How Wrecked Cars Are Repaired | Cars Insider
Narrator: Car crashes
are incredibly common. In 2017, nearly 6.5 million car accidents took place in the US alone. Collision centers use various techniques to realign a car's frame, restore damaged areas, and correct paint. Juan: Here at Hendrick Collision Center, we're capable of fixing
anything from a small dent to a large repair that
requires structural repair. Some of the typical tools that we use are our flatliner, our frame machine, and Bondo.
If your car is on the frame machine, more than likely it's got some
kind of structural damage. When you are getting ready to set up a car on the frame machine, obviously drive it up on the machine, make sure that the vehicle is square. The second part is you're going to go to the computer to figure out where your mounting clamps need to go on the vehicle. We have access to Alldata, which is a computer system that gathers all the
information from manufacturers to be able to repair vehicles correctly.
You go ahead and get the
car built onto the clamps. Then you go to the measuring system, and the measuring system will tell you where the damage is. We have to digitally measure the structure of the vehicle to ensure that all the components are where they need to
be, within millimeters. And then you have to reverse the damage. When you're operating, you have to be mindful
of your surroundings.
Obviously, make sure that
you're in a safe spot and make sure that everybody
around you is safe. You have to be very mindful
in observing the damage and how it's being pulled out. The measuring system is
connected to the computer, and you can see numbers that will move as you are pulling, and you want to get those numbers as close as possible to zero. The frame machine can
be very intimidating. A lot of times the clamps will come off and kind of fly around, so you have to conquer that fear. Not all dents require
such a large machine. For smaller and more delicate dents, we use the flatliner.
The first step is to make sure that you've recognized your damage. For that, we have a special
light that we set up so that you can actually see all the damage on the panel. Make sure that you sand the area that's getting ready to be pulled. Make sure that you get a good ground, a solid ground, before you start to put the pulling keys on the metal. Not every dent is a straight line. Sometimes dents have a curve.
After you've welded
your keys onto the spot, then you begin your pulling process. You pick the correct bridge
that you're going to use. When operating a bridge, it has a handle that has threads. And as you turn the thread, the handle gets shorter, and that's attached to
the bridge and the rod. The rod will pull the dent out. If you have a dent that's deeper, you're going to have to
pull a little bit more. If you have a dent
that's not quite as deep, you're going to have to turn the knob a little bit less. Then you need to tap
the crowns of the dent. Anytime you have a
dent, it creates crowns.
The dent doesn't always
necessarily pull out. Sometimes you need to
reassess after your pull, and you have to maybe
pull in a different spot until you've gotten the dent as close as possible to
its original position. After we use the flatliner, we still need to smooth out the dent, and that's where the Bondo process begins. Bondo can be a fast-drying filler that is sandable that we use to get the car's body as close as we can to its original shape. Once you've mixed your
Bondo on your mixing board, we have plastic spreaders, and that is what you use
to apply onto the dent. You have to make sure
that you are applying it in the correct spots, that you are not applying it too much in spots that it's not needed. You have to make sure that you are very fluid with it and that you are keeping the correct contours of the vehicle.
Once you've applied Bondo
and you've sanded it and you're happy with the
way that the dent feels and it's visually correct, at that point, you would take the car
over to the paint shop for it to be primed. One of the first steps of painting is to make sure that you clean off any contaminants that are on the panel. The full replaced part, or
repaired part, is painted. Adjacent panels are also blended in order to ensure a perfect color match. So, the painting process is
different for each vehicle, because each repair size is different. But in a perfect world, beginning to end, it would be reasonable to say it would take around two hours. I would say it's very
gratifying to fix cars. If somebody is in your collision center, it's because they had a accident, and accidents aren't fun for anybody.
So it is gratifying when the
customer picks up their car and they leave and they're happy, and you know that you had a part in making this person's problem disappear..
