Strategic Partnerships
No business exists in a vacuum, least of all a collision repair shop.
Tool Time: Common Hand Tools
Can you imagine finishing a weld with a file and emery cloth or sandpaper? Can you imagine prepping a panel for plastic filler with a piece of sandpaper powered only by elbow
grease? Can you imagine removing 25 different types of screws and bolts with a socket and a screwdriver – again, powered by
only elbow grease?
A Crash Course on Retrofits
As a collision repair specialist, air-conditioning service is part of your job. When your customers bring in their cars for repairs, you want to offer them all the services required.
Body Shop Boot Camp
While the collision shop of today is repairing existing vehicles, the cars of the future are off the drawing board and plans for production are underway. Increased use of aluminum and plastics, computerized navigational systems, crash-avoidance computers and sophisticated adhesives are all becoming part of our reality.
School Profile/Alfred State College
At Alfred State College (ASC) – a technical college in Western New York with a student body of 3,200 – an emphasis on work ethic and a real-world shop atmosphere combine to assure plenty of job opportunities for every graduate, including its autobody program grads.
Designing A Dream: Kustom Kreations
The newly opened Kustom Kreations, nestled in the scenic Sierra Nevada mountains of Carson City, Nev., is stopping traffic – literally.
A History of Success and Change
The time: 1894. The place: Boston, Mass. The body shop: Fitzpatrick Brothers.
Internet Insight
You’ve no doubt heard about the Internet. Whether it’s those commercials with guys in suits surfing in the streets, Al Gore talking about the Information Superhighway or somebody on the radio telling you about "dot com," it’s all around you. You may even be a “netizen” yourself.
Starting Over
Russ Manley and his father, Ron, have run Manley and Son Auto Body and Paint in Forsyth, Mo., for 34 years. In the early years, custom work was the bread and butter for the shop, but because of poor work conditions, paint jobs that went wrong were as prevalent as the ones that went right.
Paint-Shop Smarts
To increase production in the paint shop, you can do one of two things: Buy more equipment – the object here being to do more work in the same time period by mechanizing
the task. Or, you can produce more by better utilizing your present facility and equipment – the old “work smarter not harder”
school of thought.