Restoring cars is an expensive business, but that doesn’t mean it has to be that way all the time. The driver of this Rivian R1T electro-pickup asked an authorized service center for an estimate and was slapped with a $41,000 service bill. Rather than agreeing to it, he went elsewhere and had his truck fixed in two days for a small fraction of that amount.
Just for the record, the reason the official body shop charged so much was that fixing a quarter panel dent like that necessitated removing most of the bodywork, as well as the panoramic roof and some of the battery pack. Modern EVs are often designed from large solid units to ease manufacturing, but the costs thus saved are usually transferred onto the owners, who are then overcharged for needlessly complex maintenance.
Instead of funding the flawed system, the owner went to All Out Paintless Dent Removal in Florida. The owner of the shop used special glue pulls to pull the dent back into shape and then beat it into its final smooth shape with the help of some steel rods and a hammer. The main challenge was that the backside of the quarter panel was only accessible through a small opening at the back of the truck, requiring some accuracy and finesse to reach. You can see what it looked like in the video here.
We don’t know how much the repairs cost, but it is clear that it was a small fraction of what the authorized center asked for. If you look closely, there is a tiny paint chip and a small dent near the edge of the panel, but other than that, the work looks flawless and no painting was involved.
