insurance coverage, your insurance company should take care of any hail damage to your vehicle. However, when a hail storm occurs, often body shops become overwhelmed with repairs. There are some things that you can do in the meantime to try to repair some of the dents.

    Use the Heat from the Sun

    It is a well known fact that heat tends to expand metal. This is also true when it comes to the metal body of your car. Therefore, parking your hail-damaged car in the sun over a period of a week where it receives a great deal of direct sunlight can expand the metal and help to pop out the dents. Although this method will not eliminate all the dents in your car, it will most likely take care of all the tiny dents and dings that were caused by the hail. Even more appealing is the fact that often there is no evidence left behind, such as creases, that the dents were ever there.

    In the Winter

    If you live in a region where the sun is scarce in the winter, you can still breathe a sigh of relief. While waiting for that appointment with the body shop, you can attempt to remove some of the smaller dings and dents from the hail yourself by applying a heat source to expand the metal and cause the dent to pop out. A hair dryer is a good heat source to use. You must be careful, though, since this could heat your paint up to a point of causing discoloration and then you will have to repaint the blemished area.

    Rely on Insurance

    For bigger dents and the stubborn smaller ones, too, you might want to just rely on your insurance coverage to fix the damages. Your policy must cover collision, however, or your insurance company may be unwilling to pay to fix your vehicle. In areas that are threatened by hail more often than others, collision insurance tends to cost more because of the added potential of damage. When the insurance company will pay, take the car to a body shop that will do the work of banging out the dents for you.

    Source:

    DoItYourself.com: Insurance Guides

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