Hail hit Gretna, the Westbank and Uptown in August. Here is what it does to a wrapped vehicle and what to inspect and repair first.
A wrap will not protect your hood from hail. Cast vinyl is a few thousandths of an inch thick and it flexes with whatever metal sits underneath it.
When a hailstone puts a dimple in the panel, the film simply follows the new shape. You are left with a dented panel wearing a perfectly intact wrap.
That is useful to know before you panic. On most hail jobs, the vinyl is not the thing that needs fixing first.
Storms crossed the area that Friday afternoon and dropped hail ranging from pea sized to golf ball sized. Fox 8 collected footage of it falling on Gretna, the Westbank and Uptown near Magazine Street.
Anyone whose car was on the street through that afternoon got a free stress test. Most of the calls we field after a day like that start with the same sentence, which is that the wrap looks fine but something about the hood looks wrong.
Hail is not rare in southeast Louisiana. It shows up with spring frontal systems and it shows up again when a strong summer cell parks itself over the parish with almost no warning.
Do this in daylight, with the vehicle dry and out of direct overhead sun. Low angle light reveals shallow dents that a bright noon sun completely hides.
Most of what we see after a hail event falls into a handful of categories. The fix depends entirely on which one you have.
| What you see | What it usually is | Typical fix |
|---|---|---|
| Dimpled panel, film intact | Sheet metal dented under the vinyl | Strip the film on that panel, dent repair, rewrap the panel |
| Small tear or puncture | Direct strike on a body line or sharp crease | Section or full panel replacement |
| Lifted corner or edge | Adhesive bond broken by impact, then water intrusion | Reheat and reseal if caught early, otherwise replace the section |
| Dull or scuffed patch on matte | Surface abrasion from ice and grit | Usually permanent, replace the affected section |
| Spotting across the finish | Mineral deposits from the rain, not damage | Wash and dry, no repair required |
Paintless dent repair has to happen against bare paint, so the vinyl on that panel comes off before the body work starts. There is no way around that.
The good news is that a hood or a roof can be treated on its own. Handling the job as a single section rather than a full reinstall keeps the cost proportional to the damage.
One warning on matching. Vinyl is produced in batches and your existing wrap has spent months in Louisiana sun, so a fresh panel of the same product code can read slightly different alongside it.
Gloss colors tend to blend well. Satin, matte and anything with a metallic flake are the ones where a single replaced panel can announce itself, which is when some owners decide to redo the whole car in a new finish instead.
If the concern is the paint underneath rather than the panel shape, that is a different product. Paint protection film is thick urethane rather than decorative vinyl, and it is designed to take hits.
It will not keep golf ball hail from denting a hood, and nobody should sell it that way. What it does is absorb the abrasion, the shell grit, the highway debris off the Causeway and the door dings that accumulate the other three hundred days of the year.
Work trucks and vans do not live in garages. Contractor fleets in Kenner and Metairie sit in open lots overnight, which is exactly where hail finds them.
If you run multiple wrapped vehicles, keep a record of the film brand, color code and install date for each one. That single spreadsheet turns a repair into a same week job instead of a guessing exercise.
It is also worth ordering a little extra material on the original install. Holding spare film from the same production run solves the matching problem before it exists, and it applies just as much to lettered service vehicles where a mismatched door panel is visible to every customer.
Covered parking is the only real defense, and most of us do not have it on demand. When a warning goes out, moving the vehicle under a garage or even a thick moving blanket is worth the five minutes.
After the storm, resist the urge to scrub. Let the panels dry, inspect them properly, then wash with a soft mitt so you are not dragging melted ice grit across the film.
If you found damage after August and have been putting off dealing with it, bring the vehicle by our shop on Rousseau Street or send us photos for a repair estimate. We will tell you honestly whether it is a one panel job or something bigger.
Hail Damage on a Wrapped Vehicle?
Send us photos and we will tell you whether it is a single panel repair or a full reinstall.