We all know what it's like: getting that annoying little ding in your new car, right there in the middle of the passenger-side door or right up in front. It's incredibly unfortunate, especially on a new car""the slightest break in the shape can look very noticeable. Whether it was caused by a flying baseball or bad weather, you'll still have to take it to the shop and spend several hundred to it fixed.

Now, though, there's a new alternative to dent repair that takes a fraction of the time and money you used to spend on repairs. It's called "PAINTLESS DENT REMOVAL PDR" and it's about as easy as it sounds. It's ideal for small dents in the body and it's so fast you can take your car in the shop and come back to pick it up in a matter of hours.

The procedure of PAINTLESS DENT REMOVAL PDR is straightforward: the shop doesn't have to replace any panels, or do any additional painting. Your car technicians simply open up the damaged portion so that they can get to the inside part of the dent. They can do this through the window opening, or by temporarily removing some inside paneling.

From there, Master Dent technicians their special PDR tools to massage the metal back into place. With reflector boards (which shows even the tiniest imperfection in the metal), glues that don't damage the paint, and some specially-designed rods and picks, the can gently ease the metal back to its original form. In this way, you won't have to pay for repainting the area, because the original paint will still be there, and look as good as it did on the day you bought the car.

While the method sounds simple, in comparison to the old methods of repair, PAINTLESS DENT REMOVAL PDR can be done by technicians with a lot of training. There's a lot of skill needed to manually ease metal by the millimeter, and a great deal of patience and concentration. Look for shops that specialize in PDR. They're worth the effort of tracking them down, for the time and money you save in car repairs.

While paintless dent removal won't work for every kind of dent out there, certain kinds of damage will make the job of reshaping the metal much easier. In damage to the middle parts of a panel, for example, smoothing it back into place will be much easier. The same applies to paint that's unbroken and without any cracks. Go on over to your nearest PDR Startronics shop and see what they can do. Startronics 3108 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica CA 90403 USA 1(310)828-8604.