The Collision Industry Conference (CIC) Repair Process and Procedures Committee held its first meeting in Las Vegas during SEMA Week with a focus on frame repair.

CIC Chairman Dan Risley said he askedg the group to come together after the response to Kye Yeung’s presentation on matte and semi-gloss clear coat during CIC’s April meeting.

“He took something that was very difficult and complex… and in very layman’s terms, he explained what a matte finish is. He explained what that process looked like,” Risley said.

Barry Dorn

Yeung, European Motor Car Works president, and Barry Dorn, Dorn’s Paint and Body vice president, co-chair the committee. The committee aims to “explain things that we’ve accepted in the industry and taken for granted without question, and how we could dispel some of the myths that are associated with it,” Yeung said.

“Setup is one of the things that a lot of repairers in here deal with,” he said. “It’s a situation where it can be combative.”

When asked before the presentation what level of knowledge audience members had relative to the labor operations and steps necessary to set up a frame to be measured and pulled, 35% answered “medium” followed by “high” (28%) and “close to zero” (24%).

The terms “set up and pull” and “set up and measure” were used when Yeung began working in the industry in 1975 and, unfortunately, are still used today interchangeably, he said. However, they’re two separate operations that should be separate line items, Yeung said.

“I think the term ‘set up and pull’ came about because it was all about holding the vehicle some way with chains and then pulling it with chains.. They’re still using that benchmark for some reason. And for some reason, repairers are accepting that.”

The presentation showed that using OEM data sheets and following their respective repair procedures is essential because, like many other collision repairs, frame or structural repair isn’t one-size-fits-all and the tolerance OEMs set to remain within specifications is typically 3 millimeters, which is the equivalent of three dimes stacked on top of one another, Yeung said.

“Data sheets — they’re all computerized,” Yeung said. “You pull up the vehicle and it comes up on a computer screen. These are much more accurate because they could include upper body dimensions and stuff like that.”

Before this was the case, slight human error in setup could cause technicians to repair vehicles out of spec, he added.

“The datum, which is the invisible line below the vehicle indicating the height, the differences in height, the width measurements, and obviously a center line — those are the goals when you think about putting a car on a frame machine,” Yeung said. “Ultimately, what you want to discover during the repair process, and hopefully when you’re done, all those things that we’re talking about are within intolerance.”

Yeung provided some examples of the mounting systems needed for today’s vehicles:

The photo on the top left is a bayonet mount designed to work with BMWs or Corvettes, he said. “Instead of a pinch weld, you would have the bayonet mount.”

The photo on the upper right was used to be for Mercedes-Benz vehicles, Yeung said.

The photo on the bottom left shows traditional pinch bolts that, typically, every shop has in their frame kit, he said.

The photo on the bottom right shows horizontal pinch welds, which require a different type of fixture than vertical pinch welds, he said.

“These are all important because it took extra time to set up and it took a lot of extra funds to be able to acquire these,” Yeung said.

Evangelos “Lucky” Papageorg

From visiting shops around the country, Yeung noticed most frame machines aren’t being used and thinks the reason is inadequate pay for the time it takes to carry out the procedures OEMs require.

As part of the presentation, Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of Massachusetts (AASP-MA) Executive Director Evangelos “Lucky” Papageorg, Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG) Administrator Danny Gredinberg, and Accurate Auto Body President Justin Lewis were brought on the stage to share their perspectives.

“I came into the industry in 1988 and, traditionally, it was the four-point holding system with the pinch welds,” Papageorg said. “Fast forward almost 40 years now, and that allotted time that I was given as the appraiser or the shop manager at that time is equivalent to what’s going on now and those holding points were already made up. All the technician had to do is fasten them to the flat rack, attach it to the pinch weld with a rivet on, and they were done. Now, I mean, as you can see from your photos, they’re much more intricate.”

Lewis said for each OEM repair certification his shop has, there are variations in frame benches and set-up style. Some benches also require fixtures to be built individually per the vehicle make and model while others have universal fixtures that must be built.

“It can be very involved,” he said. “If it’s not something that you’re using all the time, it could take some time to figure it out. Being that, like our shop for instance, we have three different bench systems to cover all the OEMs that we work with… Some of the manufacturers, in order to set a panel properly, you have to build fixture systems.”

Gredinberg said all of the information providers require on-the-spot evaluations to determine what’s included and not-included in setup.

“The information providers acknowledge that there’s just too many variables involved in the type of vehicle, the type of collision, the type of equipment you’re going to be using and, therefore, they can’t anticipate a time,” he said.

Universal benches can be beneficial by calibrating a vehicle to it with the suspension in and the drivetrain in or out, Yeung said.

“What that did for us as repairers, was it eliminated a lot of total losses because there were times when OEs would stipulate that if you bench the vehicle, the drivetrain would have to be pulled out,” he said. “The universal benches actually are a really good guide path for investment because you’re allowed some flexibility on how you can mount the vehicle.

“I want to encourage whoever is doing the repair planning or whoever is doing the estimating, even the owners of the shop the need to understand whatever repair process that they’re getting into, what type of vehicle they’re working on, that this gets put down and explained properly to be able to document.”

Dorn added that OEMs want collision repair shops to use specific tooling to confirm a consistent outcome.

“Gap measurement first as a preliminary diagnosis is not uncommon,” he said. “In fact, I’d say in most cases it should be more common because that’s what the OE is requiring us to do to confirm, again, a consistent outcome.”

Lewis and Gredinberg encouraged estimators to go out and work with technicians so they can learn firsthand and hands-on what’s involved.

“I have my estimators go out and work with my technicians to understand how involved they need to go, how deep they need to get into setting up fixtures, how much time to make sure that they’re getting the proper allocation… because the time it takes and setting up the bench is one thing but the training, the cost of all that too needs to be factored in,” Lewis said. “There’s a lot that goes into this and I think it gets overlooked.

Justin Lewis

“My biggest pet peeve is when I hear a technician, a body shop owner, an adjuster tell me, ‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years.’ It drives me nuts because even in the last five, 10 years or less, things have changed so much.”

Gredinberg added, “Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty out there. Don’t be afraid to ask the technician questions and actually perform that step with them along the way so you can explain that process 100% of the way from start to finish and document those steps… also look at the P-pages, look at the requirements, and look at what the procedures call for because we have indirectly related operations that also need to be considered perfect.”

After the presentation, the audience was asked if they thought their level of knowledge on the subject had increased. Forty-five percent answered “significantly improved” followed by “slightly improved” (42%) and “no change” (13%).

Images

Featured image: Kye Yeung presents during CIC’s Nov. 5 meeting in Las Vegas. (Lurah Lowery/Repairer Driven News)

(Group photo from left) Barry Dorn, Danny Gredinberg, Evangelos “Lucky” Papageorg, and Justin Lewis. (Lurah Lowery/Repairer Driven News)

All slide photos courtesy of CIC