Weekend work

These two jobs came in over the weekend. The first is a 2015 Dodge Challenger. Yes, Its brand new. It was involved in an accident late Friday afternoon. It has pretty extensive damage. The other is a Nissan Maxima that hit a deer on Friday night. We disassembled both of these cars today to write an accurate estimate as possible. This allows us to really get all in the car to see whats broken to minimize surprises later. Its not a fool proof plan, but it does help. Stay tuned to see how these go.

Meet Paul, and take a look at the SL 500

Meet Paul. Our newest employee. He has 20 years experience and is PPG certified. He comes to give us a hand in the booth and as well as the in the body shop as well. This Mercedes needed a lot of rock chips fixed in the front end as well as a few battle scars from over the years repaired. This warranted a complete respray by the time we fixed it all. After all the chips and scratches were repaired, the bad areas were primed. Then the primer areas were blocked out and the rest of the car was sanded prepped and washed. The next day it was tapped up and slid into the booth for paint. Paul sprayed and nice slick job on the SL. We will need to buff up a few places tomorrow. Hopefully if all that gets done, it will go home to its owner on Friday.

Fixing a couple of bump ups

This little Jetta is in the shop to get a couple of accidents from the college days fixed up. A new bumper, grill and headlamp is on tap as well as a repair on the left fender. Yesterday the car was disassembled and inspected for hidden damaged. The fender was also repaired and primed yesterday. Today it was sanded and prepped for paint. After lunch, it took its turn in the booth and was painted. Tomorrow the plan is to reassemble it, get it cleaned up and delivered back to the customer. That should go pretty smoothly and be a pretty quick turn around.

Freshening up the Benz

This very nice SL 500 is in the shop to get a face lift. We will be fixing quite a few rock chips from highway driving and a couple scratches. We started by removing the grill, door handles and mirrors. We will be painting the rest of the car together. Here you can see Paul doing the prep work. Paul has filled in for us from time to time when we needed an extra hand. We never sub out any of our paint or body work, if we get super busy, we may bring in help, but nothing leaves our shop for something we are capable of doing ourselves. Paul spent most of the day sanding the car. Late in the afternoon, he masked off the areas that were getting primer and primed them. Paul is a certified PPG painter so he is plenty capable of handling a  spray gun. Tomorrow he will be back to block out these spots and finish prepping this one for paint on Monday.

Grand finale

What we have here is is the finished product on the Mustang. We put this back together yesterday and had it washed and all cleaned up today. It turned out very nice, I’m sure the owner will be happy with how it turned out.

Here a bump, there a bump III

These are the bumpers to the Mustang that we painted last week. Today we painted the matching stripes on them. Careful attention was taken to make sure the stripes lined up with the trunk and hood. We re-installed them to ensure that they lined up as close to perfect as we could get them. Once the stripes were laid out, the rest of the bumper was masked off to prevent over spray, then the charcoal was sprayed. Once the charcoal base coat was dry, the masking was removed and clear coat was sprayed. Tomorrow’s plan is to re-install the bumpers and get this on ready for delivery.

Here a bump, there a bump II

This Pathfinder is in to get its bumper fixed as well. We started by removing and disassembling it to make a quality repair. The repaired area was properly cleaned then sanded to remove the scuffs and scratches. We masked off the undamaged parts of the bumper to keep primer in the wanted areas. Tomorrow we will sand and prep this bumper for paint and get it shot.

Here a bump, there a bump

This Buick Enclave is in the shop to get the rear bumper repaired. We can fix the damage to the bumper itself but the chrome molding is done. A new one is on order. As you can see we removed the bumper and completely disassembled it. We heated up the damaged area and pushed the low spots back up. We then applied filler to the low areas and blocked it to make sure its as flat and straight as possible. Once we were happy with the blocking, Chris applied 3 coats of urethane primer. Tomorrow we will block the primer and this bumper will get painted.