When Jude, the vehicles owner, brought this Camaro to us he was pretty upset with the damage. Jude was moving things around in his garage and a 2×4 piece of wood slipped and fell onto his newly purchased 2017 Chevy Camaro. He couldn’t believe what he had done, still in shock, he brought the vehicle in and we told him we would be able to repair this damage with our paintless dent repair method. He was sure that we could even though he had been told by another body shop in town “that cannot be fixed with paintless dent repair” and “it’ll need to be repainted.”
After the estimate we scheduled him in for a repair and we went to work on it right away. This type of repair was done in a day, verses a body shop, that would have the car for at least a WEEK! Plus then a bunch of the car would be repainted including the quarter panel, trunk lid and convertible top cover. It would then be reported to Carfax and heavily diminish the resale value dramatically!
After the repairs were done he was kind enough to do a video review of his repairs and experiences. The smile alone speaks for itself! We love making people happy and putting the pride back in their ride!
Today we are repairing this damage in a 2013 Cadillac ATS left side quarter panel. This damage impacted so deep it actually pushed the exterior sheet metal into the inner wheel house structure. This severe impact caused the exterior metal to to actually bend outwards and crack the paint on the edge of the panel.
Now with there being paint damage a person has two options: – Repaint the entire panel – Use touch up paint to touch the area up
This is a choice ultimately only the customer can make.
To give you a little more detail about these choices first off lets start off by choosing repaint the panel.
Repainting the Panel:
The entire panel requires repainting. Everything installed on the panel like tail lights and a bumper, would need to be removed. Other panels may require more items. Items such as door handles, trim, mirrors, glass, moldings and lights.
If this paint damage is near any other panels typically anything under 18 inches, the body shop will have to fade or blend, this is the industry term, the color into the other panel.
What if the paint is a specialized color like a pearl coat or tri coat, like this vehicle was?
That distance spreads much further for blending the paint. For this vehicle the left rear door, left quater panel and rear bumper would all need to be repainted. A minor scratch in one panel, say a door for example, could mean the ENTIRE side of the vehicle being repainted to get a correct color match!
Touch up the damage:
Now for touch up, it is exactly that. We or the customer are “touching up” the specific area with paint damage. How we explain touch up paint to a customer is like this:
Imagine a black shirt with a black button on it. Now the button blends in pretty well but it is still visible. This explains how a paint touch up might look when completed. Solid colors such as a straight black is the best candidate for touch up repairs. Other colors like pearl coats, quad coats and other unique colors like this, are sometimes not the best choice for touch up. At a minimum a small coat of a clear coat should always be applied over a small crack or chip to at least seal it from the outside elements.
This customer was actually referred to us from another body shop in Tea, South Dakota. The customer was a friend of theirs and the Body Shop knew that this repair would get extremely costly for the customer because of the pearl white tri coat stage paint finish. The customer did the paint touch up themselves and live with any possible color mismatch, they just wanted the dents to be repaired and we were happy to provide this service for them!
This is a customer of ours video review of her experience with Sioux Falls Dent Repair. We did some Paintless Dent Repairs on her 2017 Ford Edge. This vehicle had a small dent in the left fender and two dents in the left front drivers door. She was very happy with the repairs. She ALSO left us a Facebook Recommendation!
Door Ding Dent Repair in Sioux Falls, SD – 2017 Ford Edge
Here we perform Paintless Dent Repair in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. From minor dents to minor dings in this 2017 Ford Edge Titanium Edition. This customer bought this car brand new and unfortunately shortly after it received some minor dents. This was Kathy, the vehicle owners, first new car! She could not stand the sight of these dents . Her husband found us online and gave us a call. We gave them a quote on the repair price and they were more than happy to get these dents removed right away!
If you have a new vehicle chances are your vehicle features many of these systems. We recently attended an ADAS Calibration presentation put on by Autopart International. In order to work on today’s vehicles, you will also need to know what kind of systems the vehicle has and how to work with them. Most importantly how to make sure they are back to working order and calibrated AFTER repairs are done.
If these systems are not calibrated correctly they will misread what they interpreting and could CAUSE accidents. To insure the safety of the consumer, their vehicle and others on the roadways, this is extremely important step to make sure your car is taken to a reputable repair shop. Many systems when out of calibration will often NOT show any type of dash warning light, but with a vehicle diagnostic tool this will tell you if there is a fault in the system.
Where Was This Event At?
We attended this presentation in Rochester, NY at The Dent Guy’s Paintless Dent Repair shop. Here this class was geared towards the use of these systems in the Paintless Dent Repair industry. Many times in the Paintless Dent Repair Industry we are not dealing with major collisions like a typical body shop. The most common use of paintless dent repair would be with hail damage repair followed by minor door dings and minor collision repairs.
In order to gain access the dented areas, items must normally be taken apart in order to push these areas out with specialized tools. Taking items apart that feature any of these advanced systems are NOT as simply as unbolt and remove and reinstall. Items such as headlights, tail lights and headliners often need to removed to complete repairs. That is just part of this process, after everything is put back together and the repair is made, these new systems need to be recalibrated to insure they are in proper specs by the original manufacture.
In this presentation we get a live demonstration of this calibration process, from setting up the measuring system and centering it with the vehicle, to setting the specifications used for this manufacture. Then we see what is all needed to actually calibrate a forward camera on this Toyota.
Pictures featured are from: https://www.shutterstock.com/search/driver+assistance+system
If you have questions on your vehicles systems. Maybe you need a repair done? Give us a call!
