Any panel with cracked paint from the impact
Heavy hail occasionally splits the finish at the deepest craters. Those panels are not paintless work, and they get marked as such on the assessment rather than quietly worked around.
Hail damage repair in St. Petersburg
A summer storm can leave a hundred small dents across the hood and roof. We price it panel by panel and work it in the shade, at your house.
Is this you?
Signs the storm left marks
Dimples across the hood and roof
Shallow dents on the flat panels, easiest to see with a straight reflection across them.
Only visible in some light
Most hail dents are too soft to feel and plain to see at an angle.
Trim and the tops of the doors
In sideways wind, the upper edges of doors and fenders get hit too.
Why it takes days
Hail lands on the flat panels first.
Roof, hood and trunk lid take the worst of it. One dent is easy; a field of them is days of work, and the skill is keeping the whole panel true across hundreds of small pushes.
We set up the canopy off the side of the van, because a shallow hail dent can’t be read in direct Florida sun.
How we do it
How a hail job goes
Walk every panel
Each panel is assessed for how many dents, how dense, how deep, and whether any sit on a body line.
Price it by panel
Each panel gets a band, and the bands add up to the price. You can check every line.
Set up shade
Your garage, a covered space, or the canopy that comes off the van.
Work it panel by panel
Roofs sometimes mean lowering the headliner to reach behind, and that’s explained before it’s agreed.
On the day
What the visit needs
The van brings its own power, water and light. All it needs from you is the space below.
- Typical time on site
- Half a day – 3 days
- Where it is done
- Garage, covered bay, or our canopy
- What the site needs
- Shade, and room to open every door
When we’ll say no
The four times this isn’t a job for us
You hear these from your photos, before anyone drives anywhere.
Panels that have already been repainted
Aftermarket paint over filler behaves nothing like factory finish under a rod, and it cracks and lifts far more readily. If a panel has been resprayed we will say so and price it out of the paintless portion.
Nowhere shaded to work, at any time of day
Reading a hundred shallow dents in direct sun is not reading, it is guessing, and a guessed hail repair leaves half the damage in the car. No garage, no cover and no room for the canopy means we move the job or decline it.
A number written to fit the claim rather than the car
We will give you a written work order to submit yourself and we will explain any line on it. What we will not do is adjust the assessment to match what an insurer would prefer it said.
The details
For the people who want every step
A hundred small dents, not one big one
Hail lands on the horizontal surfaces first: roof, hood, deck lid, then the tops of the wings and the upper edges of the doors as the storm blows sideways. What you get is not damage in one place, it is a field of shallow craters across a whole panel, most of them too soft to feel and every one of them perfectly visible the moment a straight reflection crosses the car.
Individually they are easy. Collectively they are days of work, and the difficulty is not any single dent, it is keeping the panel true across hundreds of small pushes without slowly crowning the whole thing.
Priced by panel, never by the dent
Everybody asks what a dent costs. On hail, that is the wrong unit. Each panel gets assessed for how many dents are in it, how dense they are per square foot, how deep the worst of them go, and whether any sit on a body line or over a brace — and that produces a band for the panel. The bands add up to the estimate. It is the same structure as the hail matrix a body shop and an adjuster work from, and it is the only version that can be checked line by line afterwards.
Counting individual dents past about thirty is theater. Anyone quoting hail per dent is either guessing or building in room to guess later.
Roofs, and the headliner problem
A roof takes the worst of it and it is also the hardest panel to reach. There are braces bonded across the underside, and the way to the back of the metal is often through the headliner — which means dropping it, which means pillar trim, grab handles, visors, and sometimes disconnecting things that would rather not be disconnected. That turns a roof from an hour into most of a day, and it is the single biggest line on most hail estimates. It is also the line people are most surprised by, so it gets explained before it is agreed rather than after.
It needs shade, and that is not negotiable
You cannot read a shallow hail dent in direct sun. There is no reflection to watch, only glare across the whole panel, and a tech working blind will leave half the damage in the car and put highs in the rest. Hail work happens in a garage, in a covered bay, or under the canopy that comes off the side of the van, and if none of those exist at your address we will move the visit to first light rather than pretend.
Insurance
You get a written work order with every panel and every price on it, and you can submit that yourself. It is generally exactly the document an adjuster wants. What we do not do is negotiate supplements, work as anybody's preferred vendor, or write a number to fit a claim rather than the car. If your insurer wants a different figure, that is a conversation between you and them, and our assessment stays what the car actually needs.
Questions
What people ask about hail damage
How do you price hail damage?
By panel and by how dense the dents are on each one, not per dent. Once a hood has forty dents in it, counting them is guesswork. Every panel gets a band, and the bands add up.
Will you deal with my insurance company?
You get a written work order with every panel and price on it, and you can hand that to your insurer. We don’t negotiate supplements or act as anyone’s preferred shop.
Can every panel be fixed without paint?
Not always. A panel where the hail cracked the paint, or one that has been repainted before, isn’t paintless work, and it’s marked that way on the sheet.
Send a photo. Get a straight answer.
Dispatch looks at your photos and comes back with a yes, a no, or a written price, usually within the hour. The van comes to wherever the car is parked.
Other work
The rest of what the van fixes
Paintless dent repairDents out, factory paint kept.Door dingsUsually about an hour, in your lot.Bumper scuffsSanded, primed and refinished to flex.Curb rash wheel repairFixed on the car, checked first.Headlight restorationSanded, polished, re-coated.Trim and moldingsLifted trim, re-bonded properly.Fleet repairOne yard visit, one invoice.Every serviceAll eight, with time on site for each.