Merry Christmas

Good thing we were open today. The owner of this Ford Explorer received a tail-lamp tint, in the form of a gift certificate, for Christmas and she was at the shop bight and early this morning to collect. Better get cracking then.

The first photo shows the lenses out of the car and in the booth. We only lightly tint the lens’s as we don’t want to dim the tail or brake light because of safety concerns. Having her tail-lamps tinted … good. Having her car damaged because a driver didn’t see the brake-lamps … not good.

After the lens’s are dry we put them back in the car. That’s what I’m doing in the second photo.

You can see in the third photo the lens’s look quite dark and match nicely with the black-out trim on the rest of the car. But while they look dark, they really aren’t that dark and the light from the tail-lamps is reduced hardly at all. The fourth photo shows how the tail-lamps are clearly visible, even during the day, and the last photo, number five, you can clearly see the brake-lamps and backup-lamps.

It is understandable, but most of the people I talk to wish they weren’t having the conversion. After all, who wants to deal with the hassle and expense of having their damaged automobile repaired? But this morning the customer was actually glad and excited to see me. That was a nice change of pace.

I think I need to sell more gift certificates.

Tight squeeze

It’s a good thing that Chris isn’t claustrophobic. Today, after three or four tries at aligning the trunk, we finally decided that the easiest way to do it was someone would get in the trunk while the other stood outside and pushed and shoved. Once the trunk lid was in place, the person inside the trunk could tighten it down.

The first photo shows Chris working his way into the trunk. Chris is a pretty big guy so it was a tight squeeze.

The lid is going down in the second photo. I took a photo of him curled up inside of the trunk with the lid down but it came out fuzzy so I didn’t use it in this post. He was curled up pretty tight and there was a fair amount of bumping and banging in there, along with some muttering, as he moved around.

The third photo shows me yelling, asking him if the keys to the trunk were in his pocket because I couldn’t find them anywhere. Actually, this was staged photo for comic effect. Yes, Chris is in the trunk but the trunk lid didn’t even have the latch attached yet so Chris couldn’t be locked in the trunk.

Just to prove that Chris got out of the trunk no worse for wear, the last photo, number four, shows him test fitting a bit of trim to the trunk lid later in the day.

In the past I’ve done my fair share of crawling in and under things as Chris did today. But if he thinks this one was bad … wait until he has to get in the Mustang.

JMC AutoworX is open for business

After enjoying Christmas with our families, JMC AutoworX has reopened for business today to help you with any body shop related needs.