Dealing with body damage

[RclKag]

Being in the auto collision repair business, U did good. Plastic has a memory. Just heat up the dented area ( or park into sunlight on hot day ), and massage it out from behind with your hand. The ridges will eventually disappear as the sunlight or heat will restore it back to it's original memory. Way better than repairing/replacing the bumper and painting!

 

[Plugsuvohio]

I am curious if the car alarm went off

No alarm. I've not played with that but I believe it only deals with doors that open, stepping on pedals or movement.

 

[Plugsuvohio]

that looks really good. So would you say the model X paint is very durable? and what was the process in terms of the tools used? heat, suction and then cool water?

From what I can see, the paint did not crack, even at the rigid edge of the dent. I could see the Xpel film wrinkled, which did fix itself in the process of repair. It's possible that protected the paint from some of the stress.

Only a 2" suction cup device would stay on an area where the surface was flat enough initially. You could tug on it and the plastic flexed but nowhere near enough to start it popping out. So pushing from behind with my fingers (hard), plus pulling the cup was how I started. I have a heat gun for electronics shrink tubing, much hotter than a hair dryer. I gently warmed the whole area within the dent depression and much less outside that. It was way hot to touch but I don't know the temp. Then I pulled and pushed; removed the cup and used a damp rag to quickly cool the surface. Did that several times attempting to iron out the wrinkle at the edge; and at that point kept the area adjacent flat using the 4" suction cup.

 

[Texas]

Good job. YouTube is filled with videos showing similar repairs to plastic body parts like yours, some do-it-yourself, some professional. But all do the job the same way on a plastic body part: heating, then coaxing the plastic back into position.

A word of caution, though: owners should not try to do paintless dent removal on the aluminum parts of the body. Based on watching paintless aluminum dent removal on my Model S, I can say that this work calls for a high skill level. This metal is less likely to resume its original shape than steel or plastic. But an expert can perform many repairs for much less than a conventional body shop, and also leave the factory paint intact.

 

[nuevodesi]

Here is the before and after. Surprisingly good, but you can still feel the ridges which were at the perimeter of the dent. I'll take it for now.

Based on the pictures, this looks like an excellent recovery. Congrats @Plugsuvohio !