Automotive Plastic Repair Services

Author : Lance Winslow
Plastic Repair? What are the top considerations in plastic repair, we hear an awful lot about this in the detailing industry, especially in the last ten years. But really plastic is been used in automobiles since the 1930s when Henry Ford for started putting it in his automobiles Ford had built a deck lid made of plastic for one of his cars and actually jumped up and down on it to demonstrate its strength and quality into the world Expo he actually took a sledgehammer to it. Henry Ford Sr. always had a knack for drawing the crowd. Still, the public was really not convinced, because plastic at that time was For toy cars, not real ones. Henry Ford of course to get on is a challenge to convince the public that plastic was the way to go.By the 1940s the public had caught on. It wasn't so after Henry Ford died that the Next Generation of cars started using plastic. This is similar to the airline industry and composite material. In Ohio there is a huge research center which studies, researches and Tests composites. The military uses composites and their aircraft. In the 777 had nearly 12 percent made out of composites, this Next Generation of aircraft by Boeing the 7E7 will be made of nearly 50 percent composite. After Ford died Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford in many foreign automakers would have plenty of plastic in their cars.Even Goodyear started making plastic for automobiles and those days, which supplemented the rubber industry after World War II. If you ever get chance in you ever get to Akron Ohio, may I recommend going to the world of rubber museum at the Goodyear plant downtown. There is so much rubber in today's automobile, along with so much plastic that is actually causing a real problem when these cars are crushed for metal recycling or end up in the junkyard. As a matter-of-fact the problem is so huge in Europe, that the EU, WTO and other organizations have formed the ELV – End of Life Program to fix this problem.http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0503/0000006f.htmhttp://www.parthe.net/_cwg0503/00000070.htmThe University of Chicago has been working on ways to meld down the plastic and the foams to reuse. I would say within the next decade we will have a similar program to the ELV program in Europe. Today if you look at the South every person living in a mobile home has a least five cars not running sitting out front rusting away. These are iron oxides get into the groundwater and can cause increased chance of heart attacks. When these vehicles catch fire the smoke from the plastic is quite toxic.These days when you detail a car you have no idea what the surface underneath that pain is made out of. It could be aluminum, steel, stainless-steel, composite, polypropylene, polyethylene or anyone of a number of plastics, mostly made from petroleum byproducts. Yes, that's right oil. What's good for Texas is good for America. What's good for General Motors is good for America. What's good enough for your car is good enough for us to detail or restore. This is why we've decided in some markets that plastic repair is an excellent add-on service for our wholesale detailing clients and perhaps in some instances good for our retail detail clients.There has been much talk in the trade publications on the subject of plastic repair, while I concur with most of what ever read, I along with many operators are quite skeptical as to the time and quality and skill required to repair plastic correctly. In mobile Tech News and on the Web sit MobileWorks several vendors who sell plastic repair kit's of all types. Some for the interiors of cars, some for the plastic lenses of taillights and others for rubber repair, and it appears that there is quite in art in a science to doing the job right. I cannot recommend to a novice detailer to jump right in and start offering plastic repair to their customers. On Auto auction vehicles, used car lots, wholesale detailing customers and on new car lots for used car trade-ins, this appears to be an excellent way to bundle services and at a little bit to the wholesale detailing price. In states like Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and you know I'm starting to feel like that Dean character, where the wholesale detailing price floats between $55 and $70 there needs to be away to get the price up. If there are holes or problems with a plastic inside the vehicle adding another $35-$50 might just be the ticket, because now you got your price closer to $100.00, which is really were you want to anyway.Where bumpers used to be steel with sheet steel metal wrap now there is plastic. Plastic bumpers with Rubber and composite seem to trump alloys. I have seen plastic parts inside of transmissions operating as the overdrive gear, plastic parts inside of break components, engines, radiators, fuel tanks, as structural parts of the frame, as fasteners as well as just about every part of the automobile. The funniest part about this whole thing is there is a kid from MIT who is actually planning a composite/plastic building and in Japan there doing experiments in plastic bridge construction, saying that it will weather better than concrete and Rebar.With less contraction and expansion, let's face it plastic and composites are here to stay. They are stronger they weigh less an air just simply smarter materials to use especially when you're shooting for higher numbers in your MPG goals. We also saw a recently that the steely import tax raised the price of an SUV $800, prompting automakers to use even more plastics and more composites to save money and weight, not so good for the steel manufacturing which it one time was the backbone of this economy, but certainly good news for lightweight materials and fuel consumption. But is strong test plastic in his it is still easily damaged just like sheet steel metal. Of course the new Saturn commercials show a man kicking a door and it just pops back out again. But not everything pops back out again. Plastic repair kits are used in the auto body shop business more than the detailing business, but this is also changing as more and more detailers become aware of plastic repair.The idea of plastic repair is worthy of the body shop in the consumer because it lowers the overall cost of repairs, which means the cash customer coming into a body shop can save money and the insured customer will net the body shop more money since it costs less to repair the to replace. Also there could be significant time-savings in that to replace the part may not be possible because the part is not in stock at the dealership. In needs to come from the distribution center. I cannot tell you have many times the distribution center has been out of the , and he which you need. And there for your car sits there, not been worked on, taking up space, at risk of more damage in the parking lot or being broke into by Pablo Gonzalez' & Co. midnight auto supply or Joe Meth "need a stereo to sell to the fence tonight" good citizen. And before you tell me I'm stereotyping, BS, because both of those scenarios have happened to me personally.The technicians are also happier because they can make more money servicing the part if they're working on commission of the body shop. Many body shops are commission based. Another person makes quite happy is the garbage and man, because you are not over filling dumpsters with unneeded waste as we talked about before. The only difficult thing that with plastic repair is better requires lots of training. Luckily there it is an inter industry conference called I-CAR Collision Auto Repair which has seminars and vendors have stepped up to the plate who sell the products used to train how to use them. General Motors also offers courses in repairing plastics. Some of these in-depth technical information seminars and hands-on repair skills practice sessions in interior and exterior plastics and sheet molded compounds are very good. After having sit in on a couple I was amazed at how easy this stuff is and how easy it is to do it incorrectly. What I found most interesting was that you really have to look at the part and determine is this part were fixing or should I just shit can it and get a new one.This is a very logical decision, it takes time to get a part in, it costs money to buy the part, it takes time to repair it, it takes labor away from another job, there's a space consideration in your shop for the number of cars there, there is a customer consideration in of course the plastic kits are relatively cheap, but they ain't free. Sometimes you look a part and say well that would be hard to fix, is my technician qualified, will it come out right, is it worth the risk to try, or should I just order another part and put this individual on other car. One thing I found out in the seminars, is to never played the guessing game, instead follow the directions exactly.The most important thing in plastic repair is to thoroughly clean the surface and remove the petroleum substances on the surface of the part. The best way to do this is to remove the mold release agent is to use simple hot water and soap. Then you use the chemical cleaner that came with the kit and immediately begin your repair. The longer the part sets, the more chance that the mold release is still left in the plastic and that will rise to the surface and deteriorate the adhesion. The modern automobile has over 100 different types of plastic in its overall product. Wonderfully u say? So the first and most important thing to do is to identify what type of plastic this is. Not every type of plastic has a repair kit, said don't just think you can fix anything because you can't, well you can try, but it might turn out like crap. The choices of repair kit's generally correspond to the degree of flexibility of the part been repair. Classified in three categories; rigid, semi-rigid, flexible.Most automotive plastics belonged to, two different families; thermo-plastic and thermosetting. Thermoset repairs require the use of adhesion promoter or cleaner between each repair step, but for thermo-plastics you use is strong chemical cleaner, and if you do it the wrong step or stage of the repairs your repair will be an absolute failure. Although I will not go into the steps to repair all plastics but like to talk about a couple different methods. The methods include chemical repair, welded repairs and re-texturing and refinishing. If all the cells too complicated you can always remove and replace, the American plastics council APC; maintains a database of recycling centers.http://www.APC.orgBefore anyone tells you that plastic repair is a way to go in your mobile detailing business for automotive detail shop you may wanna start small, for instance try out when those cool kits to fix tail lights or go down to Home Depot and by a plastic repair kit and play around with it for awhile and ask yourself do you have the patients and will you follow instructions because I have seen some really blotched refinishes and some really botched chemical repairs. Occasionally you might be detailing a car any save yourself what happened here, why is this discolored, why is it rough here and smooth there, will I can tell you because in a practice session I went to just about everyone there are botched a couple, it takes a little practice and takes little time, do not expect to learn how to be an expert plastic repair technician overnight, it just won't happen.If you are a stickler for details and if you can follow instructions maybe you should look into the new and profitable world of thermo-plastic repair.Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/
Keyword : Automotive Plastic Repair