Car Repair’s Best Kept Secret
Plymouth-based Dent Kraft PDR is pounding out the competition with an innovative method for removing auto body dents
Ugly dents on your car are not just an eyesore, but can lower the value of your vehicle as well. But getting dents removed and repainted can cost upward of $1,000. What’s worse, you won’t have your car for a few days—maybe even a week.
But now you have options. That dent can be fixed for around $150, even with no insurance claim. The car will retain its original paint and look perfect- guaranteed—usually in less than an hour. No, you’re not dreaming. Welcome to Plymouth-based Dent Kraft PDR. PDR stands for paintless dent removal, and for Dent Kraft PDR owner Don Kavanagh, it’s a passion. The process dates to Germany in the 1940s, when Mercedes-Benz line workers would use PDR techniques to correct dents and dings that happened on the assembly line. PDR specialists use custom hand tools to manipulate the dent from the inside, and then use polish hammers to make it disappear.
Kavanagh first learned the art of PDR in 1989 from a German service specialist while working at Sears Imported Autos in Minnetonka. “He brought me out to his car, took a hammer out, hit the door with it and he proceeded to take the dent out,” Kavanagh remembers. “And the light bulb really went off for me.”
Two years later, Kavanagh opened his own PDR shop and word of his craft spread quickly among car enthusiasts, especially among owners of classic “muscle cars.” Most of today’s cars have much thinner sheet metal than cars of the ’50s and ’60s. Their comparatively thin sheet metal makes dent removal a breeze, while the thick, virgin steel of muscle cars takes much more patience and skill.
Because original paint is a huge selling point, especially for vintage cars, PDR maintains a car’s value because it removes dents while keeping that paint intact. “Cars are being painted every single day that don’t need it,” Kavanagh says.
The shop's ability to work on muscle cars is not its only claime to fame. When Kavanagh was first trained in paintless dent removal, his German instructor warned against attempting to fix a dent bigger than a person's fist. But to date, Kavanagh is one of the most advanced PDR specialists in the country and has removed dents as large as 3 feet in diameter. "We've completely redefined what can and can't be done," he says.