sliu1

I have a tiny door dent on my driver door and had a PDR done today. After the repair I noticed that the black plastic trim on the door panel is bent inward and upward. The plastic trim I am referring to here is the most upper portion of the door panel where it meets the window. Apparently, PDR will need to gain access to the back side of your door. The way they do it is to put a wedge in between the door panel and the door skin to force it open. I can tell that wedge is very forceful. The door skin is all good because it's metal, but the door panel is just plastic, so it bends (or call it permanently deform). Sharing it here hoping this will help folks decide if PDR is necessary. You may fix a door dent but you can easily bend your door panel, which cost 300-500$ to buy a used one.

kj07xk

I wonder if that is always the case, or if that PDR shop was just careless.

unioncorps

I agree. Not on my Lexus, but I have had PDR done before for a door ding and didn't have a problem. Depending on certain dings/dents, the tech may need access to the interior trim pieces to help apply force to push out the ding in addition from the outside.

I hope the PDR shop would pay for damages they caused. I guess in this case, they should have physically (and properly) took off the whole door panel itself.

rVague

I’ve had a door panel dent fixed by PDR. Took about 10 minutes with no damage to door.

sliu1

I guess it all depends on how hard they wedge your door panel. In my case, it was way too hard. Unfortunately, the shop won't pay me for the damage, I accepted the risk before the work was commenced. I hope that in the future, when you guys do PDR, you should keep a close eye on the progress and call it off if you see any potential of damaging your door trim. I will attach a pic or two later today regarding the damage I got. It's not horrible but it's visible especially when sunlight shines at it.

sliu1

Well this is how it looks like now, hopefully you guys won’t be in the same shoes.

InveredMP

I have had PDR on various cars done multiple times without issue. Looks like they accessed the dent through the top and didn't use anything to support the tool. Pretty amateur hour. If they did end up pulling the door panel, it is super easy to fix, it may not be aligned in the channel properly.

sliu1

the tech did remove the panel. we spent some time to put it back on. i dont get it, based on what we can see, there is a u-shape channel on the door panel and you just hook the channel to the door skin, how can it be misaligned tho? it either snap in or not snap in right?

zhifan1

That hurts, imo if i were you, I would take it back and ask them to form it back. As the panel is plastic, I have seen some shops able to heat-form some bent plastic back to original form. That door panel is designed to withstand UV and sun's rays, it can take the heat, so to speak and won't break so easily. At the very least, take it back and see what they say.

BBQapple

Good luck finding a shop that will let you watch over the tech’s shoulders as they work.

And why they didn’t just remove the door card like a normal person is beyond me, there’s zero reason to pry it like that.