Bumper scuffs, door dings, paint scratches. All of it means one thing, time to find a Car Paint Chip Scratch Repair specialist. Everybody gets them on their cars. Most of the time you look at it and think “I’m going to need to get that painted and it’s going to cost me a fortune.” The cost to do a paint repair job at a body shop is very costly. Unfortunately, when you go to one of these types of shops they don’t have a lot of other options available to offer you.
Paint Chip Scratch Repair
At your local detail shop or mobile details service, you can find many other lower cost alternatives for paint chip scratch repair services. Many times a scuff or key scratch isn’t through the clearcoat and can be removed by wet sanding and aggressive compounding. After this, we can move on to paint chip scratch repair, touch-up, or bumper paint repairs. These are considered standard car reconditioning services. Body shops believe they have a lock on this business. Many times when you think you are getting a new bumper, they are just fixing it and putting it back on your vehicle. So the differences between getting your damage repaired and painted versus a body shop claiming they are giving you a “new” bumper, might not be as different as you think they might be.
The Advantages are Obvious
Compare a Micro Chip, Paint Chip Scratch Repair or Bumper Paint Repair Service to those of a local body shop, and the advantages are obvious:
Cost: body shops replace damaged parts with new and paint them, dramatically increasing your costs. With the expense of a new bumper at approx. $350 or more and the painting of that bumper an additional $350 or more, your body shop costs are $700 and up. With a Micro Paint Repair or Paint Chip Scratch Repair of that bumper at $180 to $250, the savings is clear!
Time: Micro Paint Repair or Paint Chip Scratch Repair Services take less than a day to complete. Try getting a body shop to do anything on your vehicle in less than a day. The time savings is evident!
Handled Quickly and Professionally
Where do these damages usually occur? Many times on bumpers where shopping carts, other cars, minor bumps against other bumpers. High traffic areas where any regular contact exists such as door handles and trunk lids. Places like the gas compartment where the car is accidentally bumped or brushed with the gas pump nozzle or handle. Repair to these damaged areas can be handled quickly and efficiently at your local detail and reconditioning center. Mobile Detailing Services can also handle these repairs onsite for you, and many have their inflatable mobile garage workshops to bring to your location.
If you are considering having these services done, please review our Proper Insurance page to get an idea of questions you should ask your potential reconditioning shop before working on your vehicle.
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Pressure Washing Interior Wheel wells to remove highway paint splatter
One of the absolute joys we get to experience living in the Northeast United States is the ever growing number of construction projects that get started as soon as the weather warms-up. This allows us to experience the next joyful experience of highway paint removal off cars.
So after a hard days work and an even harder trip through one of the many detours established for our convenience, isn’t it wonderful to discover “fast drying” heavy duty highway line paint all over your wheel wells and rocker panels? You get your choice of either white or yellow. Either way, the paint is designed to dry fast, only problem is it doesn’t seem to dry fast until it gets picked-up by your tires and splattered all over your car.
We’ve been offering highway paint removal services for years. So when you’ve got a new multi-color or two tone section of your one color car it, helps to have somewhere you can go to find out how to remove it. I always start highway paint removal with a two step process. You have to loosen the paint with an acetone or paint remover. Take a sponge or towel and soak the paint with acetone to loosen it. Then power wash the area with your pressure washer. The biggest area that this helps with is in the wheel wells where the surface is rough. If the area of coverage of the paint is large then you will need to apply several coats of acetone with a pump-up sprayer with viton seals (chemical resistant) letting each coat soak for approx. 5 minutes. After 2 to 3 applications it should be soft enough to power wash the wheel well and the paint should remove fairly easily.
Our Old School Fallback Trick
Here’s another tip that we have heard numerous places and actually tried quite a few times when our normal highway paint removal techniques didn’t work. Our old school fall back trick is Easy Off Oven Cleaner sprayed on the wheel wells. You spray it, let it soak in, then spray it again letting it soak longer. Then you powerwash like the above highway paint removal process instructs.
First Loosen the Highway Paint
Important note, be careful using any of these highway paint removal processes on the exterior painted surfaces. Depending on the psi of the pressure washer and the age of the paint, it can sometimes blow the paint right off the car. A good nozzle for this would be the 25% pressure washer nozzle at 2,000 psi for the wheel wells (see our page on Mobile Detailing Equipment for more on this). On the vehicles painted surfaces first use a plastic razor to try and first loosen the highway paint after soaking. This will help to reduce the chance of damaging the paint with the pressure washer.
Once this highway paint removal process is completed, the exterior surfaces must be high-speed buffed because they will be lightly scuffed due to the plastic razors and acetone removal process.
The costs of having a highway paint removal service professionally done really depends on the coverage area of paint over the vehicle. As a customer you can expect your professional detailer to charge you anywhere from $150 to $550 or more for expert highway paint removal services. Again, this pricing greatly depends on the area being cleaned and the length of time the detailer believes the highway paint removal process will take.
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Scuffs, minor scratches, paint flaking, bumper scuffs, and deep scratches. All of these kinds of minor damage can are be repaired without the services of a body shop. A paint chip repair can have your vehicle looking like new most times in less than a day.
Paint Chip Repair
Compare a detail shop’s micro paint chip repair and touch-up services to those of a local body shop and the advantages to staying far away from a body shop are obvious:
Cost: body shops replace damaged parts with new and paint them, dramatically increasing your costs. With the expense of a new bumper at approx. $350 and the painting of that bumper an additional $350, your body shop costs are $700. A Micro Paint Chip Repair or Touch-up Painting of that bumper at $180 to $250 will show you definite savings!
Time: A Micro Paint Chip Repair Touch-up Service takes less than a day to complete. Try getting a body shop to do anything on your vehicle in less than a day. The time savings is obvious!
Scuff and Scratch Removal
Many times paint chip repair, and touch-up may not even be necessary. See our scuff and scratch removal page for more information on this service before you consider paint touch-up, chip repair or additional damage repair. You, the consumer, should exhaust all of your possible options for the inexpensive repair of your vehicle.
Handled Quickly and Efficiently as Part of a Full-Service Detail Package
Where do these scuffs mostly show up? Most of the times where any high traffic contact exists, such as door handles and places like the gas door where the car is accidentally bumped or brushed with the gas pump nozzle or handle. Bumper scuffs also happen by brushes with other vehicles and walls. These can be handled quickly and efficiently as part of a full-service detail package.
Do you want this service performed in your area? We have a criteria page of what to look for in a reconditioning show performing minor body repairs. This is something you want to review. Also, make sure you review our Proper Insurance page to find a list of questions to ask about insurance before you agree to have the work done.
We hope you enjoyed this “how to” tip sheet. Access more tips, training, and insight by subscribing to the AutoDetailGuide.com E-Newsletter.
If you’ve had a vehicle for any length of time, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually experience wear and tear damage to your vehicle upholstery.
It could be a rip in your vinyl seat, a cigarette burn, fraying vinyl or leather armrests, the possibilities are endless.
As are the car upholstery repair options available to fix these problems.
People are Keeping Cars Longer
The cost of many new cars today is as much as our parents paid for their first house. Which is kind of insane to think about.
So it’s only natural that people are keeping cars longer than in past years.
Over time, wear and tear on car upholstery starts to become a problem that needs fixing.
And not only because of aesthetics.
Worn or delaminated vinyl and leather car upholstery not only looks bad, but it also feels horrible. And sometimes it hurts.
Did you ever get into a vehicle and rest your elbow onto an armrest as hard, frayed, pointy vinyl poked your skin?
Fixing car upholstery damage is sometimes referred to as leather and vinyl repair.
Regardless of what it’s called, as auto reconditioning services go, car upholstery repair is a fast-growing, high demand service.
Leather and Vinyl Car Upholstery Repair
A good auto reconditioning technician can repair virtually any type of material, from leather and vinyl to velour or fabric.
The nice part of leather and vinyl car upholstery repair is the flexibility in choosing the type of work to be done. It doesn’t always have to be repaired to ‘like new’ condition.
Sometimes making it look new will make the rest of the car look bad.
Whether it needs fully rebuilt, or simply touched up, the tech can easily make that decision after visual inspection of the damage.
And they can offer the customer more than one option based on their budget or overall condition of the rest of the vehicle.
Either way, most of the time the repair is actually stronger than even the original surrounding upholstery material.
Many parts of the car that are covered in leather or vinyl upholstery can be repaired rather than replaced.
From car seats and armrests to vinyl and leather dashboards and headrests. Replacement of these items should be a last resort if for no other reason than cost. It’s expensive to replace a worn armrest. And a dashboard cost is ridiculous.
Car upholstery repair of damaged leather and vinyl is generally the fastest and least costly way to go.
How much is the cost for car upholstery repair?
Depending on the severity of the damage, the cost for car upholstery repair ranges depending on both the severity of the damage and the type of upholstery material needing repair. For example, a one-inch tear in a vinyl seat might take an hour to repair and cost $50 to $70. While an armrest that’s covered in frayed or split leather might take one to two days depending on dry time and cost a few hundred dollars to fix.
It’s worth remembering that the cost of car upholstery repair is nothing when compared to the replacement cost of a seat, dashboard, or armrest.
Before you decide to get a damaged car seat replaced, check with your local detail shop first.
Many detail shops have in-house reconditioning services. So call around and ask about car upholstery repair services. Most cities and even smaller towns have at least one shop that offers these types of services.
We hope you enjoyed this overview of Car Upholstery Repair and Leather and Vinyl Repair Tips. Access more tips, training, and insight by subscribing to the AutoDetailGuide.com E-Newsletter. We are also very active on Facebook and Twitter.
As a detail shop business owner, the question you need to ask is why should I add any additional services other than detailing and washing cars. Why add window tinting? Why add bumper scratch and scuff repair services? Why add paint chip repair? Why? It’s simple, actually. Profits. The lifeblood of any business. Just like profits, detailing businesses need additional profit centers to survive.
Detailing Shops Need Additional Profit Centers to Survive
Detailing services are considered a commodity business. I don’t care how good you are or how loyal you believe your customers are. There is always going to be somebody out there running a business out of their home that can undercut your prices. If you rely on your current customers or pricing levels, you are setting yourself up for failure. Detailing shops need additional profit centers to survive and hedge their bets against business downturns and pricing pressure.
There are so many things that can happen to cars while they are driving that the possible ways for you to improve profits in your shop become almost endless. The issue though is time and money with the learning process. You need to learn how to do bumper scratch and scuff repair services before you can offer it to customers and make sure you are doing it perfectly. Detailing a car is one thing, but when you tell a car owner that you are going to make their scratched and scuffed-up bumper look new again, you better be able to perform as expected. Otherwise, your reputation will suffer and so will your bank account if you end up having to pay another business to fix your work.
The great part about having so many options is that you get to pick and choose the services that you want to offer. One of the things
that we did in our shop was simply found in local one-man operators that did the service that we were looking for and then add that to our offered services list. This got our name out there as being an expert in this area even though we weren’t actually the one’s performing the work. As you can see from the picture at the right, adding Bumper Scratch and Scuff Repair services is not something you can just decide to do overnight. You need to get some training on a few things, but mainly these primary areas of skills development:
First and foremost, you need to get great a properly mixing paint for the exact color match to the car you are painting. This is harder than it sounds because even the tiniest percentage off in mixing the paint and your bumper scratch and scuff repair won’t match the rest of the car.
Second and just as important, you need to practice spraying techniques to get your proper spraying pattern down. Spray too heavy and it will run. Not enough and you will need to go back and recoat several more times. Another problem area when spraying is applying too light a coat and then recoating several times after with the same density. This results in an almost powder coating type texture like a lot of outdoor furniture. Obviously none of these results will sit well with your customer. They are paying you for perfection and in their minds a bumper scratch and scuff repair will look like that section of their car is brand new again.
There are other areas that you will learn as you get trained on the proper ways to do the bumper scratch and scuff repair services, but issues like masking the car properly, having adequate ventilation and lighting, using the right sprayer and always wearing a respirator are a few that come to mind as being important.
One of the things that just amazed me was how much more credibility and respect we starting getting from local dealers and our own clients when we added these specialty bumper scratch and scuff repair services. It was like we were “just detailers” before, but now we can do things that a limited number of other people in town could do well. I also immediately noticed the quality and experience levels of job applicants at our shop improved dramatically because we advertised all of our services, including specialty add-ons like bumper scratch and scuff repair services and the fact that we provide on-the-job training. Employees will take a pay cut for things like quality training and even moreso for benefits. This also greatly improved our shop profitability because I could add a $300 bumper scratch and scuff repair add-on charge to a $150 detail and my profit ratios went through the roof. Supply costs are basically just the paint, some mixing equipment, sprayers and a larger compressor than you probably use now unless you have all air buffers, which usually isn’t the case.
I could probably write for days on this subject, but I figured I would post this and get some new information uploaded to our new auto detailing news and updates board. If you have some comments or questions you would like to add, we welcome the participation. Please complete our 2 question member form and that will give you access to post to areas of the site.
Thanks for stopping by and let us know if there’s anything we can help you get answered.
Detailing businesses must adapt to survive in tough economies like we’ve been dealing with for the past five years.
Sadly, the idea of simply doing a good job detailing customer cars is not enough anymore.
People want a “good deal” but they also don’t want to deal with the hassles of finding different companies to provide different services.
Time is money as they say and with the overworked consumer, many of your auto detailing customers just don’t have time to bring their car to different companies for servicing.
This is where you can benefit incredibly by adding Auto Reconditioning Services to your existing auto detail shop or mobile detailing business. Auto Reconditioning Services are “specialty” services that can dramatically improve your profitability.
Unfortunately, most of your customers don’t realize how much work goes into great detail.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t consider getting it detailed from the fly-by-night guy that operates out of his home in their neighborhood. Those are the people you are competing with. And one of the basic things you need to understand about the detailing business is once you decide to go down the path of competing on price, you will never recover.
You will forever be known as the discount detail guy and you might as well add a car wash to your business. So instead of cutting your throat by lowering your prices, why not add some services that your customers will gladly pay for?
As far as your customers are concerned, these are all services that only “experts” can offer. I’m talking about auto reconditioning services such as :
Adding these auto reconditioning services won’t cost you a massive investment of time or money. Most of the time you spend will be simply perfecting your skills, just like you already do with your buffing and other specialty services that you offer now.
The difference you will notice is how much more money your customers are willing to pay for these “specialty” auto reconditioning services versus your standard services.
These types of services are very profitable and will provide you with the added income and profits that your business needs to thrive in this any economic environment.
