Part Two of a Series on Crash Repairs
I started this discussion with my last post about the challenges the collision repair industry faces posed by the wizardry of auto makers’ engineers. The constant state of innovation they’re paid to maintain often leads to repair shops all around the world struggling to keep up with the tools, knowledge and training needed to do their job. By its nature, the problem has a greater effect on owners of later model vehicles than those who drive older models, and that means it’s particularly troubling for operators of automotive fleets.
Take, for example, the materials used or the structures and assemblies that comprise today’s typical vehicle body, which have been redesigned for higher fuel efficiency and better occupant safety. As a result, bodies structures are built with a combination of exotic, light-weight mild- and high-strength metals that crumple to absorb the forces that might otherwise deliver a lethal impact. The timing of the crumpling of each structural member is carefully choreographed with a growing number of protective airbags deployed in precisely orchestrated sequences by computers responding to sensors. Documented gains in fuel efficiency, crash studies and the decreasing number of highway fatalities testify that the new auto body designs work very well.
But how well the configuration holds up after a collision repair depends totally on a technician’s ability to replicate what the engineers created. The science of ”collision energy management” demands the use of plastics, new metals, and old metals of varying thicknesses – even in a single panel – in the construction of today’s auto bodies, and these need more precise repair methods. For example, a car’s center pillar post might now consist of sections of advanced hig -strength steel (AHSS), low strength steel (mild), and boron alloy steel, hot stamped, and rolled to different thicknesses into one part, with varying gauges and no seams evidencing where the different metals meet.
To the average technician, as well as new car salesman, this pillar looks the same as this part has looked for years – from the outside. From the inside, it’s completely different. To repair it properly means knowing the exact specifications as they change along its entire length, from 1.0 mm to 1.65, 1.8 and 1.9 mm. Each needs to be precisely restored with different methods, which means they require the use of different welding temperatures and repair or replace requirements. Failure to achieve the right repair could well mean that the sensors that control the vehicle’s air bags won’t receive the right signal for proper deployment, meaning air bags can deploy too soon or too late, both with serious consequences.
It’s for reasons like this that the collision repair industry has been thrust into a new challenge of catching up with OEM engineers, as well as maintaining the financial wherewithal to finance this catch-up with a continuous stream of new equipment, tools and training. Many shops can and will meet this dilemma but, inevitably, some will not. For fleet operators, there’s peril in not knowing which shops are which.
