[MARTINSR]

Originally Posted by techron

Brian, we had hail here in the north bay on thursday. it was puny hail that hit the ground and was just gone. when i lived in kansas in the 60s i saw golf ball sized hail that totaled cars left outside. How about the lightening/thunder storms that rolled through the bay area??? SF, the east and south bay got pounded. PG&E reported over 1000 strikes to the grid. being in the east bay did you see any of that???

Oh yeah I did, was woken a few times that night with lightening lighting up the room and then the RUMMMMMMBLE. It was pretty cool.

Brian

[TucsonJay]

Originally Posted by swvalcon

NO MartinSR no joke. I had never tried it until and assistant manager told me how to do it so I thought what the heck I'll try anything once.We had a hail job in the shop and he wanted me to do it. Said it didn't have to be perfect but to get it as good as possible. Was and older ford taurus late 80s style sliver in color.I got the hood set up so I could site across it like I was about to do pdr work. Then took my small butane torch and as I said started around the outer edge of the hail dent with the heat and slowly warmed the metal working into the center making sure not to get it to hot. Sure enough it expanded the metal just like he said it would. As the dent raised up with the heat I could watch it until it was up perfect with the rest of the hood then hit it real fast with the cold rag and it just seemed to lock it right there. Dam est thing I ever saw. I would never have thought it would work but it did. The hood had maybe a dozen or better hail dents in it and I got them all out but two. Took maybe a hour after I got the hang of it. Only burnt the paint in a couple of spot and the just enough to discolor it. Filled the two remaining dents, da-ed it down and painted and looked good. Take and old junk hood with hail dents in it and try it. If you can learn the trick it's a real time saver.

The guy I was quoting before also said, once you had practice, you could often repair them so no filler was needed.

I don't know if that includes the "baseball-sized hail" that the news mentioned. :-)

[MARTINSR]

I will keep an open mind as I am dying to learn new things. But everything in my being tells me enough heat localized with a torch is doing to burn paint. Second, the heat from curing filler on a late model hood will warp it for goodness sakes.

Like I said, I will keep an open mind but I am VERY cautious on this one. I have tried to do PDR, it is a whole different animal than "regular" body work. I can metal finish out damage using no filler but some of the stuff the PDR guy does blows me away and I have tried it, it takes TONS of practice to be able to pull off.

But everything in this heat and cool to remove hail damage goes against everything I have learned so I am very cautious.

Brian

[TucsonJay]

I am also cautious, but I haven't done any hail repair at all.... unless you count the time I threw a wrench at my '57 Bel Air in the sixties! (I don't do that any more.)

My belief is that you should talk to the guy who has done it! The one I mentioned was a graduate of GM body school, who eventually became my shop forman. Before I hired him, he had grown up, and learned the biz in Kansas.

[johnnyg]

Originally Posted by MARTINSR

Do you mean "paint-less" repair?

They are like storm chasers.

Brian

A friend of mine is a painter at a dealership, and he told me the paint-less repair guys DO chase hail storms!!

[Valkyrie5.7]

We had a huge hailstorm here in the winter of 2010. Good business for my dad, as he's a subcontractor in the roofing industry... Anywho, It caused so much damage and the hail repair guys moved in like a cloud of locusts. For months you would see them on every corner with their tents and bright signs. Then when the work dried up (like everything else does under our unrelenting sun ) They were all of a sudden all gone. Like a biblical plague or something.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

[swvalcon]

We had a large hail strom here in mn in 1998 when I worked at a local shop. We had a guy from ok city,ok come in and do pdr work. The guy was really good and fast and worked almost around the clock and 7 days a week. I dont know how much he made here that summer but it had to be a bunch.

[techron]

Originally Posted by MARTINSR

Oh yeah I did, was woken a few times that night with lightening lighting up the room and then the RUMMMMMMBLE. It was pretty cool.

Brian

Cool. up here in Santa Rosa we missed it. living in Kansas just 7 miles west of Topeka at Forbes AFB, a SAC base as a kid thunder storms would rock the house, we learned to tell how far away it was by counting from the flash of the light to the BOOM, it was that common. it was way cool. 1000+ strikes during a storm was the norm. Tornadoes would hit too, as a kid in the summer we would lay in the front yard and watch the funnels come down, most never hit the ground and most were many miles away. in Kansas it was so flat if you could find a hill 10 feet hi you could see for miles. it was fun growing up there, but a ******* hole i never want to go back to.

now out here earthquakes are cool, i was living in SF when the 89 quake hit, that was way cool. the day after i took my jetboat out from SSF, the bay, normally clean was like a junkyard. old pilings and stuff was everywhere in the water. i went under the bay bridge where the uppur deck fell. Alemeda was a mess. i dokked at oakland and looked at the collapsed freeway (May God bless the people who died there) if not for fate i could have been there.

[KVP]

Had 2 vehicles with very noticeable hail on the roof and hood a few years ago. The body shop called in the PDR people and the dents were removed with no remaining traces of the damage. Had they been golfball sized we were told it would have been filler and a repaint.