Dent Removal and Repair: Cost, Hours and Process in Hacienda Heights

An aluminum sided trailer has a thin sheet, usually .024 to .032, fastened over wood or aluminum framing with an air gap and batt insulation behind it. That sheet can often be worked from behind if we can reach it, and where the corrugation is intact the panel will come back close to flat with careful dolly work and minimal filler.

A laminated sidewall is a different animal. Filon or a gel coated fiberglass skin is vacuum bonded to a block foam core and the framing, so the panel is a sandwich with no cavity. There is nothing to push against, which is why paintless techniques do not transfer to RVs. When that panel dents, the foam under it crushes and stays crushed, and the repair is a filler and fair operation over a stabilized substrate, or a section replacement if the crush is deep.

A molded cap is a laid up laminate with a gel coat surface. It does not dent so much as it stars and cracks, and pressing it back out puts the cracks into the resin behind the gel coat where they keep running. That work goes to the fiberglass program because the repair is a grind, layup and refinish, not a metal straightening operation.

• Aluminum siding, workable from behind where access exists, minimal filler
• Laminated Filon sidewall, no cavity, filler over a stabilized core
• Gel coated molded cap, laminate repair rather than dent work
• Painted steel or aluminum on a Sprinter or box body, conventional metal finishing
• Aluminum tread plate and rock guard, usually replaced rather than straightened

The visible dent is the smallest part of the question. What determines cost is whether the framing behind it took the load. A strike that landed directly on a stud transfers into the frame member and can split it, and a split stud under a repaired panel will telegraph a line through the finish inside a year.

So the first thing we do is get behind the area. On a towable that often means pulling an interior panel or a cabinet back. On a motorhome it may mean dropping a baggage compartment liner. That access is where the hours are, and it is also why a dent that looks identical to another dent can price at twice the labor.

We also read moisture at the dent edge. A crease that fractured the outer skin has been letting water into the core since the day it happened, and filling over a wet core produces a repair that blisters. If the reading is elevated, the core gets opened, dried and replaced before any filler goes on.

The band on this page runs from a single shallow dent in reachable aluminum siding at the low end to a multi panel laminate repair with core replacement at the high end. Labor is billed at the posted body and paint rate of $210 per hour across 3 to 30 hours, plus body supplies at $5 per body hour.

The two multipliers to know about are access and blend. Access is the interior teardown needed to reach the back side. Blend is the paint operation, which is quoted separately and which on a full body paint coach can exceed the body labor, because a sidewall with no natural break point has to be carried to the next panel edge.

The priced RV systems estimate is $150 and it is credited against an authorized repair. On a dent that is money well spent, because the difference between a $700 repair and a $4,000 repair is entirely in what the back side looks like, and nobody can see that from a photograph.