Capitalize on Cold Weather
A mild winter doesn’t have to bring a chilling end to your shop’s profits and steady workload. By adding seasonal profit centers and specialized winter service, you’ll boost your bottom line and customer relations.
Airing Their Differences: A/C Hardware and Design
The more A/c systems, hardware, designs, and gagdets change, the more important it is to keep up with these changes.
It’s Nice to Fool Mother Nature
Climates can be pretty extreme (too hot, too cold, too dry, too humid), but these days, the right preparation, products and professionalism are a solid defense against weather problems that try to attack a good paint job.
Controlling Weather Conditions in Your Paint Shop
Blue skies are ahead when you learn you can’t control Mother Nature – but you can control how her moods affect your shop.
Brushing Up on Paint Basics
Whether your paint technicians have been with you two months or 20 years, a quick refresher course on the foundations of paint mixing and application is always time well spent.
Ease Your Purchasing Pressure: the Impact of Compressed Air
The impact of compressed air on workflow and product quality is often overlooked. The bad news: Costly rework due to poor quality paint jobs and workflow interruptions due to inadequate air supply can increase cycle times, causing real monetary losses. The good news: You have complete control over your compressed air system.
A Not-So-Sticky Subject: Adhesives
When ancient Egyptians boiled animal hides to make glue, they had no idea how far modern chemistry would take adhesives. Today, two-component epoxy, urethane and acrylic glues are being used as structural panel bonding adhesives – and OEMs have given their stamps of approval.
Taking the Pain Out of Glass
These days, automotive glass serves a bigger purpose than simply keeping bugs out of a driver’s teeth. Some passenger-side airbags depend on the windshield to act as an integral part of the system. With such a critical repair at hand, proper glass replacement is of the utmost importance — but isn’t nearly as complex as you might think.
The Heat Is On: Infrared Equipment
Since the average body shop paints an entire vehicle just 10 percent of the time, it makes sense to focus your energy — and that of your curing system — on only the areas refinished. How? Infrared equipment can be applied just where and when you need it, helping to increase your shop’s efficiency
Fill In The Blanks: Correctly Using Fillers
Today, fewer panels are repaired and more are replaced. Likewise, gone are the days when shops used entire 5-gallon pails of body filler weekly to avoid doing metal work. While today’s fillers are used in smaller volumes, a wider variety of styles can provide just what you need — if you know how they work, which to choose and how to use them properly.