After a major traffic collision in the Tampa Bay area, people take their vehicle to a local automotive body repair shop to have their collision damages repaired. After the vehicle is repaired, many consumers take for granted that the repairs were performed properly and do not take notice of any post collision repair problems. There are some ways to be educated about what to look for after a collision repair has been performed in Tampa.
Look at the overall condition of the damaged area and notice if all of the areas have been painted well after the collision repair. Tampa has many auto body shops, but not all of them do excellent paint work. Take notice of the color and make sure the color looks the same as the rest of the vehicle where paint work was not performed. Look for a smooth shiny look lustering from your paint and make sure that your eyes do not see any flaws in the actual paint surfaces.
Check the structured areas for damages. If you have had frame damage, make sure that the frame damaged areas are not beat up looking, have any bare metal exposed or any rusting areas. You should not see any welds or primered areas behind the body panels. Poor body welds are another factor to consider. If a panel or frame has poor looking welded areas, this is a sign of bad work. A great collision technician will make the frame and panels look so good, you should not be able to tell or hardly tell that work was performed.
Look over the vehicle for overspray. Overspray is lots of very small paint droplets that will appear over multiple body areas or parts after a collision repair. Tampa’s heat and humidity is an ideal condition to get overspray very quickly. Proper prep techniques as well as quality prep materials will eliminate this type of defect on the finished vehicle. Overspray can easily be removed, but quality collision repair work should not have any areas with overspray. A quality control of the final vehicle finish should catch any types of overspray prior to a customer picking up a repaired vehicle that has had paint work performed.
Quality auto body shops will have your vehicle cleaned prior to you picking up your vehicle after a collision repair. Tampa area consumers should expect that their car has been detailed well after any paint or collision repairs. When you pick up your car from the body shop it should look like a new car. You would never want to accept a car that looks half new and the other half looks old and dingy.
A more post inspection of a collision repair in Tampa would be after a long time, like a year or so, is the paint holding up. Fading, chipping, pealing, rusting or thinning of your vehicle’s paint job are all signs of poor paint quality or poor workmanship during your collision repairs. Tampa has many body shops that use poor quality paint. This paint will usually look good when you pick up your car, but it doesn’t look good after a year or so. Even with a lifetime warranty, your car is not going to look better after 8 paintjobs later. The more times your car is painted, the more your car looses resale value. Do yourself a favor and choose an auto body shop that uses quality paint in the first place to avoid a poor quality paint job. Doing post inspections of collision repairs will only inform you of whether or not your vehicle is going to hold up after a major or minor collision has changed your vehicles integrity.
by Guy's Automotive
Visit BodyShopTampa.com or more information
14611 N Nebraska Ave. Tampa, FL 33613
813-975-9307
