autobody news setepmber 2010 southwest edition

talks with Autobody Newsabout her long-timeinterests, including financereform, insurance and

automotive repair,replacement partsand steering.Collision repairersnationwide needto payattention.Here’s why...

CaliforniaCongresswomanJACKIESPEIER

Texas Insurance Commissioner RemindsInsurers about State’s Steering LawsTexas Insurance Commissioner MikeGeeslin issued a bulletin Aug. 2 re-minding insurers writing PC insur-ance about their responsibilities underthe state’s steering laws. The notifica-tion also specifically stated that it isan “unfair claim settlement practicefor insurers to pay claimants anamount for the repair of the vehicle,including parts, that is not a reason-able amount for repairing or replacingthe property with other of like kindand quality.”

The commissioner’s notificationwas addressed to “ALL COMPANIES,CORPORATIONS, EXCHANGES, MUTUALS,RECIPROCALS, ASSOCIATIONS, LLOYDS,COUNTY MUTUALS OR OTHER INSURERS

WRITING PROPERTY AND CASUALTY IN-SURANCE IN THE STATE OF TEXAS ANDTO AGENTS AND REPRESENTATIVES ANDTHE PUBLIC GENERALLY.”

The bulletin reminded insurersthat the law prohibits an insurer fromdirectly or indirectly limiting cover-age under a policy by “specifying thebrand, type, kind, age, vendor, sup-plier, or condition of parts or productsthat may be used to repair the vehicle;or limiting the beneficiary of the pol-icy from selecting a repair person orfacility to repair damage to the vehi-cle.”

As with other states’ laws pro-hibiting steering, the Texas Insurance

by John YoswickSpecial to Autobody News

Let’s say the industry developed a for-mal set of “repair standards” for colli-sion repair. What then?

This was the question a CollisionIndustry Conference (CIC) committeeintroduced at CIC’s meeting inChicago in July.

Jeff Patti, chairman of the In-dustry Standards Committee, said hiscommittee felt that, in addition toworking on the proposed set of stan-dards, it should also begin theprocess of considering what might be

the next step. He outlined the pro-posed creation of a non-profit organ-ization that would oversee the finaldevelopment and implementation ofthe standards. Although designed pri-marily to prompt discussion of thetopic, Patti’s proposal included de-tails down to the level of potentialcosts for launching such an organiza-tion and possible fees for those wish-ing to participate.

Such an organization, Patti said,would be limited to one focus: the de-velopment and implementation of thestandards.

CIC Discussions: Repair Standards andFord Compares Non-OEM Parts

See Texas Steering Laws, Page 4

See CIC Meeting, Page 6

see page 25 inside

“You first came to national prominence as a shootingvictim in the prelude to the grisly nine hundred murder-suicides in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. At that time youwere a 28-year old lawyer and legislative aideaccompanying Congressman Leo Ryan to inquire aboutJim Jones’Peoples’ Temple cult.

Many of our readers know that five of your party,including Congressman Ryan, were killed, and that youwere left for dead for nearly 24 hours before helparrived.

What readers likely don’t know is that after yourrescue you endured a dozen surgeries to recover fromfive gunshot wounds, and that you still had bulletfragments in you when you first ran for Congress.

Tragedy struck again in 1994 when your firsthusband was killed when his car was hit by anunlicensed driver with faulty brakes.

What no one but you knows is how these horrificexperiences shaped your political views and perceptions.

Tell us how they did”

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Aegis Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Allen Samuels Dodge Katy . . . . . . . . . . 12Auto Body Guru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Autoland Scientech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20BMW Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . . 32Chacon Suzuki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Chassis Liner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Chevyland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39David McDavid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Ford Wholesale Parts DealersTX, OK, LA, NM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Fredy Kia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Gene Messer Hyundai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Garmat USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Global Finishing Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . 9GM Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . . . 33Goodson Honda West . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Honda/Acura Wholesale Parts Dealers 37Huffines Hyundai McKinney . . . . . . . . . . 8Huffines Hyundai Plano . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Hyundai Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . 28Kia Motors Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . 17

LKQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Mazda Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . 33Mercedes-Benz of Oklahoma . . . . . . . . 27Mike Calvert Toyota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Mitsubishi Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . 36MOPAR Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . 11Nissan/Infiniti Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . 34Parkway Family Mazda . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Performance Radiator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Pre Fab Ads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Ray Huffines Chevrolet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Replica Plastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31SCA Appraisal Company . . . . . . . . . . . 25Southwest Autogroup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Suzuki Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . 38Toyota Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . 36VIM Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Volkswagen of Tulsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Volkswagen Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . 30Volvo Wholesale Parts Dealers . . . . . . . 35Walcom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Young Chevrolet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Inde

xofAdvertisers

‘Bird Dogging’—Guerilla Tactics for Small

Body Shops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

‘Open Letter’ Leads to Lawsuit Involving

Aftermarket Certifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

1933 Delage D8S Roadster is Pebble’s Concours

d’Elegance ‘Best of Show’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2009 Dealer Wholesale Parts Down More than

19% from ‘08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Amaradio - The Lack of Industry Leadership . . . 35

Attanasio - INTERVIEW California Congresswoman

Jackie Speier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Attanasio, LKQ - LKQ is Fueling Smarter to

Expand its “State of Greenness” . . . . . . . . . . 15

Chess - Why is Camry “B” Pillar Reinforcement

Repair Done at the Roof Line? . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

CIC Discussions: Repair Standards and Ford

Compares Non-OEM Parts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Copper in Brake Pads Restricted in Washington

State, California Next? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Espersen - OE Repair Information Sets the

Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Evans - Building a Numbered Car Exactly like

the Red Mist, Part Two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Formula One Returns to U.S. at Track in

Austin, TX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

GM Awaits Fuel Ratings on Volt . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Louisiana Sees Decline in Motor Vehicle Theft . . 24

NACE Town Hall on Aftermarket Parts . . . . . . . . . 7

Nationwide Insurance Provides ‘Bait Cars’

in Houston. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

New Laws on Louisiana’s Books Include Tougher

Penalties for Texting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Northwest Louisiana Collision Repair Association

Hosts Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Record Attendance Forecasted for 2010 SCRS

Affiliate Leadership Conference . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Texas Insurance Commissioner Reminds Insurers

about State’s Steering Laws. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Toyota Produces Tacoma in San Antonio . . . . . . . 7

VW Passat Probed for Fire Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Weaver - Three Gallons of Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Williams - Parts for Profit 5—Pricing: Sensitive

and Often Misunderstood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Yoswick - Access and Use of Shop Data Raise

Privacy Concerns for the Industry . . . . . . . . . 34

Yoswick - I-CAR Announces New Structure to its

Training, Recognition Programs . . . . . . . . . . 10

Yoswick - Recyclers and Shops Meet To Discuss

Used Parts Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Contents

Code forbids an insurer from suggest-ing that a consumer must use a spe-cific repair facility, or facility on apreferred list, for the repair to be cov-ered by the policy.

Geeslin’s letter says that an in-surer may be in violation of the law ifthey tell a claimant that they may beresponsible for some repair costs ifthey choose a repair facility that is noton the insurer’s list.

The Department also expressedconcern that setting reimbursementrates for repair artificially low maylead to substandard repairs. The de-partment reminds insurers that the ma-jority of policies require insurers topay the amount necessary to repair orreplace the property with other(s) oflike kind and quality.

“It is an unfair claim settlementpractice for insurers to pay claimantsan amount for the repair of the vehi-cle, including parts, that is not a rea-sonable amount for repairing orreplacing the property with other oflike kind and quality or is not suffi-cient enough to make the repairs nec-essary for the manufacturer to honorthe vehicle warranty.”

The letter concludes with a warn-ing that the Department “will enforcethe rights of claimants to receive thebenefits to which they are contractu-ally entitled,” adding that, “The De-partment will investigate allegationsof unfair claims settlement practices,both in the context of individual casesand general business practices, andwill take appropriate enforcement ac-tion when evidence of unfair claimsettlement practices is demonstrated.”

The full text of the letter follows:

August 2, 2010TO: ALL COMPANIES, CORPORATIONS, EX-CHANGES, MUTUALS, RECIPROCALS,AS-SOCIATIONS, LLOYDS, COUNTY MUTUALSOR OTHER INSURERS WRITING PROPERTYAND CASUALTY INSURANCE IN THESTATE OF TEXAS AND TO AGENTS ANDREPRESENTATIVES AND THE PUBLIC GEN-ERALLY

RE: Automobile Repair Facilities

The purpose of this bulletin is to re-mind insurers of their responsibilitiesto claimants regarding payment fordamage to a motor vehicle and the se-lection of a repair person or facility in

accordance with Subchapter G, Chap-ter 1952 of the Texas Insurance Code(TIC) and Title 28, Section 5.501 ofthe Texas Administrative Code (TAC).The Department has received infor-mation which causes it to be con-cerned that insurers may be providingclaimants with additional notice re-garding motor vehicle repairs thatmay be in conflict with the TIC andTAC. Section 1952.301 of the TICspecifies that an insurer may not di-rectly or indirectly limit the insurer’scoverage under a policy coveringdamage to a motor vehicle by:

1. specifying the brand, type,kind, age, vendor, supplier, or condi-tion of parts or products that may beused to repair the vehicle; or

2. limiting the beneficiary of thepolicy from selecting a repair personor facility to repair damage to the ve-hicle.

Section 1952.302 of the TICspecifies that an insurer, an employeeor agent of an insurer, an insuranceadjuster, or an entity that employs aninsurance adjuster may not state orsuggest, either orally or in writing, toa beneficiary that the beneficiarymust use a specific repair person orfacility or a repair person or facilityidentified on a preferred list compiledby an insurer for the damage repair orparts replacement to be covered bythe policy.Section 5.501 of the TAC requires aninsurer to provide a notice to the in-sured or third-party claimant whomakes a claim regarding damage toa vehicle. The required notice speci-fies that a claimant has the right toselect where a motor vehicle is re-paired and the parts used for repairs.The notice also specifies that an in-surer is not required to pay morethan a reasonable amount for suchrepairs and parts.

The Department requests that in-surers review all notices that are beingprovided to claimants regarding motorvehicle repairs to ensure the noticesare not in conflict with the TIC andTAC. For example, providing noticeto a claimant, either verbally or inwriting, that implies the claimant maybe responsible for paying for certainrepair costs if the claimant chooses arepair facility that is not on the in-surer’s list of preferred repair facili-ties, may be in conflict with the TICand TAC because it would indirectlylimit the coverage under the policy bydiscouraging the claimant from se-lecting a repair facility that is not on

the list. While the prescribed noticespecifies that an insurer is not requiredto pay more than a reasonable amountfor repairs and parts, neither the pre-scribed notice nor policy languagesuggest that the reasonable amount forrepairs or parts be based on a limitednumber of preferred repair facilities orspecific repair parts.

The Department is also con-cerned that setting reimbursementrates artificially low for specificmotor vehicle repairs and parts thatare used to make the repairs may leadto substandard repairs, which mayalso impact the warranty on a vehi-cle. The majority of personal auto-mobile insurance policies requireinsurers to pay the amount necessaryto repair or replace the property withother(s) of like kind and quality. It isan unfair claim settlement practicefor insurers to pay claimants anamount for the repair of the vehicle,including parts, that is not a reason-able amount for repairing or replac-ing the property with other of likekind and quality or is not sufficientenough to make the repairs necessaryfor the manufacturer to honor the ve-hicle warranty.

Sections 541.060 and 542.003 ofthe TIC and section 21.203 of the TACrequire all insurers to attempt in goodfaith to effectuate “fair and equitable”settlements of claims and not engagein unfair settlement practices. The De-partment will enforce the rights ofclaimants to receive the benefits towhich they are contractually entitled.The Department will investigate alle-gations of unfair claims settlementpractices, both in the context of indi-vidual cases and general businesspractices, and will take appropriateenforcement action when evidence ofunfair claim settlement practices isdemonstrated.

Questions regarding this bulletinmay be directed to David Nardecchia,Deputy Commissioner,

Personal & Commercial LinesDivision, at (512) 305-7544 [email protected] orto Leslie Hurley, Manager, PersonalLines Division, at (512) 322-2266 [email protected].

Mike GeeslinCommissioner of InsuranceFor more information contact:[email protected]


Continued from Front page

Texas Steering Laws


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It would work to gain consen-sus from “all stakeholders in theindustry” for the standards, hesaid, thus following the guidelinesestablished by the American Na-tional Standards Institute (ANSI),the body that essentially sets stan-dards for ‘standards develop-ment.’

“Its mission would be to establishand manage collision repair standardsdeveloped by collision industry stake-holders,” Patti said. “That’s every-body in this room. Everyone will havea say in what goes on. This won’t belimited to any one particular seg-ment.”

As hoped, the proposal didprompt discussion at CIC. ScottBiggs, of Assured Performance Net-work, said he felt that rather than cre-ate another industry organization thatwould need to build awareness, cred-itability and funding, the standardscould instead be overseen by an exist-ing industry organization such as I-CAR.

Others questioned the need for in-volvement of anyone other than colli-sion repairers in creating repairstandards.

“It’s ultimately the repairer whowould abide by the standards,” AaronSchulenburg, executive director ofthe Society of Collision Repair Spe-cialists (SCRS), said. “When you have‘stakeholders,’ there are special inter-ests involved. There are lots of organ-izations out there that are directed forconsumer protection that are easilyswayed and don’t necessarily protectthe consumer. There’s a lot of skepti-cism out there about abiding by repairstandards that are developed by otherentities with vested interest in howthey want us to act.”

CIC administrator Jeff Hendleragreed.

“Developing standards for thecollision repair industry does not needto involve insurers, database providersor anybody else but those peopletouching that car,” Hendler said. “Thebody shop person already is standingside by side with an insurer who issaying, ‘Yeah, I know that’s the rightway to repair the car, but we won’tpay for it.’ That’s BS.”

Patti and others said that part ofwhat ANSI requires in the develop-ment of standards is consensus of allaffected stakeholders. Part of why thestandards should be overseen by an in-dependent sole-focus organization, hesaid, is to avoid influence by specialinterests.

“This has to be a consumer drivenorganization,” he said. “We have tolook out for our mutual customer.”

Schulenburg also questioned howeffective the industry would be at try-ing to implement “voluntary” stan-dards.

“Things that are voluntary tendnot to be followed, and those that dofollow them in our industry often seeno benefit for doing so,” he said.“We’re often held to the lowest com-mon denominator.”

The discussion of the issue willcontinue at a meeting scheduled forLas Vegas on November 4, the dayfollowing the next regular CIC meet-ing.

Ford compares non-OEM partsAlso at CIC in Chicago, Ford MotorCompany announced the findings ofits comparison of some Ford service

parts to corresponding non-OEM re-placement bumper beams, bumperbrackets, and radiator core supports,Ford cited some critical differences.Spot welds on some of the non-OEMparts did not meet Ford specifica-tions, for example, and the type ofmaterial (as well as its thickness andweight) often differed from the OEMpart.

The non-OEM radiator core sup-port for the 2004-07 F-150, for ex-ample, was made out of plastic ratherthan magnesium and steel like theOEM service part. A non-OEM re-placement for the 2005-09 FordMustang’s single-piece ultra-high-strength steel bumper beams wasfound to be made of two mild-steelpieces welded together. A non-OEMbumper bracket for the 2006–08Ford F-150 were half as thick andweighed less than half what theOEM parts weigh.

Paul Massie, powertrain and col-lision product marketing manager forFord, said he believes that Ford’sanalysis of the parts shows they arenot of equivalent “like kind and qual-ity,” a requirement for replacement


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CIC Meeting

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NACE Town Hall on Aftermarket PartsCreated especially for collision repairprofessionals, an official NACE TownHall meeting will be held during Auto-motive Service & Repair Week (ASRW)on Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010 from11:30–1:00p.m. Sponsored byASA, thisevent will be a platform to discuss theuse of aftermarket parts. ASRW isscheduled for Oct. 10–13 at the Man-dalay Bay Convention Center in LasVegas and includes NACE and CARS.

The panel discussion, titled “IsCertification the Best AftermarketParts Policy for Consumers and Re-pairers?” will include various indus-try segments and entities that have (orplan to) establish parts certificationprograms. The program will focus onthese key questions:● What does parts certification meanto consumers and repairers?● Has parts certification been effec-tive to date?● What should determine whether aparts certification program works ornot?● With multiple parts certificationprograms in place and more in the de-velopmental stage, does this hurt orenhance the effectiveness of certifica-tion? Where does the proliferation ofthese programs stop?● Would consumers and repairers ben-

efit from a single parts certificationprogram versus multiple programs?● Should state governments and/orthe federal government be involved inparts certification? Why or why not?

Tickets are $40, include a boxlunch and are available in the onlineattendee registration systems forNACE and CARS.

“There's no bigger debate in col-lision repair right now, than aftermar-ket parts,” says ASA president andchief staff executive Ron Pyle. “Asthe pulse of the industry, we realizedwe needed to allot extra time for thisimportant discussion at NACE.”

Many new show features and in-dustry forums are currently in devel-opment for ASRW 2010. Onlineregistration is now open and offersvarious package options starting at$210 and Expo registration availablefor just $15 until the August 31 earlycut-off. Online housing is also open,and provides the lowest hotel rates inrecent years.

Toyota Produces Tacoma in San AntonioProduction of the Tacoma pickuptruck began last month but was offi-cially noted August 6 with a ceremonyat Toyota Motor Manufacturing,Texas, Inc. The $100 million invest-ment boosts total investment to $1.4billion.

Texas Governor Rick Perryjoined San Antonio community lead-ers, team members, suppliers as wellas Toyota officials including ToyotaMotor Corporation Executive VicePresident Atsushi Niimi.

Tacoma’s production move toTMMTX was announced a year agoand adds 1,000 jobs. Today, over2,800 team members are employed atTMMTX and the plant is fully posi-tioned to ramp up Toyota’s pickuptruck production for the Americanmarket.

“The San Antonio plant hasshown a great deal of resilience dur-ing the recession and is fully preparedto ramp-up Tacoma production,” saidChris Nielsen, TMMTX president.“By building Tacoma in Texas, we areable to consolidate pickup truck pro-duction in the United States under oneroof, allowing us to fully utilize theplant’s capacity.”

During the economic downturn,TMMTX was one of several Toyota

plants impacted by poor sales. How-ever, TMMTX retained its workforceinstead of laying off, in order tostrengthen team members’ skills andimprove plant processes.

About ToyotaToyota established operations inNorth America in 1957 and currentlyoperates 14 manufacturing plants, in-cluding one under construction.

There are more than 1,800 Toy-ota, Lexus and Scion dealerships inNorth America which sold more than2.05 million vehicles in 2009. Toyotadirectly employs more than 35,000 inNorth America and its investmenthere is currently valued at more than$23 billion, including sales and man-ufacturing operations, research anddevelopment, financial services anddesign. Toyota's annual purchasingof parts, materials, goods and servicesfrom North American suppliers totalsmore than $25 billion.

Toyota currently produces 12 ve-hicles in North America, including theAvalon, Camry, Corolla, Highlander,Matrix, RAV4, Sienna, Sequoia,Tacoma, Tundra, Venza and the LexusRX 350.

For more information about Toy-ota, visit www.toyota.com.

www.autobodynews.comCHECK IT OUT!

parts in 20 states.But Massie said that perhaps

more important than comparisonand testing of individual parts is todetermine how they impact the over-all response of the vehicle in a colli-sion. Non-OEM bumper parts thatare thicker or heavier than Fordparts, for example, Massie said,could affect that response just asmuch as those that are lighter andthinner.

That’s why Ford engineers alsoconducted simulated computer mod-eling of the non-OEM parts’ responsein a crash, again finding significantdifferences to the Ford parts.

“The use of these tested after-market copy parts will change the dy-namics of the crash process resultingin a differing response from the vehi-cle safety systems than those cali-brated by Ford Motor Company,” thecompany concluded based on its re-search.

Massie said he hopes Ford will dosome actual crash testing of the parts,

but recognizes there is ample compe-tition within the company for the re-search time and funds that wouldrequire.

Other news at CICIn other news and discussion at CICin Chicago:● A CIC subcommittee shared a doc-ument outlining proposed standardsfor the digital images of damaged ve-hicles that insurers require. The goalof the standards is to help reducesome of the variation in insurer re-quirements, subcommittee chairmanRandy Hanson said, although aswith all standards, it won’t eliminatesome individual circumstances underwhich an insurer may require addi-tional digital images. “But for theeveryday claim, 80 percent of themthat you deal with every day, we thinkthere’s a great case for standards,”Hanson said. An outline of the pro-posed standard is available under the“Repairer-Insurer Relations TaskForce” section of the CIC website(www.ciclink.com).● State Farm explained that “SelectService” shops will now receive a3-digit number—similar to a credit

score—from the insurer based onits measurement of the shop’s per-formance. The number, on a scaleof 1 to 1,000, will be updatedmonthly and is established using aproprietary formula that takes intoaccount the key performance indi-cators (KPIs) State Farm uses totrack each shop’s performance. Thereport also indicates how theshop’s number compares withother shops in the program (eventaking into account, State Farm’sGeorge Avery said, such things asdifferences in the types of vehiclesrepaired), and lists three areas thatthe shop could focus on to improveits score.● Mike Quinn, co-owner of Ari-zona-based 911 Collision Centers,was named as the next chairman ofthe conference. Quinn has been along-time participant at CIC as wellas in the National Auto Body Coun-cil (NABC). His company operatesseven shops in Arizona and Ne-vada. He will succeed RussellThrall who completes his secondyear as chairman at the last CICmeeting of the year on November 3in Las Vegas.


Continued from Page 6

CIC Meeting

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Nationwide Insurance Pro-vides ‘Bait Cars’ in HoustonAccording to reports made by Insur-ance Journal, Nationwide Insurancepresented the Houston Police Depart-ment, the Harris County Sheriff’s De-partment, and the Webster PoliceDepartment with a bait vehicle eachto assist with their respective anti-theft/bait vehicle programs. Houstonis number 4 in the country for thetotal number of stolen vehicles in2009, according to the National In-surance Crime Bureau.

Bait vehicles are standard, un-marked cars that are used by law en-forcement to apprehend car thieves.The vehicles are outfitted with spe-cial equipment such as GPS trackingand remote-control immobilizers thatallow officers to monitor the vehicleand seize suspects without engagingin a vehicle pursuit.

Vehicle theft rates are droppingin almost every region where Na-tionwide has implemented the“Bait Vehicle” program. Currentlythere are over 55 bait vehicles inservice or in progress in 17 differ-ent states.

Nationwide’s bait vehicle pro-gram is supported by industry part-ners who donate the parts and servicenecessary to repair the vehicles.

John Edelen said that three years agowhen he stepped out of retirement totake on the role as CEO of I-CAR,someone well-known and respected inthe industry asked him why he would“waste his time” with an organizationlike I-CAR that was “no longer rele-vant.”

“At first I was stunned, and thenI was really … angry,” Edelen said,obviously choosing the adjective care-fully, generating laughs among the200 people gathered in Chicago for anI-CAR event this summer. “I-CAR ir-relevant? An organization that was es-tablished by the inter-industry 30

years ago to meetthe training needsof the inter-indus-try … irrelevant?After 30 years ofefforts by volun-teers to providethat training … ir-relevant? After the

industry had spent $170 million overthat period of 30 years … irrelevant?Not if I could help it.”

Over the last three years, Edelenhas overseen I-CAR’s efforts to reachout to the industry to find out what thetraining organization was doing rightand what needed to change to ensurethat its training and recognition pro-grams were focused, valuable – and rel-evant – to shops, insurers and educators.

Edelen said the results of that ef-fort, which were rolled out at theChicago meeting, is I-CAR’s new“Professional Development Program.”

Under the program, I-CAR hasidentified the knowledge required forthree levels of development (“Pro-Level 1, 2 and 3”) within each ofseven job classifications, such as “es-timator” and “non-structural techni-cian.” Other job classifications will bedeveloped over time.

The I-CAR or other training andtesting recommended to reach each ofthe three levels is also identified, pro-viding job-specific training paths.

The “Platinum Individual” and“Gold Class” recognition program re-quirements will also transition over a3-year period. By 2014, the “Platinum”designation will require having com-pleted the training to obtain “ProLevel

3” in the appropriate job classification,as well as completion of six hours of

training per year. A“Gold Class” shopwill be required tohave at least one“Platinum Individ-ual” in each of fourtypes of jobs (esti-mator, steel struc-tural technician,

non-structural technician and refinishtechnician).

One key change to the Platinumand Gold Class programs, I-CAR’s JeffPeevy pointed out, is that as the transi-tion moves forward, I-CAR’s hands-onwelding and sectioning qualificationtesting becomes part of the requirementto reach various “ProLevels” for somejob classifications. The steel weldingqualification test, for example, is re-quired in order for a steel structuraltechnician to achieve ProLevel 1.

Similarly, paint company certifi-cation is required for a refinish tech-nician to achieve ProLevel 3.

Peevy acknowledges the systemis almost a return to one that I-CARused in the past, before abandoning itin a effort to make it easier for techni-cians and shops to know what wasneeded to earn or maintain Platinum orGold Class status. But that simplifiedsystem, Peevy said, sometimes led tostudents earning needed points by tak-ing any class that was available ratherthan one relevant to their work. And inrecent years, he said, I-CAR has de-

veloped tools likeits online “Train-ing Manager” thathelps a businesstrack what trainingits employees haveor need, making areturn to more job-specific Platinum

and Gold Class requirements easier forthe business to manage, Peevy said.

Edelen acknowledged that hedoesn’t believe that all of thesechanges are apt to cause “people whodon’t invest in training today to sud-denly start.”

“But I believe the people in ourindustry who are interested in im-proving their individual personal per-

formance or the performance of theirbusiness now have access to a well-or-ganized, well-structured program ofprofessional development, one thatwill be better support their personaland business goals,” he said. “And Ibelieve that creates a competitive ad-vantage for them.”

So, too, he said, the changes willhelp make the Platinum and GoldClass designations more meaningful.

“We as an industry are reachingthe point where NOT being a Plat-inum Training individual or GoldClass facility also will mean some-thing,” Edelen said. “With thesechanges, it will become quickly andincreasingly more apparent whichbusiness are prepared through trainingto address the increasing complexityof repair…and (which) businesseshave failed and continue to fail to pre-pare themselves for the future. By notselecting a Gold Class business, the

consumer is unknowingly acceptingthe risk of having repairs completedby undertrained workers.”

Details on the new training andrecognition programs are available atthe I-CAR website (www.i-car.com).

In other changes, I-CAR execu-tives at the Chicago meeting said inthe coming years there likely will bemore variance in the length of classes(currently most are four hours) basedon necessary content. Pricing is alsolikely to change, although they did notprovide details; one option may be theability to purchase all “ProLevel 1”training needed for a certain job clas-sification at a package price.

More online training options arealso planned by early 2011. I-CAR isalso working on a system, also ex-pected in early 2011, that would allowveteran technicians to “test out” of atleast the ProLevel 1 requirements fortheir job classification.


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Industry Insightwith John Yoswick

John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been writingabout the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASHNetwork (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com).He can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Bill Stage

Jeff Peevy

John Edelen


PRICING is a sensitive and some-times misunderstood issue. In thismonth’s article I’ll attempt to cover

some basic facts,clear up miscon-ceptions, and—at-tempt to increaseyour opportunitiesfor communicationwith customersand management.

Pricing isan issue with no

absolute answers, only guidelines;since a tremendous number of vari-ables make up the final cost. The re-tail price of parts is fixed andpublished. Profit is the differ-ence—but how much profit is there,and who gets it?

Let’s look at some of the vari-ables:1) Actual cost of item from differentsuppliers2) Published cost of item from manu-facturer3) Monthly changes between actualand published costs4) Shipping costs

5) Invoice discount6) Stock order discount7) Emergency order charges8) Wholesale incentives

All of these variables, and more,need to be considered by the dealer-ship when deciding what their pricingstructure will be.

The parts manager’s job is to findthe lowest possible cost for all of hisparts. I try to use every ordering trickthere is, and plan every purchase. Anyfunds saved in this way usually willgo into a separate account, contributeto the parts department net profit, andare not to be used to determine thepricing of any parts. Any funds usedto procure parts, freight, ordercharges, etc., also go into separate ac-counts for expense analysis. Discounts

are seldom larger than 5%, whileorder and freight charges are usually10%, or more. To make things easier,keep all of your parts on the shelf at atrue published cost figure.

Almost all body shop sales are re-stricted to only one price, the pub-lished retail price. All current

estimating systems use this price, andso do all insurance companies. Thismeans the discount given by the deal-ership is the only profit the shop willget.

This will set up a conflict of in-terest—both the dealership and thebody shop survive on the same smallprofit margin, and both need as muchprofit as possible in order to stay inbusiness. There is no need for conflict,however, if there is open communica-

tion between you. Everyone stayshappy as long as both sides of theequation understand one another.

Popular opinion would have usbelieve there is a wide profit marginat the dealership level, and althoughthis may have once been the case, it isnot so now. The pricing structure usedto include wholesale incentives that inmany cases allowed dealers to dis-count deeply and still make good prof-its. This is not true today.

With the current pricing trends,there is usually only a 40% differencebetween the dealer cost and the pub-lished list price.

A fair deal is to split the profit, re-sulting in a 20% discount to the bodyshop.

This leaves the parts departmenta 10% profit for expenses, a 5% profitfor commissions, and a 5% net profitfor the dealer.

Discounts which are greater than20% are rare, and depend entirelyupon the manufacturer’s wholesale in-centive programs.

These figures are based on partsordered on a stocking basis, not spe-

Parts for Profit 5—Pricing: Sensitive and Often Misunderstood

Both the dealership and the body shopsurvive on the same small profit margin...there is no need for conflict if there isopen communication. Everyone stays

happy if there is understanding.

Larry Williams


cial orders. Freight and special ordercharges always reduce your profits. Abody shop should always make everyeffort to order parts well in advance,because if a part must be ordered onan emergency basis the freight alonecan wipe out any profit which youstand to gain.

Talk to your partners; familiarizeyourself with their policies, and nego-tiate a pricing structure that benefitseveryone concerned.

Pricing for the retail market is adifferent issue. The following infor-mation is primarily for parts man-agers. You cannot exist on wholesalebusiness alone. A 20% profit marginis not enough to cover your overhead.A business must make a minimum of30% gross profit in order to survive.You need to adjust your pricing to ac-complish this goal.

You begin with the 40% profitmargin that the manufacturer allows,and then calculate your invoice costs.I allow $2.00 per invoice—this coversthe paper, printer, and handling foreach sale. The problem is obvious. A$5.00 sale results in zero profit, andany sale less than that is a departmentloss!

The solution is called matrix pric-ing. You create a pricing structurebased on your parts cost that coversyour expenses. I have found that mostcustomers are not likely to questionitems that cost less than $50.00.Therefore, you keep the manufac-turer’s retail price in place for yourhigher priced items, and adjust all ofthe prices in the less than fifty dollar

range. Use a sliding scale based onyour cost to ensure enough depart-mental profit on lower priced items inorder to make it profitable for you tocontinue to sell them. I usually post asign stating that $2.00 is the minimumsale amount. That starts the matrix.Starting from that minimum, I use aninverse profit-percent/sale-ratio thatends at the $50.00 level.

You will need to use your ownjudgment when setting up your profit

margins. Don’t be greedy! Financialsuccess is based upon repeat business;not one-time sales. Analyze your salesand target the 30% goal. Your monthlystatement will give you all the infor-mation you need.

The last and best check on yourpricing program is the feedback fromyour counter personnel. They willtell you whether or not your cus-

tomers are accepting your matrix. Ihave heard this called the “flinch”method.

Example:Let’s imagine that a potential cus-tomer asks about brake pads, and youtell him that the price is $20.00. Thecustomer has no reaction. You thentell him that the price is per side($40.00). The customer still has no re-action. You then tell him that price is

per pad ($80.00). The customer nowhas a questioning expression on hisface. You have just reached the“flinch” point (and probably just lostyour customer).

This is not a technique I recom-mend for a real transaction, but willserve in principle to check your pric-ing matrix.

Again, I strongly emphasize thatevery dealer is different, and that thereis no standard pricing formula foreveryone.

You are the only one who canfind the proper balance-point betweenprofit and loss, based on all the met-rics we’ve discussed in this series ofarticles.

See Larry’s previous Parts forProfit articles at www.autobo-dynews.com. Go to www.autobo-dynews.com/content/distinctive-dealerships.html

Larry Williams is an innovativeparts manager who has won nationalawards and over 30 years of experi-ence in creating and managing prof-itable departments. He can be reachedfor consultation [email protected].

Parts managers cannot exist on wholesalebusiness alone. 20% is not enough to

cover your overhead. 30% gross profit isa mininum and your pricing needs to

accomplish this goal.


LKQ operates from nearly 300 facili-ties nationwide and surpassed $2 bil-lion revenue in 2009. It’s an enormouscompany that could potentially burnmany unneccesary thousands of dol-lars on fuel and electricity everymonth. But, by staying ahead of thegame in its pursuit of ultimate green-ness and sustainability in parts recy-cling, LKQ has quickly become aleader in re-using, remanufacturingand recycling everything it can whileusing fewer of the world’s natural re-sources in the process.

LKQ is a recognized leader in re-cycled auto parts and uses environ-mentally friendly business practices

and while recycling 492,000 vehicleslast year. That is equivalent to recy-cling about 540,000 tons of steel,47,000 tons of aluminum, and 13,000tons of copper, according to the com-pany’s web site. Through its opera-tions, LKQ helped to reducegreenhouse gas emissions by over890,000 tons, which is about the sameas the annual emissions of a city ofabout 82,200 people.

“In addition, LKQ recently part-nered with the Arbor Day Foundationto give its customers and anyone elseinterested in helping the environmentan additional way to be green in thecompany’s LKQ Get Green promo-tion, which ran from April 22 to June30 of this year. Together with its cus-tomers, LKQ was able to plant a forestat the conclusion of the program.”

Paul Shaw is LKQ’s Central Re-gion Vice-President, overseeing Col-orado, South Dakota, Nebraska,Western Iowa, Western and SouthernMissouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas,Northern and Western Louisiana.

Autobody News recently talkedat length with him about the latest de-velopments in his region. One of hisresponsibilities is to see LKQ and

Keystone become greener, as part ofan ongoing, proactive journey for theworld’s number one auto parts recy-cler.

Shaw’s job is a huge undertakingas he oversees 34 LKQ and Keystonerecycling salvage yard locations, twowheel plants and six bumper recyclingfacilities. More than $300 million inannual sales comes out of his region,making it a significant part of theoverall LKQ picture, which consistsof nearly 300 facilities nationwide.

In the newest facility in Houston,Shaw oversees a mega-warehouse thatacts as an LKQ aftermarket facility, abumper manufacturing facility and a

full recyclingfacility allunder oneroof.

A B N :Fuel conser-vation is anobvious stepto improve

greenness. What are you doing tomake your trucks more fuel-efficientoverall?

Shaw: The first thing we do isupdate our fleet regularly. A majorityof our newer trucks are equipped withidle shutdowns, depending on eachstate’s requirements.

For example, in Texas we havelaws that only allow 10–15 minutes ofidle time. Cutting down on idle timecan save a good deal of fuel while

benefiting the environment. Texas isstarting to implement many of thelaws that have been in effect in Cali-fornia for years, so that helps us tostay on top of things and keep things

in perspective. We also mandate ouremployees, even in areas where we donot have those laws, that they shut uptheir vehicles. We started implement-ing that several years ago when fuelwent up to $3–4 per gal-lon. That can really startto sting when you con-sider how much fuel weuse as a company.

One way we are try-ing to be more fuel-effi-cient is by re-using fuelon the Keystone side. Were-use all of the fuel thatwe pull from recycledvehicles and use it atmany of our locations.

This has been verycost effective for us and in some caseshas provided enough recycled fuel tosupply the entire fleet in certain mar-kets. We feel that if we can run on free(recycled fuel), we will obviously gothat route because it not only benefitsour company, but also the environment.

ABN: What other methods areyou using with your vehicles to savefuel?

Shaw: We changed all of ourforklifts to electric, and all of the newforklifts we put into our newest facil-ities are all-electric. We also buy gas-powered forklifts where we can, sothat we can re-use our recycled gas inthose forklifts while saving propane.We’re also always updating our oldervehicles to get better mileage. A lot of

our old box trucks didn’t havethe proper wind deflectors onthe front, so we added those tomany of the old trucks. Then,we started analyzing gear ra-tios on many of our semis andthe drive trains they use. Youcan change out the ratio of asemi and save$20,000–30,000 annually infuel just by altering the ratio ofa tractor trailer.

ABN: Have you altered yourdistribution strategies over the yearsto save more fuel that way?

Shaw: We are constantly lookingat our truck routes to save on fuel andto cut back on our trucks crossing

paths. We started doing this severalyears back when fuel prices were skyhigh. It made us stop and take a longlook at our truck routes. We put a GPSsystem on each truck for a week at a

time to map out each route. We thencompiled the data to show the mostcost effective routes and to ensure thatour trucks were not crossing pathswhen they did not need to. The nextstep we took was to combine LKQand Keystone routes where it madesense. With the information from theGPS and the combination of LKQ andKeystone routes, we were able tochange 60% of our routes to be morecost effective and fuel efficient in Dal-las alone. Our ultimate goal is to nothave more than one truck going to thesame location.

ABN: Adaptability and constantchange seems to be the norm in pur-suing the newest technologies toachieve complete greenness.

Shaw: Absolutely. Technology isa rapidly evolving industry. What wedid last year is already outdated today.My regional managers meet often todiscuss the changes in technology andways to make our region more green.By staying on top of the newest tech-nology advances, we can use that toour advantage to benefit our companyand the environment as a hole. One ofour most recent advances is the open-ing of our first green warehouse inWichita, Kansas. Some of our cost ef-fective areas of that warehouse in-clude the heating system, skylights,motion sensor T5 lights, and the ven-tilation system. The energy costs as-sociated with this warehouse areexceptional.

LKQ is Fueling Smarter to Expand its “State of Greenness”

CompanyConnections with Ed Attanasio

Ed Attanasio is an automotive journalist based inSan Francisco, California. He can be reached [email protected].

LKQ’s enormous warehouse in Houston, Texas has received multiple accoladesfor being a mega-green facility

Storing recycled fuels extracted from salvaged vehiclesfor re-use is an integral part of the whole green plan atLKQ

LKQ makes being green a priority, by leading the way in re-using,remanufacturing and recycling 492,000 vehicles annually

Some say the recession is over, butfrom my observations, that recoveryhasn’t trickled down to most bodyshops yet. I see the large shops goingafter the incidental jobs that used tosustain smaller shops. When some oftheir DRP work slows down or driesup, they begin to look for ways to pickup jobs that normally went to theirsmaller competitors.

I’ve written before about theowner of a small shop in my area whohad a direct guerilla strategy for timeswhen business was slow. He droveover to the local college and walkedaround the parking lot looking fordamage on the Lexuses, BMWs andMercedes affluent parents had pur-chased for their college-age kids. Hewould write a rough estimate on theback of one of his business cards andstick in by the driver-side door handleand lock. He told me he always pickedup a few jobs to get through a slowtime.

I’ve suggested a similar tactic toone of my clients who has come underattack by large competitors who aretrying to capture the authorized colli-sion repair status he has enjoyed formany years. At this point he needs aguerilla strategy to counter the bigshop warfare advantage he faces fromcompetitors who employ top profes-sional marketing attack dogs. The ap-proach I’ve suggested is an expandedversion of the college parking lot so-licitations. I described this briefly inan article in 2008, but the economicclimate today calls for a more power-ful version of this guerilla tactic.

The key to the success of thestrategy is numbers. Sales organiza-tions like Amway would call it “feet

on the street.” Multi-level marketingprograms depend on large numbers ofsales people making thousands ofsmall sales. Ironically the tough econ-omy makes it possible for a smallbody shop to recruit one or two dozenfairly good “bird dog” sales people tobe out hustling jobs. Dealerships andcompeting body shops have gone outof business in many areas, leaving nu-merous collision-repair trained peopleout of work. It’s not likely these peo-ple would work for straight commis-sion under normal circumstances butin this economy any additional in-come would be welcome.

I’ve found the main objection toimplementing a program like this isthe fear of being represented by indi-viduals whose appearance or de-meanor would reflect badly on theimage of the shop. During affluenttimes applicants for this kind of non-salary work might be social dropoutsor even homeless types, but the ranksof the unemployed today encompassthe full spectrum of skills and abili-ties. The shop owner can be in a posi-tion to pick and choose from higherquality prospects.

Another concern is liability. Awell-designed independent contractoragreement is essential to stipulate thatthe “bird dog” is merely solicitingprospects to come in to the shop for anactual estimate and not empowered tomake any firm offer or contract for theshop.

With the shop thus protectedfrom liability, it’s now necessary toprotect your “bird dog” from ex-ploitation or unfair conflicts. The bestprotection is a carefully constructedestimate/business card that specifies

the fact that the estimate is not a firmoffer. The card must also contain aunique code number for the “birddog” so he or she will get propercredit for the job if it comes through.

It’s also essential to create anotherlevel of commission protection. Notevery prospective customer will bringin the estimate card with the code. Tobe certain the right person gets credit,it’s best to create specific territories.Since the best areas to canvas for dam-aged vehicles are large parking lots,specific malls, college lots, departmentstore and grocery store lots, theseshould each be assigned to a definiteindividual. It then becomes the re-sponsibility of the shop front-desk per-son or estimator to ask where thecustomer learned of the shop and tocarefully note the answer to promptproper credit for the referral source.

Once a crew of reliable “birddogs” has been assembled, it’s neces-

sary to train them on writing the roughestimates they will be placing on dam-aged vehicles. A cheat sheet with threelevels of fender damage, bumper dam-age, hood and other outer panel dam-age pricing should provide the “birddog” with the ability to quickly decideif a damaged fender calls for a low-ball economy model price, a mid-range price, or a high-end vehicleprice. Keeping in mind that the cardclearly states this is an approximationand not a firm quotation, the real goalis to get the prospective customer tocome in for a real estimate.

In addition to the obvious benefitof bringing in jobs, there is the long-term possibility that each new cus-tomer will become a customer for life.And there is the added possibility thata “bird dog” will find sufficient satis-faction in the job to continue workingfor the shop full-time, or just continueworking in the industry.


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‘Bird Dogging’—Guerilla Tactics for Small Body Shops

On Creative Marketingwith Thomas Franklin

Tom Franklin has been a sales and marketing consultant for forty years. He haswritten numerous books and provides marketing solutions and services for manybusinesses. He can be reached at (323) 871-6862 or at [email protected] Tom’s columns at www.autobodynews.com under Columnists > Franklin

Formula One Returns to U.S. at Track in Austin, TXAccording to reports made byBloomberg News, Formula One autoracing plans to return to the U.S. in2012 after a five-year absence with anevent at a track in Austin, Texas.

The London-based series ownedby CVC Capital Partners Ltd. said onits website late yesterday it reached a10-year accord with sports event pro-moter Full Throttle Productions LP inAustin to organize the race.

The last Formula One race in

the U.S. was at the IndianapolisMotor Speedway in 2007. Mercedesteam Chief Executive Nick Fry andothers have since called for a returnto the U.S. to help carmakers com-peting in the series to promote theirbrands.

All 12 Formula One teams arebased in Europe. Charlotte, NorthCarolina-based USF1 failed to raisefinancial backing to start the seasonin March.


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NSF Files Suit Against CAPANSF International has filed suitagainst the Certified Automotive PartsAssociation (CAPA) and CAPA Exec-utive Director Jack Gillis.

NSF says its suit is in response toan “Open Letter” that Gillis, in his ca-pacity as CAPA’s Executive Director,circulated to members of the Automo-tive Body Parts Association on July28, 2010. Attorneys for NSF demand-ing a public retraction from what theyclaimed were misstatements of factand out and out distortions of NSF’sposition in relationship to the auto-motive aftermarket and its certifica-tion programs.

In February this year NSF Inter-national announced the launch of itsnew Automotive Parts CertificationProgram to address concerns regard-ing consumer safety and compro-mised automobile crashworthinessfrom the use of untested aftermarketstructural parts. The NSF AutomotiveParts Certification Program said it of-fers independent, third-party certifi-cation of steel bumpers, step bumpers,absorbers, reinforcement bars andbrackets, and that certification hasnever previously been available forthese aftermarket bumper systemcomponents.

NSF said at the time that the pro-gram offered by the Certified Auto-motive Parts Association (CAPA)currently certified plastic bumper cov-ers and facias but not reinforcementbeams, brackets, or energy absorbers,and that CAPA currently certified justone of the five categories of partsidentified by the Auto Body Parts As-sociation (ABPA) as a structural part:radiator core supports.

Not long afterward, CAPA an-nounced that its own structural partscertification program was also in de-velopment, and that the organizationhad been testing bumpers since lastyear. ABPA let it be known in April ofthis year that it was reviewing theNSF program with a view to other OEequivalent certification options be-cause of shortcomings in the CAPAprogram.

Gillis’ letter was addressed toCharlie Hogarty, Chairman of theAuto Body Parts Association and hisCanadian counterpart, DeloresRichardson. It essentially took ABPAto task for participating in NSF’s new

certification program that has “un-known standards.” Hogarty respondedto Gillis in his own open letter on Au-gust 2. The full text of both letters canbe read at www.autobodynews.com.

The NSF suit seeks an injunctionand damages for false and misleadingstatements about NSF’s AutomotiveAftermarket Parts Certification Pro-gram and other NSF programs, quali-fications and abilities.

NSF says Gillis’ statements weremade in an apparent attempt to harmNSF and NSF’s 65-year stellar repu-tation for protecting the public healthand welfare, and to improperly implythat CAPA is superior to NSF in con-nection to automobile part verifica-tion/certification.

NSF says Gillis declined an op-portunity to retract his letter and cor-rect the record. NSF Internationalsays it has filed this suit to protect itsname, 65-year reputation for protect-ing and improving public health andsafety worldwide, and the integrity ofthe NSF Mark. The NSF suit allegesunfair competition under 11 USC1125 (a), common law unfair compe-tition, violations of Michigan’s Con-sumer Protection Act, businessdefamation and injurious falsehood.The suit was filed in U.S. DistrictCourt for the Eastern District ofMichigan, Southern Division case no.10-13309.

NSF launched an industry first,parts certification program for frontbumpers, step bumpers, absorbers,rebars and brackets in early 2010, tocounter the growing concerns thatlower quality parts were being usedin the automotive repair industry.NSF’s Automotive Aftermarket PartsCertification Program verifies thataftermarket auto parts meet rigidsafety, quality and performance stan-dards through testing and inspec-tions.

CAPA is a direct competitor ofNSF in the area of automotive partscertification, and while NSF says itwelcomes the competition, the com-pany says it competition must be incompliance with applicable law.

NSF believes that Gillis’ com-ments regarding NSF’s qualificationsand the NSF Automotive AftermarketParts Certification program constituteUnfair Competition Under 11 USC1125 (a).

‘Open Letter’ Leads to LawsuitInvolving Aftermarket Certifiers

www.autobodynews.comwww.autobodynews.com

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In March of this year, Washington Statebecame the first state to legislativelyphase out the use of copper in car andtruck brake pads. Washington legisla-tion bans brake pads containing morethan trace amounts of cadmium,chromium, asbestos, lead and mercury,starting in 2014. Initially, it will limit theuse of copper in brakes to a maximumof five percent by model year 2021.

Studies show that braking fric-tion releases minute copper particlesthat fall onto the road and are eventu-ally washed into rivers, where envi-ronmentalists say the metal poses ahazard to marine life, especially Cohosalmon because it intereferes withtheir sense of smell.

Vehicle brake pads manufactur-ers use a variety of ingredients, in-cluding copper, in formulating brakepads and each vehicle stop wears offa tiny amount of brake pad material.Studies conducted in South San Fran-cisco Bay identified vehicle brake padwear debris as a significant source ofcopper in urban runoff.

In 1998, the Brake Pad Partner-ship, a collaborative group of brakemanufacturers, environmentalists,storm water management entities andregulators, came together to studybrake pad wear debris. The BrakeManufacturers Council (BMC) and itsmembers agreed to introduce refor-mulated products within five years ifthe technical studies indicated thatcopper in brake pads was contributingsignificantly to water quality impair-ment. In late 2007, the partnership

completed a series of interlinked lab-oratory, environmental monitoringand environmental modeling studiesthat indicated that brake pads are asubstantial contributor to copper inrunoff to the San Francisco Bay.

“It was a balanced approach, bal-ancing the needs of our consumers andenvironmental concerns,” said CurtAugustine, policy director for the Al-liance of Automobile Manufacturers,a trade group of 11 manufacturers, in-cluding Ford, Chrysler and Toyota.

Many brake pads are made ofsteel, brass and copper fibers—mate-rials designed to create friction anddraw off heat. Some also contain ce-ramics, Kevlar and other nonmetalliccompounds. Brake pads contain asmuch as 25% copper, a metal used be-cause it is good at dissipating heat,Augustine said. Heavier and high-per-formance vehicles tend to have morecopper, but many cars already containless than 5 percent, he said.

Copper adds structural integrity tothe friction material and creates fric-tion. The metal also has properties thathelp prevent brakes from squeakingand shuddering, over a wide range oftemperatures and driving conditions.

The industry believes it can pro-duce a safe and reasonably priced brakepad without copper, said Terry Hef-felfinger, director of product engineer-ing forAffinia Global Brake & Chassis,a major brake maker. One alternativemay be ceramic brake pads, which havegrown in popularity in recent years.

However, some brake pad mak-

ers say there is no other material thatcan easily substitute for copper and areplacement would likely require acombination of components.

“We are worried that we won't beable to provide reduced copper padsby the proposed deadline,” said BobPeters, chief engineer at AkebonoBrake Corp., which supplies brakepads to Ford, Chevrolet and GM.Akebono has been studying other ma-terials that could be used in their pads.

There are two major types ofbrake pads. “Organic” ones includecopper; the expensive semi-metallicpads do not contain copper and areusually only used in high-perfor-mance cars such as Porsches. About85% of cars have brake pads madewith copper, to prevent brakes fromoverheating and reduces squeaking.

Copper is a major source of waterpollution because it is present in somany products, including plumbing,paint and building materials. A studyby the nonprofit Sustainable Conser-vation found that one-third of 530,000pounds of copper released fromhuman activity in the San FranciscoBay watershed in 2003 came from au-tomobile brake pads.

Similarly, state ecology officialsin Washington estimate 70,000 to318,000 pounds of copper are releasedinto Puget Sound each year, withabout one-third coming from vehicles.

Copper replaced asbestos as a keyingredient in brake pads in the early1990s after asbestos was banned as ahealth danger. Though a federal appeals

court overturned part of that ban in 1991,manufacturers continued to use copper.

California SB 346California is likely to be next due to SB346, introduced in 2009 by Sen. Chris-tine Kehoe (D-San Diego). Kehoe’s billwould eliminate copper in a vehiclebrake pads and place limits, beginningin 2014, on the use of lead, mercuryand asbestos in vehicle brake pads.

“By banning the use of copper invehicle brake pads, California has theopportunity to again lead the nation inprotecting our environment,” Kehoesaid in 2009. “This bill would be amajor achievement toward removinga significant amount of toxic chemi-cals found in brake pads that other-wise find their way into the ocean andour watersheds.”

Proponents of the bill claim thelegislation can serve as a template forother states to follow to reduce thelevels of copper in streams, lakes andcreeks. Unlike the failed attempt bythe Federal government to remove as-bestos from brake pads, this initiativeis being carried out at the state level.● Brake pads can contain as much astwenty-five percent copper;● Brake pad wear debris may contributeup to forty percent of the copper that en-ters the Bay through storm drains;● Copper content can vary from manu-facturer to manufacturer and among padsmade by the same manufacturer; and● Low-copper and no-copper brakepads are available for at least somemodels of cars.

Copper in Brake Pads Restricted in Washington State, California Next?

New Laws on Louisiana’s Books Include Tougher Penalties for TextingMore than 650 new laws took effect inLouisiana August 16, including revi-sions to existing statutes and arcane ad-justments of insurance and health careregulations, According to reports madeby Insurance Journal.

Perhaps the most attention-grab-bing changes is the strengthening ofLouisiana’s ban on text messagingwhile driving.

The ban is becoming a primaryoffense, meaning police officers canstop a driver for this traffic viola-tion without needing another rea-son.

Sgt. Markus Smith, withLouisiana State Police, said troopersare first going to focus their efforts onmaking sure people understand theycan be ticketed for texting behind the

wheel — rather than immediately writ-ing a ream of citations.

“We’re going to make sure thepublic is fully aware about the prob-lems of distracted driving and knowthat it’s a primary offense,” Smith said.

“We’re not going to go out thereto write a bunch of tickets. But if it’s ablatant offense that’s a danger to thepublic, we’re going to write a ticket.”

Penalties for sending text mes-sages while behind the wheel — withan exception for emergencies — canreach up to $200 for the first offenseand $500 for subsequent offenses.

Minors 17 and under also can bestopped and cited simply for using acell phone, as that state ban also waselevated to a primary offense thisweek.


“Dealer wholesale parts sales (me-chanical and body parts redistribu-tion) plunged nearly one-fifth during2009 compared to the previous year.As a result, Dealer 2009 wholesaleparts volume was over $2.5 billionlower than five years earlier.”

“Combining lower wholesaleDealer business with sinking bayparts sales and reduced Dealercounter parts volume, total 2009Dealer parts sales fell more than $6billion at retail level. This dramaticsales reduction in Dealer parts is cre-ating unprecedented opportunities formanufacturers, distributors, retailers,and installers of aftermarket prod-ucts.”

Get a Competitive EdgeFor complete analysis of Dealer serv-ice bay parts volume, see the just re-leased 2010 AAIA Factbook & LangAnnual.

Dealer Wholesale Parts DeclineThe unprecedented plunge in Dealerwholesale parts (mechanical and

body) sales reflects an array of mar-ket conditions.

In addition to Dealer closingsand leaner Dealer parts inventories,which have reduced availability ofOE parts in many markets, OE-Sup-plier brands are being aggressivelymarketed and the perceptions of in-stallers regarding OE-Supplier brandsvis-à-vis OE-Dealer brands arechanging, particularly in the foreignvehicle aftermarket.

Big Wholesale DropAfter Dealers expanded their 2007and 2008 wholesale parts volume atan average 3.7% annual pace, Dealer2009 wholesale parts sales suddenlyplunged over $2.6 billion, an un-precedented 19% reduction.

As a result, Dealer 2009 whole-sale sales fell more than 22% below2004 levels.

Three Reasons for Wholesale Fall-OffThere are three primary reasons forthe sudden drop in 2009 Dealerwholesale parts volume.

First, approximately 1,500 Deal-ers closed or converted to used-caroutlets with bays during 2009. As aresult, there was a sharp cut-back inDealer locations wholesaling parts toindependent installers.

Second, many Dealers reducedparts inventories in order to controlexpenses, thereby limiting their abil-ity to fill parts requests by independ-ent installers.

Third, there is the growing suc-cess of foreign parts distributors(Worldpac, IMC, and others) in con-verting installers, particularly ForeignSpecialists, to purchase OE-supplierand other foreign brands in place ofDealer OE-brands.

OE-Supplier PartsThe growing availability of foreignOE-supplier brands and the superiordelivery and electronic ordering ca-pabilities of Worldpac and others toprovide these brands to installers(who often must wait much longer forDealer delivery of OE parts) haschanged the buying habits of many

independent installers in the foreignvehicle sector.

Reduction of Dealer partsDealer 2009 parts volume also fellsignificantly in terms of Dealer bayreplacement and counter sales.

$6 Billion Dealer Parts ReductionAcross all segments of Dealer partssales and installation, there was morethan a $6 billion drop in 2009 partsvolume at user-price.

Unprecedented OpportunitiesThe historic drop in Dealer parts salesacross a wide array of segments—wholesale redistribution, bay instal-lation, counter sales, etc.—providesunprecedented opportunities for man-ufacturers, distributors, retailers, andinstallers of aftermarket products tofill the market gap resulting from thefaltering performance of Dealers.

'From Aftermarket Insight™ byJim Lang, President of Lang Market-ing Resources, Inc.,www.langmarketing.com.'

2009 Dealer Wholesale Parts Down More than 19% from ‘08


One of my regular customers broughthis adult son into the shop the otherday. It was right at opening time andthe good old dad made it a point to tellhis son, “Gonzo, probably hasn’t hadhis coffee yet so go easy on the oldguy.”

He was right about the coffee,but that still didn’t prepare me for thestory I was about to hear.

The story started sometime ear-lier, about two years ago… apparentlyI changed the fuel pump on the son’scar back then. The owner decided hisgas mileage had dropped consider-ably. To the point that he was con-cerned and very upset that there wasobviously something that I had donewrong to cause it. I guess it had beengrating on him for two years.

He insisted that the new fuelpump was to blame because he alwaystracked his mileage by way of his tripodometer. Before the new fuel pumphe would get close to 400 miles pertank. His accuracy was noted on his lit-tle log book and showed how muchgas he would refill his tank with. It wasalways around 23 gallons and never adrop more than 23 gallons. But nowhis tank was holding 26 gallons.

His question to me was, “So,where is the other three gallonsgoing?” I had to laugh. I’ve changeda lot of fuel pumps but I never havehad anyone come in and tell me thatthe tank suddenly holds more fuelthan before.

My guess was that his originalgas tank sending unit was probably in-accurate and that was the discrepancy.

“I’m pretty sure your gas tankhasn’t increased in volume since thefuel pump has been changed. I wouldimagine you’re probably mistaken asto how much your tank actuallyholds,” I told him as I reached for mycoffee.

Nope, he wasn’t buying that an-swer. He knew how much his gas tankheld and he knew I was the cause ofhis three missing gallons. What hewanted was for me to find out why hisgas mileage has decreased so much.

I tried to explain it to him, but hewas very, very sure he was correctand I wasn’t listening to what he wassaying. He was getting quite loud andbelligerent over the whole matter.Poor old dad just sat there with asmirk on his face. I kinda figured dadhad already had enough of his boy’sattitude and figured old Gonzo wasgoing to straighten him out. (This isgoing to take a lot more coffee…)

The aggravated son then beganto tell me how good a mechanic hewas, because he had rebuilt a few mo-tors in the past so he knew what hewas doing under a hood. (Note: put-ting parts together does not a me-chanic make. That’s solving puzzlesand it doesn’t need a mechanic.)

Then he added to his story withthe usual… “I went to one of thoseparts stores that will read codes foryou. They said the reason for thecheck engine light was because of abad gas cap.”

He was grasping at possible rea-sons why his gas mileage haddropped so much.

What gets me is how somethingas important as the service light isn’tbrought up into the conversation untilafter you have told me how good atech you are and that you have alreadymade the decision that I was to blame.(I’m going to need more coffee.)

So at this point, we have a serv-ice light on, we have a supposed lossof fuel economy, and I’m sure there ismore… there is always more… I hadto ask, “Anything else?”

On occasions the ABS lightcomes on. He had that checked too.This time he consulted the ever faith-ful Internet. He tells me in a loudforceful voice, as if I couldn’t hearanything he was saying, “That alwaysmeans it’s time to rebuild the ABScontroller.”

Oh yeah, I do that every day. Itake the controllers apart and removethe epoxy sealer over the circuitboards and remove the affected com-ponents on the board and then resealthe whole thing back together. All thisbefore a full cup of coffee? It’s reallytoo early to absorb this kind of daz-zling technical information.

After dad and son dropped thetruck off, I went straight to the glovebox. I checked the owner’s manual asto how much capacity the fuel tankheld. It had it in big bold letters: 26gallon capacity, not the 23 that he hadlogged so meticulously.

While I had the truck in the shopI checked the tune-up parts and thefilters. All looked great. The nextthing was to tackle the check enginelight. Yes, there was a code. A code

that might lower gas mileage? Sort of,but not by three gallons, that’s morethan 11%, right?

It was the evap solenoid valvecode, p0449. After doing the test onthe valve it turned out the valve was-n’t responding to the PCM com-mands. A new evap solenoid valvesolved the problem. As far as theABS? Nothing; not a thing; no codes;no history codes, and the system wasworking normally.

A drive test showed no problemsand I gave him the benefit of thedoubt that he may have an intermit-tent ABS controller problem… how-ever when I gave him the option ofleaving it alone or changing it… heleft it alone.

After all the phone calls weremade and arrived to pick up his truckthere was never any mention of the al-leged missing three gallons or the factthat it was merely the original fuelsender that was reading improperlyall this time. Or the fact that the loosegas cap had nothing to do with theservice light this time around.

I guess when you’re wrong youdon’t have to admit it. That is, whenyou’re the customer. But you can bedarn sure if the mechanic is wrong,everyone will know about it, andsomebody is going to have to apolo-gize.

I apologize for being the me-chanic in this story and I guess Ishould apologize for one morething… Writing in BIG letters on hisinvoice… YOUR TANK HOLDS 26GALLONS! !

Three Gallons of Troublewith Gonzo Weaver

Gonzo’s Toolbox This is a new story by Scott “Gonzo” Weaver as posted on his website,www.gonzostoolbox.com. See his book “Hey Look! I Found The LooseNut”, which provides a Good Laugh for Mechanics of Any Age. The bookis available at amazon.com. Contact Gonzo at [email protected]

GMAwaits Fuel Ratings onVoltGM is anxiously awaiting how thegovernment will rate the fuel economyon its extended-range Chevrolet Volt,which goes on sale late this year, Ac-cording to reports made by the DetroitNews.

GM said it is still in talks with theEPA about the final fuel economy rat-ings for the vehicle that will run onboth battery power and a gasoline en-gine.

The automaker expects a finalrating later this year, before the Voltgoes on sale.

GM said last summer that it ex-pected to label the Volt with a 230 mpgcity rating and even launched a web-site touting that number.

But Larry Nitz, GM's executivedirector for hybrid and electric power-train engineering, said that the com-pany no longer is planning on thatfigure.

"It will never show up on thelabel," Nitz told reporters on the side-lines of the Center for Automotive Re-search's Management BriefingSeminars annual meeting.

GM has submitted a confidentialrating proposal to the EPA, but Nitzdeclined to disclose it.

"The (EPA) is not close to final-izing the label. They say the end of theyear, but that's the general label. Whatthey've agreed to is to work with us ona specific label" for the Volt, Nitz said.

The EPA said it may release adraft proposal this month on calculat-ing plug-in electric vehicle fuel econ-omy ratings, but might not finalize ituntil year's end.

GM wants to make sure drivers

get the most out of the vehicle, takingfull advantage of its electric power.

The Volt will get up to 40 miles ona single battery charge, and a gasolineengine that generates electricity adds an-other 300 miles of range to the vehicle.

The vehicle's $41,000 price tagraised some eyebrows at a panel dis-cussion July 27.

Nitz noted that GM will expandproduction volume in 2012 from30,000 to 45,000 Volt vehicles.

For more information please visitgm-volt.com.

by John Yoswick

The two gatherings of auto recyclersand collision repairers took place onlyone year apart, but they could not havebeen much further apart, at least ini-tially, in tone and tenor.

“A year ago, a shop owner stoodup at the start and all but accused theauto recycling industry of conspiringagainst shops,” said Mel Hunke ofthe Quality Replacement Parts (QRP),a coalition of auto recyclers in ninestates. “By the end of that meeting,and from the start of the second one,the repairers saw that recyclers werenot the enemy, and the recyclers sawthat, as an industry, they have somegenuine quality and customer serviceissues they need to address. Everyonecame into that second meeting withmore of an interest in, ‘Okay, how dowe improve the situation?’”

The next of these “Recycled PartsRoundtable” meetings, which arebeing organized by QRP as part of itseffort to discuss and work toward res-olution of issues related to the use ofrecycled parts in collision repair, willbe held November 4 in Las Vegas. Themeetings have been facilitated by in-dustry consultant Lou DiLisio, andhave brought together about twodozen representatives from auto recy-cling and collision repair companiesfrom around the country.

One of the key topics of discussionat the a recent meeting was the need formore complete and accurate descrip-tions of recycled parts and their condi-tion. The group agreed that not enoughrecyclers use—and far too few repair-ers are aware of and understand —thestandards and grading codes developedby the Automotive Recyclers Associa-tion to help both recyclers and shopsunderstand the condition of used parts.

The attendees at the meetingagreed that recyclers need to improvethe accurate use of these systemswithin their industry, and should re-view this information with their repairshop customers, perhaps providingshop estimators and parts managerswith laminated copies of the gradingand damage codes.

“It has come through pretty clearlyat these meetings that many of the issuesboil down to communication,” Hunkesaid. “Repairers simply need to com-municate what they need, and the recy-clers need to honestly reply whetherthey can meet those needs or not.”

The group discussed that educa-tional and reference materials on theseparts and damage description systemsare available at “Standards & Codes”on the ARA website (www.a-r-a.org).

Another potential win-win for re-cyclers, insurers and repairers couldresult if recyclers helped make shops

aware of parts they are likely to needin a repair but that are not typicallypurchased from a recycler—in partbecause they often are not on an ini-tial parts order and will likely be or-dered from the OE during thesupplement process.

“If you buy a fender, hood andbumper from me, but you also needthe windshield washer jug and batterytray and all the other stuff recyclersare currently crushing, we can amor-tize our overhead and dismantlingcosts over more parts, and you can in-crease your alternative part usage andsave totals,” Hunke said.

“I think recyclers should help ed-ucate repairers by showing them thatin a typical accident, these 10 keythings get damaged and you typicallyorder these five things, and there’sfive things you don’t typically order,”DiLisio suggested. “I think everybodyhas some responsibility here.”

DiLisio said there is also an op-portunity for recyclers to educatethemselves and their shop customersabout OEM recommendations, per-haps through subscriptions to the au-tomaker repair information websitesor third-party information providers.

“I was just in a shop with a Kiathat had the airbag blown,” DiLisiosaid. “Kia requires in that situationthat the wiring harness be replaced.It’s $1,100. If the recyclers understoodthis, there’s absolutely an opportunityto sell the shop a wiring harness if youlet the shop know that—and I bet mostshops don’t have that information.”

Similarly, DiLisio said, recyclerscan add value to their shop customersby having and sharing informationthat can help the shop ensure it willhave the parts it needs to prevent de-lays to a job.

“If you sell something that in-cludes one-time fasteners, my view is

you should be let-ting the shop knowthat,” DiLisio toldrecyclers at themeeting. “I thinkyou’ll sell moreparts because therepairers will gainthat confidence andtrust and utilize youmore.”There was also dis-cussion at the meet-ing about where theindustry stands in

terms of electronic systems for order-ing of recycled parts. The group dis-cussed that the lack of VIN decoderswithin the inventory management sys-tems used by recyclers limits a move toall-electronic parts ordering in the

short-term. But QRP representatives atthe meeting said they have a processcalled “Auto Sender” that strips the ad-ministrative information from an esti-mate—to protect shop and customerdata privacy—and sends the body ofthe estimate to the recycler in order tocheck for parts prices and availability.A committee was establish within thegroup to explore more fully-electronicparts ordering options. Hunke saidQRP plans to continue holding suchroundtable meetings to help movesome of these issues forward.

“We don’t have any illusions thatthere aren’t still some people out there,and maybe even at these meetings,who say, ‘If I had my druthers, I’dnever use a used part,’” Hunke said.“But there are others who are realisticabout it and say if we don’t find waysto use more recycled parts more prof-itably, we’re going to lose some in-surer repair programs and the repair isjust going to go some place else. Sothe only sensible thing for all of us is toaddress how are we going to processused parts so that everybody can comeout with some kind of a win.”


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The Northwest Louisiana Collision Repair Association heldtheir monthly meeting on August 3 at the Shreveport, LA,Country Tavern, and discussed recycling techniques amongseveral other industry issues.

Guest speaker Michael Hughes, of Hughes Recyclingin Shreveport, LA, gave a speech on recycling in the auto-motive industry.

Hughes mostly talked about recycling paper and whiteand clear plastics around a body shop.

“He is also working on finding a way to recycle plas-tic bumpers,” said Bill Burnside, past NWLCRA presi-dent.

Hughes also offered to waive his recycling fees for anybusiness who joins the NWLCRA this month.

The meeting went on to highlight upcoming events forthe association, including their annual Christmas party onDecember 4 which will coincide with a charitable toy drivefor Toys for Tots.

The party will be held at Fielders Paint and Body, 521North Market Street Shreveport, LA.

Next month’s NWLCRA meeting will be on Septem-ber 7 at 6:30 pm at the Shreveport Country Tavern.

The guest speaker will be JimAdams who will speakabout time management and the company that designed theNWLCRA’s website will give a demonstration on new fea-tures and how to use them.

For more information please visit nwlcra.org.


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Northwest Louisiana Collision Repair Association Hosts Meeting

Doug Rivet of Shouse Auto Collision Shreveport, LA; Michael Hughes ofHughes Recycling; Kevin Adams of Krystal Auto Collision Bossier City, LA

Group shot of the NWLCRA August meeting at the Shreveport, LA,Country Tavern

Louisiana Sees Decline inMotor Vehicle TheftLouisiana Insurance CommissionerJames Donelon reported that motorvehicle theft rates are on the declinein Louisiana. Motor vehicle theftrates declined in 2009 over 2008 by16.8 percent in four of Louisiana'slargest metropolitan areas accordingto 2009 preliminary data from theFBI.

“The work of the Department ofInsurance Louisiana AutomobileTheft and Insurance Fraud Preven-tion Authority (LATIFPA) is havingpositive results across the state,” saidDonelon.

Louisiana’s motor vehicle theftfigures were lower in 2009 than in2008 with 4,614 vehicles stolen inLouisiana's four major metropolitanstatistical areas according to the 2009Preliminary FBI Uniform Crime Re-port.

Below is a breakdown of theFBI data showing the recent declinein motor vehicle theft figures. Firstnumbers are from 2008, then 2009,then the percent decrease:

Baton Rouge: 974, 929, 4.6%Lafayette: 506, 432, 14.6%New Orleans: 3208, 2612, 18.6%Shreveport: 859, 641, 25.4%

Can you tell us how your views on po-litical or consumer issues may havebeen shaped by those horrific experi-ences?

Personal tragedy has strengthened myresolve not to waste a day of my life.I’ve chosen public service as a way togive back. Simply put, I am drawn tofinding out the facts when the voice ofspecial interests attempt to drown outthe truth—this mindset has frequentlyput me in the position of protectingconsumers.

In 1986 you won a seat in the Califor-nia State Assembly. You were reelectedfive more times, the last as the nomi-nee of both the Democratic and Re-publican parties. In the Assembly youauthored more than 300 bills thatwere signed into law by both Demo-cratic and Republican Governors.

One of your key achievementswas passing the California FinancialPrivacy Act, which took effect in 2004and was called by Consumers Union“the strongest financial privacy legis-

lation in the nation.”—Why were thefoundations of this act of such impor-tance to you?

Personal privacy is foundation of ourfreedom. Corporate greed has been re-sponsible for the invasion of our pri-vacy and the diminishment of ourfreedom to choose the path that is bestfor us. I don’t want to restrict our rightto seek and obtain information, I sim-ply oppose those entities that want tosell our personal financial informationwithout our consent. SB 1 struck ablow for protection from special in-terest manipulation.

Another legislative victory was yourauthorship of California’s anti-steer-ing law in 2003. How did you come tounderstand that steering was a threatto consumer and repairer’s interests?

I chaired the Senate Insurance Com-mittee in 1999 which investigatedauto insurance fraud. Committee staffinterviewed hundreds of consumers,auto repair dealers and insurance ad-

justers. They documented that that in-surers were pressuring shops to repaircars quickly and cheaply, sometimesat the risk of compromising proper re-pair procedures. This pressure wasembodied in confidential agreementsbetween the insurer and shops. It wasif insurers wanted to run the shopswithout accepting any liability. I au-thored SB 1648, approved by the StateSenate, that would have prohibited in-surers from owning repair facilities.The bill failed passage by the full As-sembly despite stellar advocacy ef-forts by consumer groups and thecollision repair industry. Since that ef-fort fell short, I carried legislation toprotect consumers from the harmfuleffects of direct repair agreements, thebackbone of illegal steering practices.Now that I am in Congress, I am tak-ing a broader approach by examiningthe use of aftermarket safety parts,such as reinforcement bars, that ap-pear to violate laws requiring replace-ment repair parts to perform as well asthe OEM. Specifically, the aftermar-ket industry has failed to provideproof that its replacement parts arecrashed tested to insure that they willperform the same as OEM in collisionsituations.

In 2005 you sponsored a bill to regu-late sub-prime loans which, unfortu-nately, did not succeed. We all knowhow unregulated sub-prime financinghas since cut the legs from the U.S.real-estate market and played a hugerole in our near financial meltdown inthe last years of the Bush administra-tion. How did you come to be awareof how dangerous sub-prime financ-ing was likely to be?

Consumers Union, Center for Re-sponsible Lending and the CaliforniaReinvestment Coalition had docu-mented the abuses that were happen-ing to real families. The informationwas compelling, but the frenzy wastoo great and the banking and mort-gage broker industries were too pow-erful. Let’s face it, they were making atruckload of money selling these prod-ucts. California was more unprotectedthan many because of the high cost ofhomes and the lack of strong regula-tion in the mortgage industry at boththe state and federal level and lack ofconsumer protections for home buy-ers and homeowners.

In Congress on July 11, 2008, you in-troduced your first federal bill, TheGasoline Savings and Speed Limit Re-duction Act, which would set a na-tional speed limit of 60 mph in urbanareas and 65 mph on less-populatedstretches of highway. Tell us your rea-soning on those issues.

This is a clear example where safety,energy conservation and saving con-sumers money should all go hand inhand. I’ve been working on these is-sues for a long time, including intro-ducing an earlier speed limit bill inSacramento. Slowing down may notbe a popular idea, but the benefits arereal and that’s why I’m for it. I shouldalso mention I introduced a bill to giveconsumers rebates for more fuel effi-cient cars, similar to Cash for Clunk-ers which went into effect later on. Weneed to keep pushing fuel economy, iffor nothing else to tackle our addictionto oil, to clean up our air and to savelives—an estimated 4,000 annually ifthe nation’s highest speed limits werereduced.

You have recently met with OEM tech-nical staff and some California re-pairers to discuss what can be doneabout substandard aftermarket colli-sion parts. This is another issue inwhich consumers and collision re-pairers interests align (at least in re-gard to the efficiency of installation ofOEM parts). Can you tell us what thestate of those discussions is? Do youthink the OEMs should be moreproactive in pushing back on insurersfor OEM part usage?

As I noted before, I am examining theuse of aftermarket safety parts, suchas reinforcement bars, that appear toviolate laws requiring replacement re-pair parts to perform as well as theOEM. Specifically, the aftermarket in-dustry has failed to provide proof thatits replacement parts are crashedtested to insure that they will performthe same as OEM in collision situa-tions. Rather than rush in with a bill, Iam waiting for vehicle manufacturersto provide engineering data to supportthe contention that aftermarket partsdon’t perform as well as OEM. Insome respects, it should be on theshoulders of aftermarket producers to


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Jackie Speier INTERVIEW by Ed Attanasio Cover Story

See Jackie Speier Interview, Page 31

A 1933 Delage D8S De Villars Roadster owned byThe Patterson Collection in Louisville, Kentucky,was named Best of Show at the 60th Pebble BeachConcours d’Elegance held Sunday, Aug. 15 on the18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links®.

“There are so many things about this car thatare special,” said owner Jim Patterson, whofounded Long John Silver’s restaurant and con-tributed to the founding of the Rally’s Hamburgerchain.

“We’ve won (with other cars) at a lot ofconcours, but never here. This win at Pebble isthe ultimate. This is the one win that really mat-ters.”

The world’s most exclusive collector car showand competition was held, as usual, in one of theworld’s most beautiful and dramatic locations: the18th fairway of the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links.Pebble Beach is open 364 days a year to golfers andclosed only one day, for the Concours d’Elegance.

This international event offers a highly uniquevisual: historic automobiles set against the backdropof Carmel Bay.

Some 255 cars and motorcycles from 33states and 14 countries compete for “Best ofShow.” Collectors bring their vintage vehicles toCalifornia’s picturesque Monterey coastline fromas far away as Hong Kong, Germany, Monaco andArgentina.

More than 20 concept and new cars were fea-tured during the weekend, including vehicles fromAston Martin, Bentley, Bertone/Alfa Romeo,Bugatti, Cadillac, W K Cherry, Ford, Jaguar, Lexus,Maserati, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Morgan,Porsche and Rolls-Royce.

Celebrity participants include Tonight Showhost Jay Leno and actor Edward Herrmann, whowas the Concours’ Master of Ceremonies. Othercelebrity attendees included Roger Corman, Je-remy Piven, Erik Estrada and California Gover-nor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Concours displayed over 108 years of theautomobile, from the oldest car on the field, a 1902

Mercedes Simplex—the oldest car still on the roadtoday to bear the Mercedes name—to several newconcept and production vehicles.

Competitors from 33 states and 14 countriesbrought their prized automotive possessions to the

California’s Monterey Peninsula for judging in 29classes. In the end, the white, streamlined 1933 De-lage with coachwork from De Villars was judged thebest.

“This Delage has a short wheelbase thatmakes it look more rakish, but it still has a long


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1933 Delage D8S Roadster is Pebble’s Concours d’Elegance ‘Best of Show’

A striking 1933 Delage D8S De Villars Roadster from ThePatterson Collection in Louisville, Kentucky, was named Bestof Show at the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.Copyright © 2010 by Kimball Studios/Courtesy of Pebble BeachConcours d’Elegance.

With a stunning backdrop of Carmel Bay, cars pass over theawards ramp of the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.Copyright © 2010 by Kimball Studios/Courtesy of Pebble BeachConcours d’Elegance.

and elegant look,” said Concours Chairman San-dra Button. “It did 110 miles-per-hour in its day;it could race and was stunningly beautiful. Thiscar could do it all; it embodied style, speed andcomfort.”

Delage added the sports version to the D8 rangein 1930. To make the S more aerodynamic than itspredecessors, a new radiator shell was used, whichrequired a special hood and firewall that made theD8S even more visually distinctive. Patterson’s D8Sgraced the 1933 Salon de Paris at the Grand Palais.It was owned during the 1950s by the Grand HotelVelasquez in Madrid, Spain and was used as trans-portation for its more discerning guests. Now it’sone of 60 Pebble Beach Concours Best of Showwinners.

Alfa Romeo, a featured marque at the 2010Concours, had the largest presence on the 2010 Peb-ble Beach show field, including seven vehiclesshipped from the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese,Italy. The 75th anniversary of Jaguar was also fea-tured, as was Pierce-Arrow. Special classes includeda focus on the 50th anniversary of the Ferrari 250GT SWB Berlinetta, the centennial of the Indi-anapolis 500, Hot Rod lakesters and Bonneville rac-ers, American Prewar Road and Racing Motorcyclesand Ghia-designed vehicles.

More than 250 cars and motorcycles were pres-ent, encompassing more than 100 years of the auto-mobile, with the oldest car on the field being a 1902Mercedes Simplex.

The Pebble Beach Concours occurs every yearon the third Sunday in August. Featured marques forthe 61st Pebble Beach Concours, slated for Sunday,Aug. 21, 2011, will include Mercedes-Benz and 100Years of the Automobile, Stutz Centennial, Ferrari250 GTO and Italian Motorcycles.

Additionally, proceeds from raffles, auctions,sponsorships and ticket sales helped contribute morethan $1 million to charity for the fifth consecutive year.


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A 28-horsepower 1902 Mercedes Simplex—the oldest car stillon the road today to bear the Mercedes name—arrives at TheLodge at Pebble Beach having just completed the 2010 PebbleBeach Motoring Classic.Copyright © 2010 by Riverview Media Photography, Tia Gemmell.Courtesy of Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.

Jaguar XKSS owners who participated in a special Pebble BeachRally paused for photos and refreshments at the historic MissionSan Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. The Jaguar XKSS class thatappeared at the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance isbelieved to be the largest-ever gathering of XKSS cars.Copyright © 2010 by Kimball Studios/Courtesy of Pebble Beach Concoursd'Elegance.Academy Award-winning director Roger Corman recounting his

time making the classic road-racing film, “The Fast & Furious”(1954) at the Pebble Beach Road Races and Pebble BeachConcours d’Elegance.Copyright © 2010 by Riverview Media Photography, Tia Gemmell.Courtesy of Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.

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The Society of Collision Repair Spe-cialists (SCRS) announced August 16the approach of its fifth annual Affili-ate Leadership Conference onWednesday and Thursday, September22 and 23 at the Gulf States Toyota(GST) Training Center in Lewisville,Texas. The modern, state-of-the-art fa-cility will provide a stimulating back-drop for the open discussion ofactivities, successes and challengesthat is the conference’s hallmark.

“Our affiliate ranks recently havegrown at an accelerated rate and weexpect event participation to increasesignificantly as a result,” says SCRSChairman Barry Dorn. “It’s exciting,because for the first time many colli-sion repair professionals will get towitness the effective strategies that areforged when SCRS’ national perspec-tive intermingles with the local, grassroots focus of the affiliates.”

The “ground level” industry viewof the affiliates forms the bedrockupon which SCRS is formed andkeeps the organization attuned tomembership needs. The AffiliateLeadership Conference is perhaps the

ultimate reflection of this aspect ofSCRS.

Attendees gain exposure to, andlearn from the experience of, their af-filiate peers in other states as doesSCRS. Local initiatives often con-tribute to the formation of solutionsthat can be applied elsewhere, includ-ing on the national level.

“The conference features collec-tive insight to address issues youwon’t find anywhere else, and we aregrateful to have the opportunity to fos-ter it,” says SCRS Executive DirectorAaron Schulenburg. “Our affiliatesand the thousands of businesses thatsupport them want workable solutionsto trying issues.

The Affiliate Leadership Confer-ence provides the content, context andanalysis to provide those answersthrough candid discussion bred froma forum structured specifically for ouraffiliate associations.”

The conference will maintain asimilar proven format to previousyears, with the first day featuring a fo-cused review from each association inattendance. Local market issues and

successful approaches to resolvingthose issues will be reviewed and an-alyzed through candid peer discus-sion.

Day two will feature updatesfrom SCRS on its most recent nationallevel activity, targeted discussions onprevailing industry issues, and a con-versation on how SCRS can betterhelp assist the collision repair indus-try. Toyota will make a presentationon Auto PartsBridge™, an electronicparts ordering system that allows bodyshops to send parts orders to Toyotadealers through a Web-based applica-tion.

In addition, CEICA ExecutiveDirector Fred Iantourno will join thegroup to share content from theCEICA Implementation Conferencebeing held the two days preceding theSCRS conference.

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VW Passat Probedfor Fire RiskAccording to reports made byBloomberg, Volkswagen AG Passatcars are being investigated by theNHTSA for fires in the engine com-partment that may be related to igni-tion-coil failures.

Passat cars for model years2002 and 2003 have been the subjectof 10 reports of fires and six com-plaints of coil failures that didn’tcause a fire, the NHTSA said on itswebsite.

Drivers reported that the check-engine or other dashboard lights wereilluminated before fires. The investi-gation covers almost 200,000 cars.

This column is part two of RichEvans’ column from our July 2010issue titled Building a numbered carexactly like the Red Mist in KickAss.

To read that column go towww.autobodynews.com > columns >Rich Evans.

Back to the Red Mist project. The caris identical to the one in the movieKick Ass and is on its way back toWoody Frees and his sons. Paying at-tention to detail and quality is what it’sall about. Never be in too much ahurry to do a project. Just make sureyou get it done right.

Let’s review the steps and pro-cedures that it took to get Woody’scar done and on the road back toFort Lauderdale, Florida. When wewe left off in July I had just widenedthe rear end 3 inches, installed mybody kit, mocked it up, and we used

the mar-glass fine hair (from Mar-son®) to bond the body kit to the

2008 GT Mustang. Now to shape therear flares so it’s part of the bodyand also mold in the rockers to thefender and the rocker panel. I’mgoing to use the mar-glass to blend itbecause it’s stronger material thanthe Bondo™. I use the 3M® tape andI’ll align myself about 2 inchesaway from where I want to mold the

two panels together. That way whenI’m spreading the mar-glass I’ll be

able to pull the tape and nothave so much extra sandingwork. You’re not really havinga heavy build but you haveenough build to seam thatmetal to the fiberglass and nothave the seam break looseafter primering and painting it.That’s why I chose the mar-glass. It’s a short-strand fiber-glass reinforced auto bodyfiller. I’ll apply Bondo™ ontop of that. After 2 or 3 days

getting these panels shaped up with36 grit. I’m going to use the Soft-Sanders™ with this body kit. The

Soft-Sander™ blocks are an every-day use of mine anyways, but theseblocks really truly save me up to75% of the time because of all theshapes that they come in. So I’mable to get in the grooves. I’m ableto sand a continuous stroke and alsoshape better with the Soft-Sander™blocks just because you’re able toform them to the radius of whatyou’re sanding. They come in dif-ferent sizes: 4-inch, 8-inch and 12-inch. With my body kit it’s really gota lot of shape to it so these blocks

are able to get me there quicker. Ifyou go to www.softsanders.com youcan get a whole list of their product.

I’ve always said time is moneyand this product is a time and moneysaver. I wish I had run across it 15years ago.

Let’s move on to the paint. Ob-viously we’re going to have toprime it first. So I gave Sherwin-Williams a call and they were coolenough to sponsor me for this buildwhich gives me a chance to trysome other products. I used theSpeed P30 Spectra Prime. The mix-ing ratio is 2 part Spectra Prime, 2part SR15 and one part UH900. Iapplied probably about 8 mills and

used a 1.9 tip on my HVLPSATA primer gun. You wantto shoot it at about 25 to 45 psiand that will give you a goodatomization and break downthat thick primer. I reallyloaded up because I only wantto primer it once. After sand-ing it ended up with about320. With my sand scratches Iusually leave about 80 or 150.I don’t get too detailed be-cause I’m going to follow up

with 80. So with this project I leftmy sand scratches at 80 and Ifeather-edged everything with 150and then the additional paint that’sleft over you want to hit with the320.

Applying the three coats ofprimer gives you probably close to 9mills. I guide coat it with some blackguide coat. This will give me a ref-erence for my highs and lows toblend this into the quarter panels ordown in the rockers all the way tothe fenders. It’s going to give me a

good reference where my highsand lows are and if I have anyadditional pinholes I’ll use the417 putty to get in there. It’spretty much like a poly primer.After priming I use the Soft-Sander™ blocks and hit it withthe 80 grit. After that I’m goingto re-guide coat it and comeback with the 150 grit. Basi-cally I chase out the 80 gritscratches with the 150. I re-guide coat it and then wet sand


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Building a Numbered Car Exactly like the Red Mist, Part Two

Using the Soft-Sander™ blocks on the rear flares

Getting the primer right

Using the Soft-Sander™ blocks to true the guide coat

it with a 400 wet. This sand paperfrom Soft-Sanders goes from 320 allthe way up to 2500. It’s amazingpaper, it’s called Superflex Sandpa-per. After the 400 wet, I 800 the restof the car.

Now we’re masked up and readyto get in to the booth. After gettinginto the booth I’ve got to take thewheels off. Obviously we’re chang-ing the color so I’ve got to remove alot of the parts in the engine com-partment, which makes it easier. Youtry to remove everything from theleft and right inner aprons and then Iuse aluminum foil for things that I’mnot going to remove. I’m not goingto remove the motor but I still wantto get as much detail as possiblewhich you’ll be able to see in someof these photos. I’m leaving the radi-ator and the A/C condenser in.

Tape really tight tape and you canget a really good job of changing thecolor. I’m first going to start with asealer that Sherwin Williams providedme with—SpectraSeal. It’s a 2.1 VOCcolor primer. I’mjust going to use agrey primer on thiswhich is a P27 andthen they have P27black and also P27white which youcan intermix to getthe different colortones. Basically themixing ratio on thisis take the P27: 4 to2 which would bethe S42 to 2 whichwould be the H45 hardener and thenthe solvent will be an ES15 and that’sthe 4. So 4 to 2 to 2 to 4.

I’ve shot a lot of sealers. This onegoes on flat, no orange peel whatso-ever. It just flows out and then it’sshiny, so they say 15 to 30 minutes.You just have to be able to put yourthumb in it, check it on a test panel,because I always shoot a test panel,

and move your thumb. If it’s lockeddown you’re ready for base. On thebase I had them mix me up some Col-orado Red and I only apply one coatof the sealer, so one coat you’re good.Hats off to Sherwin-Williams. So on

my base coat we’ve got the Col-orado red and I applied 3 coats.I’ve got a system and anytime Iapply a base coat, I apply 3 coats.That way if the car ever gets in anaccident or I’m redoing it I have asystem. Always create a systemfor yourself.The reducer I use is a 0025, so

on our base coats I’m going with3 coats. It’s 1 to 30 percent, sopretty easy mixing ratio with thiswater. It covered really well. I

was really surprised. The first coatcovered, second coat was even better,and—with my system—3 coats be-cause I’m painting everything inpieces. You want to use the right psi.I use 27 psi on my base coat and a 1.4tip with my SATA gun. Go tosata.com and figure out what youneed.

I’ve got about 20 different guns soI’ve got a gun for every application. Soafter my 3 coats I’m giving it about 15to 20 minutes wait. I’m spraying it in across draft. Now I’m ready for my topcoat. The top coat that I chose fromSherwin-Williams is the 1100755 Ele-gance clearcoat. It’s a 2.1 VOC. Mix-ing ratio of the clear is 2 to 1 as reducerwith BUS4 to the UH 80 hardener. Soit’s 2 to 1 to 1.

This clear just lays down flat. Ihaven’t used reducer and clear in over10 years and I was pretty impressedwith the way the clear shot. I tend towant to put more mills on. We’ve gotno graphics so I’d usually do 3 coatson this job. However, I applied 5 coatsjust because I knew we’d be cuttingsome off and when you add reducerthat thins it out a little bit so it’s not as

thick. That works out to 4 coats on thisproject. I don’t think you want to gowith too much more. I’m waiting10–15 minutes between each coat.That way you don’t get too much buildon the edge. You don’t want it to bub-

ble up on you or get air pockets onyour edges. So, four coats worked forme. Three coats would probably beokay but the extra is an insurance pol-icy with myself, just because I like theflattened panels. So we’ve gottenthrough the paint stage, now we’reready for color, sanding and buffing.

Next month we’ll finish up theproject. This car has got stamp #7.

I’d like to thank my sponsorson this project, Sherwin-Williams,3M, Grit Guard (which we’ll talkabout next month), and Soft-Sanders. Thanks to Woody and hisfamily for giving me the opportu-

nity to do this greatproject for them. I’malways looking forgreat projects so ifyou want quality, andyou want it done myway, which I hope isthe right way. Try tobetter yourself atwhat you do everyday and try to learnsomething new. I’mdefinitely practicingevery day to be bet-ter.

I’ve got six cars going to SEMA.Visitmy site to see what’s going on:huntingtonbeachbodyworks.com orrichevansdesigns.com and don’t for-get to visit mopar.com and follow meon my Challenger build. This thing iscool. You’ll be able to get the productto trick out your own car in two hours.We’re supposed to be done with thatOctober 1. Until next month.


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prove their products are equivalent.But I believe auto makers can make asignificant statement by releasingcrash data.

Federal law may be needed toprotect consumers from unsafe after-market parts. But ideally consumersshould be educated to ask for and todemand that safety-related vehicle re-placement parts be OEM and theyshould avoid insurers that refuse toput their safety first.

Tell us how you originally got in-volved in the collision repair industryand related legislation?

I got involved part because I waschairing the Insurance & Financial In-stitution Committee, finding myselfsparring with the insurance industryand they were often times looking atways to shave their costs. I just thinkthat when a consumer pays for an in-surance product, they should get pre-cisely what they pay for, so the wholeidea of steering to particular a specificbody shop because they’re in a DRP,

or because they’re going to put infe-rior parts on the vehicles, it just does-n’t sit right with me. So, that’s how Ifirst got involved back in the late‘90’s.

It just grew from there. Morerecently I’m on a committee in theHouse in which has oversight au-thority over the automotive industry,and we had a hearing with the CEOof Toyota, Akio Toyoda, recently.He was questioned and during thecourse of the questioning, it becameapparent to me that we need to havesome legislation on event data re-porters and mandate them in all newvehicles, so that there isn’t this dis-pute based on whether there wasdriver error or faulty brakes, for in-stance. That type of informationshould be communicated to NHTSAin a timely fashion, so that we catchthem before these problems becometragedies.

Will recent federal insurance reformhave any impact on the collision re-pair industry in the near future?

I don’t believe so. I worked reallyhard to make sure that the consumerprotections and state law was nottrampled on in an effort to create somenational insurance regulatory con-struct. For instance, in California theInsurance Commissioner will stillhave the authority to take action onany number of consumer issues, basedon California law.

Recently, I started looking at theaftermarket collision parts issue, andthere is really an alarmingly potentialfor important safety equipment on avehicle to be compromised, becauseaftermarket parts are being used. Inpart, I was looking at the reinforce-ment bars in some vehicles and howthey’re critical to activating the car’sairbags. If they’re not a proper fit, theycan in fact compromise the airbagsfrom being activated.

Do you think the constant tug-of-warbetween the insurance companies andbody shops has gotten better, or will itnever stop?

Well, it got better. I carried legislation[in California] to prevent steering, andthen two years later I left the Legisla-ture and the insurance industry wentto a member to start and undo that. Iworry that the Legislature has becomeso beholden to the insurance industry;that the only way for consumers to beprotected in this environment and forauto repair shops to be able to makeprofessional decisions relative to therepair of a vehicle, will have to bedone in the courts. I really object to in-surance companies telling consumersone thing in their ads and then deliv-ering something completely differentwhen you really need them. We weresuccessful in preventing ProgressiveInsurance from owning its own repairshops when I was in the Legislature,and I know that at one point Allstatewas looking at it as well.

What is your position about Right toRepair?

It should be a requirement for the carmanufacturers to cooperate with therepair shops. [Otherwise] that wouldbe like a medical diagnostic companynot sharing information about theequipment that they’re selling to thedoctors to diagnose a health condi-tion.

Has the ‘bailout’ for the American carmanufacturers been a success in youropinion?

I’m smiling when you say that, be-cause I was at the committee andasked the question of General Mo-tors, when they were coming to uswith their hats in their hands for as-sistance from the federal govern-ment. And I made a case when Itold them, ‘you want somethingfrom the people of this country,how about offering somethingback, such as meeting these guide-lines for lower emissions or highergas mileage at a faster rate?’ Andthey said ‘No, we couldn’t possiblydo that.’

That was in the fall of 2008 andlook at where we are now. Now [weare about to have] the Volt and100,000-mile warranties—so I thinkit was important for the federal gov-ernment to step in, because it saved alot of jobs. It saved the economy inpart and I think in time all the loanswill be repaid. American car manu-facturers got leaner and better atmaking products. We need to make aconcerted effort to create manufac-turing jobs in this country, so savingthe carmakers is a critical part ofthat.Where do you think the collision re-pair industry will be in 5–10 years?

The industry needs to align itself withthe consumer more and find opportu-nities to work with consumer organi-zations to make the case that they’relooking out for the owner of the vehi-cle. The repair shops don’t want to becompromised in doing a good job forthe car owner and they’re often timesput into a conflict of interest by the in-surers, and we really need to preventthat from happening. They need towork together to push the customer tothe top of the list.

Thank you very much. Last Question:Is it true that as a child you wanted tostudy ballet but your father insistedyou learn Judo instead?

True. But I earned a brown belt, so Ican’t complain.

Comments on this interview and futureones can be posted at www.autobo-dynews.com.


Jackie Speier INTERVIEW continued from p. 25

From quick fixes to major structural repairs, OE in-formation is the gold standard for collision repair.When you can demonstrate that a vehicle has beenrepaired to OE standards, you assure the vehicleowner and the insurer that quality and passengersafety are your first concerns.

Access to affordable OE information, such asthat found in ALLDATA Collision, can positivelyimpact your entire operation. Guesswork is elimi-

nated, meaning you never have to worry about thevehicle coming back because it may have been re-paired improperly.

Having OE information on hand for every spe-cific vehicle allows for greater efficiencies and ac-curacy throughout all shop operations, fromestimating and parts ordering to production, sched-uling and repairing the vehicle. Important benefitsmay include a reduction in supplements and en-hanced negotiations with insurers.OE repair information also makes it possible to per-form mechanical procedures that you may routinelyoutsource, which may include drivetrain, suspensionor steering system repairs. What’s the result? Lessmoney flowing out the door.

An all too common situationHave you ever had a vehicle come back with a prob-lem that was not there when you delivered it to theowner? If not, you are one of the lucky ones. Here’sa typical scenario where access to OE informationcould save time, money and a customer relationship:A customer brings in her 2010 Honda Accord andcomplains that the door sounds hollow or tinny

when she closes it. Just a few days ago, you hadcompleted repairs on this vehicle after it had beeninvolved in a minor collision. It was a quick job, andthe vehicle checked out perfectly.

Suspecting that this condition was not con-nected to the repair, you check the ALLDATA Col-lision information system to see if there is atechnical service bulletin (TSB) covering this issue.TSBs are issued by manufacturers to alert their deal-ers to known issues and the correct repair procedure.TSBs are updated daily in the New TSBs section ofALLDATA Collision. In the case of the Honda, thenoise is a known condition, covered by the manu-facturer’s warranty.

So, in hindsight, this situation may have beenavoided. Ask yourself, “When is the best time to dis-cover a pre-existing condition?”

How about a process that prompts your team toask the customer (when dropping off the vehicle) ifany noises or other unusual conditions existed beforethe collision? Some of you may already do this. Forthose of you who do not, a little investigation couldlead to new up-sell opportunities for your shop.Sourcing OE Technical Service Bulletins right at the


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with Dan EspersenALL OEM Information

with Dan EspersenALL OEM Information

with Tom McGeeALL OEM Information

with Tom McGeeALL OEM Information

Automaker Actions and Announcementswith Jeremy Hayhurst

Automaker Actions and Announcementswith Janet Chaney

Automaker Actions and Announcementswith Jeremy Hayhurst

I-CAR Tech

I-CAR Tech

Amaradio Explains CRAwith Lee Amaradio Jr.

Amaradio Explains CRAwith Lee Amaradio Jr.

Consumer Callout

Consumer Callout

The Right Causewith Mike Causey


with Ed AttanasioShop Showcase

with Ed AttanasioShop Showcase

Say What?!

Say What?!

Dan Espersen is ALLDATA® CollisionSM Program Manager. Dan is a Gold PinMember of the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) and holds an AA Degree inAutomotive Technology. He has 17 years of experience in the collision industryand 17 years of experience in the automotive industry.

start could prevent situations, such as the irritatedHonda owner with the noisy door. Here is the TSB:Door Sounds Hollow or Tinny When Closing

APPLIES TO2008-09 Accord - ALL PROBABLE CAUSEThe sealant between the door skin and the doorbeam has separated at one or more of the gluepoints.

CORRECTIVE ACTIONRemove the old adhesive, and reattach the doorbeam to the door skin at the original glue points.

REQUIRED MATERIALSSealer or sealant (one cartridge repairs two 2-doorvehicles or one 4-door vehicle)• 3M® Ultrapro® Urethane Seam Sealer (requires3M applicator gun 08398): P/N 3M08361• 3M Ultrapro Autobody Sealant (fits a standardcaulking gun): P/N 3M08300• 3M Scotch-Brite® General Purpose Hand Pad:P/N 3M7447

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Repair ProcedureAlways refer to ALLDATA® CollisionSM for safetyprocedures, identification of material types, recom-mended refinish materials, and removal and instal-lation procedures. Always refer to the vehiclemanufacturer for questions relating to applicable ornon-applicable warranty repair information.

NOTE: This procedure is in an outline form thatyou can also use as a checklist for the repair.1. Remove the door panel and the clear plastic shield.


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See OE Repair Information, Page 39

Concerns about data privacy promptedthe formation this spring at the Colli-sion Industry Conference (CIC) of ataskforce focused on the subject. AtCIC in Chicago in July, Tony Passwa-

ter, an industrytrainer and execu-tive director of theIndiana Auto BodyAssociation, saidthat the new task-force that he chairshas in recent weeksbeen discussing

and finalizing its objectives.The primary issue, he said, is that

as the industry’s information providersmove toward “cloud computing” sys-tems—in which a shop’s estimate andeven management system informationis stored on the system provider’scomputers rather than the shop’s—concerns are being raised about accessto and use of the data.

“I don’t think the current data pri-vacy policies and terms-of-use address

all the ramifications of that,” Passwatersaid.

The topic was also highlighted bya panel during the CIC Insurer-Re-pairer Relations Committee, whichdiscussed a “data rights” proposalcrafted by another CIC committee.That statement says no third-partyshould capture or use in any way dataproduced by a shop—even if devel-oped using or transmitted over a third-party’s software or network—withoutthe specific authorization of the shop.The intended use of the data and whowill have access to it must be clearlystated, the proposal reads.

Aaron Schulenburg, executivedirector of the Society of CollisionRepair Specialists (SCRS), said theproblem isn’t that informationproviders don’t get shops’ permissionto aggregate and sell their data. It’smore that shops aren’t given anychoice but to sign away that right ifthey want to use any of the Big Threeestimating systems, he said. Granting

permission for the shop data to beused should be an option for the shop,not a requirement, Schulenburg said.

“We all need aggregated data,”Mike Lloyd of California Casualty

said. “But as far asthe individual re-paier’s data, I be-lieve that belongsto the shop. Youshould have that inthe agreement withthe vendor thatyou’re using. You

should also have in the agreement thatif you move to a different vendor, howdo you get your data back so you canput it in your (new) system?”

That’s an issue several people onthe panel brought up. One panelist, forexample, said he was aware of anmulti-shop operator who closed one lo-cation and could not get the data cre-ated for that location back from theinformation provider because the sub-

scription for that location was nolonger maintained.

Passwater said informationproviders argue that they should havesome rights to estimate data preparedby users that are based on the infor-mation provider’s labor times andother data. But he compared it to buy-ing lumber, saying that doesn’t allowyou to own the land the wood wasgrown on nor give the lumber yardany right to the house you build withit. It’s my house. At some point intime, I should have the right to saywhat I do with my house,” Passwatersaid.

Scott Biggs, of Assured Perform-ance Network, said some shops mightnot be overly concerned about thisissue but likely will be if down theroad the information providers chargea shop for access to the shop’s ownaggregated data that the shop cur-rently has access to as part of its man-agement software system fee.


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Access and Use of Shop Data Raise Privacy Concerns for the Industry

with Ed Attanasio

Shop and Product Showcase

with Ed Attanasio

Shop Showcase

with Erica SchroederShop Showcase



John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been writingabout the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASHNetwork (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com).He can be contacted by email at [email protected].

A new survey found that when it comes to

parts suppliers, collision shops prize order

accuracy most, aren’t overly interested in

electronic parts ordering, and are not very

satisfied with the quality of remanufactured

or non-OEM parts.

The survey by phone and fax of 300

shops was commissioned by the Collision

Industry Conference (CIC) parts committee

earlier this year. It asked shops to rate nearly

two dozen attributes of a parts vendor on a

scale of 1 to 10, with the higher number in-

dicating a higher level of desirability.

Perhaps not surprisingly, order accu-

racy, quality parts, competency and help-

fulness of the parts personnel, timely

delivery and undamaged parts topped the

list of shop’s desires.

A large parts inventory – something

many dealers tout in their advertising to

shops – finished about in the middle of the

21 attributes.

Least important to shops among the

attributes were the proximity of the supplier

to the shop, and promotions or trips and

merchandise awarded for purchase loyalty.

But perhaps discouraging to OE Con-

nection and InfoMedia was the fact that the

ability to order parts electronically received

an average importance rating of 7.32, indi-

cating that 17 of the 21 other attributes

were more important to shops.

Still, nearly 3 out of 5 shops respond-

ing say they use one or both of the elec-

tronic parts ordering systems. The rest said

they don’t use them because they prefer the

personal contact with the vendor by order-

ing via phone or fax. Some non-users, how-

ever, also cited a lack of dealer participation

as the reason they don’t use the systems.

With regard to non-OEM parts, the sur-

vey found that over half of the shops said their

vendor does not supply them with return-rate

information on a particular part. Eighty-two

percent rated the quality of non-OEM parts as

“7” or lower on a scale of 1 to 10.

Remanufactured parts fared slightly

better, with 37 percent rating their quality

as an “8” or higher.

Complete findings of the study are

available on the CIC website at:

www.CIClink.com.

Mike Lloyd

What shops want from parts vendors

Tony Passwater

I am a member of the CAA, the SCRSand a Gold Pin holder of CIC; I havesome questions for all these organiza-tions.

My first question is to the boardof the CAA. As a member of theCAA, I want to know where the boardstands on aftermarket parts? Do youagree with the aftermarket parts com-panies when they say they have testedtheir parts and they are the same asOEM parts according to the law thatreads that the parts must be of ‘likekind and quality’ to the OEM’s?

Or, do you agree with the recenttests that have been conducted byFord Motor Company that proves thatthey are not the same? I want to knowwhere you stand on this issue becauseas this industry issue has come to theforefront at CIC (with Toby Chessand his now famous rebar test) youhave been quiet as to where the CAAstands on this issue. It seems that you

should have some opinion and I wouldlike to know what it is and why youhave chosen to keep quiet on such acontroversial industry issue.

As a member of the CAA, I wantto feel comfortable that the organiza-tion is looking after my best interestas a shop owner.

My second question is to theSCRS. As a member, I would like to askyou the same question. As the Societyof Collision Repair Specialists it seemsto me that the SCRS would be very out-spoken about this ongoing issue withaftermarket parts and vehicle safety. Itseems to me that you have chosen to re-main quiet also. I really don’t under-stand why as an organization that is sohighly respected within the collision in-dustry—with a board that consists ofpeople I highly respect—so please an-swer: why are you not taking the leadon this issue? Correct me if I am wrong,but I don’t believe that any of your

members really need to be told of thedifference between an aftermarket partcompared to an OEM. Where do youstand on the use of aftermarket parts?We want to hear from you please.

My question to the CIC board. Asan associate member, I want to knowwhy after all of these years do we keepre-hashing the same issues over andover and keep fooling ourselves intothinking things are getting better. Asthe recognized industry forum whereeveryone in the industry can come to-gether for the good of all why do wekeep pretending that we are all on thesame page? Our industry leaders don’tlead and we never accomplish anythingsignificant. Why didn’t some one stepup and encourage Toby Chess when hewas threatened and demand that he dohis rebar test anyway and then threatenthose that threatened him.

Instead, all of the so-called colli-sion industry leaders failed to lead at atime when leadership was crucial andnecessary. We are so worried aboutanti-trust and being politically correctthat we are failing to guide this indus-try through desperate times.

True leadership always comeswith a price and there are tremendousrisks involved. Nothing will everchange by taking the safe road, butthings will change by taking the highroad. I would have never started mybusiness if I hadn’t been willing torisk everything at some point. We area fragramented industry because welack the direction of a defined leader.

We are compiled of a bunch ofassociations that either have their ownagendas or are just using them for net-working purposes.

Right now, today, we know thatover 50% (I think more like 80%) ofthe vehicles are repaired improperlyafter a collision. Today the majority ofcollision repair shops lack the equip-ment and training to repair collisionsproperly. Vehicle safety is put on theback burner because most shops arenot informed or forced to repair the ve-hicles properly. Collision repair isevolving so rapidly that even the wellfinanced well informed shops are hav-ing trouble keeping up. So why do wekeep fooling ourselves and act likethings are going to get better. We can’t

even speak out against Aftermarketbumper rebars at our own industrymeeting without some one overpower-ing us and stopping Toby’s test. Ifthings are to change it will only bewhen the CIC, CAA, or the SCRS stoptrying to be so politically correct andreally stand up for the repair process.Its time to take notice that there is asafety problem!! Now that Paul Massefrom Ford Motor Company has com-pleted testing that is pretty powerfuland hard to ignore collision shops andinsures are opening themselves up tohuge liability problems.

How can I be so bold as to say thethings I am saying? Because they aretrue! After Toby was stopped the CRAcontacted him and we were able to dothe same test for Channel 7 and FoxNews with Assemblyman David Jones.After this Allen Wood and I went toCongresswoman Jackie Speier’s officeand saw her do the test with her ownhands. After this meeting Jackie was soconcerned that she ask me if we couldget some national support for this or wasit just a California issue. I told her I wassure I could get national support. I madea call to Aaron Schulenberg, the pres-ident of the SCRS, and left a detailedmessage asking him if he wanted to beinvolved. I didn’t get a return call forweeks (after the fact) with a messagethat he was sorry for not getting back tome. Wow. I thought this was a big issue.I mean how we repair vehicles: safety incollision repair is something that we, asthe repair providers, are assuming the li-ability for.

We met with the Deputy AttorneyGeneral Paul Stein from the State ofCalifornia, along with the Chief Coun-cil to the Insurance Commissioner, andwe did the test for them. The depart-ment of insurance thought trackingwould solve the issue because the CAAhad told them that this was the primaryproblem and the A/G wanted proof thatthe parts were not the same (he has hisproof now thanks to Ford). But theyboth ask me the same questions, if thisis such a big industry problem where isevery one else. We told them the truth,they are either receiving funding fromA/M parts companies or they are afraid.So at the end the A/G wanted proof and


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The Lack of Industry Leadership



Opinions Countwith Dick Strom



Action Countswith Lee Amaradio Jr.

Action Countswith Lee Amaradio Jr.

with Sheila LoftusYour Turn

with Sheila LoftusYour Turn

Opinions Countwith Dick Strom

Shop Showcasewith Janet Chaney

Shop Showcasewith Janet Chaney

Industry Overviewwith Janet Chaney

Industry Overviewwith Janet Chaney

Industry Interviewwith Janet Chaney

Industry Interviewwith Janet Chaney



Lee Amaradio, Jr. is the president and owner of “Faith” Quality Auto Body Inc. in Murrieta,California. Lee is president of the CRA as well as an advocate for many other industrygroups. He can be contacted at [email protected]

See Leadership, Page 39

Aloha Toby,I just got done reading your article(Heat? On a Toyota Front Frame Rail?No Way !) in the July edition of Auto-body News. I’ve always considered my-self fairly smart and up to date withrepair standards but after taking the“test” and feeling a bit foolish, an-swering only 7 correctly out of the 15questions, I have to agree with you thatwe can no longer repair vehicles theway we used to. Acquiring the vehiclemanufacturer’s repair procedures be-fore you start the repairs and followingtheir recommended repair proceduresis the only way to go. Thanks for all thatyou do, for all of us in this industry.Keep up the great work that you do!Mahalo,Dale Matsumoto—Auto Body Hawaii

Aloha Dale—Mahalo for the compli-ments and your honesty. One of themajor problems that our industry is

facing today is lack of knowledge on“the why” we do certain proceduresand not on “the how.” Case in point.Why is the “B” pillar reinforcementreplacement on a 2009 Toyota Camrydone at the roof line instead of sec-tioning? Let’s take a look at the whyfirst and then the how.The government mandated that the carmanufacturers design vehicles thatwill protect the vehicle’s occupants in

front collisions. Vehicle makers haveresponded by building cars that willabsorb a great amounts of energy in

frontal impact and, along with frontalair bags, this contributes to much lessinjury and death. Look at the previouspicture and you will notice that frontstructure collapsed nearly 50% of itsoriginal length, but the passengercompartment hardly had any defor-mation. This was all accomplished byusing high strength steels, internal re-inforcements, crush zones and laserwelding (Example: The front rail on aToyota Camry has 3 different thick-nesses of metals attached using laserwelds). The Federal Governmentstarted to look at side impacts androllovers more seriously in the mid90’s. Our first encounter in the bodyshop was the door intrusion beam.These parts were constructed of ultrahigh strength steels. The Insurance In-stitute of Highway Safety, as part oftheir crash ratings, began to test forrolls over and side impacts.

IIHS devised a test by placing a

weight on the “B” pillar and measuredthe amount of crush.

The standard of 2009 was 3 timesthe weight of the vehicle and in 2012it will be 4 times the weight. Toachieve a 5-star rating, vehicle manu-facturers began increasing the strengthof the “B” pillar reinforcements. Toy-ota uses steel with a MPa rating of 590and the Volvo XC 90 reinforcementrating is 1100 Mpa. Let’s look atwelding and the affect of heat on Ad-vanced High Strength Steels (AHSS).

Looking at the previous picture,you will notice the weld, silver metaland the black oval ring around the


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Tech Notes

National News in BriefWEB WINDOW: - www.autobodynews.com

Regional News in BriefWEB WINDOW: - www.autobodynews.com

with Jeremy HayhurstPublisher’s Page

with Karyn HendricksShop Showcase

with David M. BrownShop Showcase

Shop Showcasewith Jeremy Hayhurst

Hey Toby!with Toby Chess

California Autobody Associationwith David McClune

Collision Repair Association of CA.with Richard Steffen

Insurers Excel at Steeringwith Richard Steffen

Year in Quoteswith John Yoswick

Transition Planningwith John Yoswick

Mainstream Media

My Turnwith Joe Momber

Toby Chess is an industry trainer, an I-CAR program instructor, welding specialist, and formersalvage yard operator. Toby is universally known in the collision industry for his charitableworks, worthy causes, and magic tricks. He can be reached at [email protected]

Why is Camry “B” Pillar Reinforcement Repair Done at the Roof Line?

weld. The black oval ring is called the“heat affected zone” (HAZ). In I-CAR’s Damage Analysis 8, there is ademonstration on the effect of heat onultra high strength steel. The UHSSwas basicaly changed to mild steel byheating the metal to 1200 degreesFahrenheit. The temperature in theHAZ can reach up to 2000 degrees,which will weaken or destroy its ultrahigh strength properties. Realizing thisfact will help us understand why somemanufacturers require that the entire re-inforcement is replaced instead of sec-tioning the part.

To better understand the drasticchanges that started in 2009, I willdemonstrate the start to finish processof a “B” pillar reinforcement in a 2009Toyota Camry.

I contacted Joe Di Donato, thelead instructor at the Toyota University

in Torrance, California about docu-menting the removal and replacementof a “B” pillar reinforcement. Joe, whoI consider to be one of the best instruc-tors in the country, accepted the chal-lenge (of baby sitting me for 3 fulldays). I printed out the repairs fromToyota’s Technical Information System(TIS) along with all pertinent CollisionRepair Information Bulletins (CRIB).1. Vehicle is placed on a frame bench2. Vehicle is measured to determinethe extent of damage (2nd photo thispage).3. Upper body measurements aretaken (third photo this page).

4. Replacement outer panel isplaced into position and marked.5. The outer Roof panel and post coveris cut and saved. The welds on the inner“B” pillar reinforcement are exposed

6. Clean and expose all spot weldsas outlined in TIS removal document.I started to remove some spots weldsthat did not need to be removed. I alsomissed a couple of spot welds on the

bottom of rocker panel. Again, you

need to look at removal documentprior to beginning the repairs. I wouldsuggest that you mark all spot weldson the car as well as the data sheet.7. Mark the outer rocker at the sec-tioning location and cut.8. Remove the entire piece as a sin-gle unit. Again I did not follow the in-structions and tried to remove all thedamaged parts separately. This took alot more time.9. Clean all the mating surfaces.10. Apply weld thru prime to all baremating surfaces.

11. Measure the thickness of themetal.12. Weld some scrap metal from theremoval process and perform a de-structive test. We welded a numberof scrap pieces at different thicknesssettings. The welds looked good, butall failed the destructive test. Wediscovered that there was notenough amperage on the circuit thatwe were plugged into. We move themachine to a different plug (85ampcircuit) and we were able to get agood weld that passed a destructivetest.13. Test fit the inner “B” panel rein-forcement,14. Weld inner “B” panel reinforce-ment to the out rocker reinforcement(We reused the old one, but I wouldrecommend that you use a new outerrocker panel.

15. Weld upper portion of the “B”panel reinforcement to the roofpanel.16. Apply epoxy primer to all baremetal. We mixed up some epoxy


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primer in a cup and applied it with cot-ton applicator (outline in the TIS).17. Weld the outer rocker panel rein-forcement to the vehicle. Use only anopen butt weld. Toyota does not rec-ommend a butt weld with backer onany welded joints as per CRIB #176(revised).18. Set outer “B” panel reinforce-ment on vehicle and mark plug weld

locations. Perform practice welds andconduct a destructive test prior towelding on the vehicle.19. Measure as per dimension sheetin repair manual,

20. Weld outer “B” panel reinforce-ment with squeeze type resistancespot welds and MIG welds as outlinedin the Toyota Repair Manual.21. Apply weld thru primer to allmating surfaces.22. Apply semi rigid foam as outlinein the Toyota Repair Manual.23. Weld in outer access panel.24. Set outer “B” panel and rocker

cover on vehicle a mark the cut location.25. Cut panels using cut and join

technique.26. Weld outer panel with stitchmethod and STRSW.27. Dress all welds.

28. Apply epoxy primer to bare metal29. Apply body filler30. Refinish.

I was visiting a local collisioncenter and they had a 2010 ToyotaPrius on a frame bench. The parts hadarrived and the shop had both doorsoff. I asked the shop foreman whatprocedures he was going utilize in theprocess. He explained the tech wasgoing to repair the inner “B” panel re-inforcement (pulling with a frametower). I went into TIS and pulleddown all the repair information andCRIBs pertaining to this particular re-pair. CRIB #175 (revised) states “Be-cause occupant safety is such a highpriority, HSS & UHSS occupantcabin reinforcement repair is not

recommended.” If goes on to say notto use hot or cold straightening meth-ods. The original estimate nowneeded to be changed and additionalparts ordered. This delay could havebeen avoided by printing out the nec-essary documentation for this repairat the time of writing the estimate.The easiest way to get this info is di-rectly from the Toyota web site. Go tooem1stop.com and click on Toyota.You can subscribe for 2 days, 30 daysor 1 year.

Here is another point fromCRIB#175 revised. “Do not section980 MPa and 590 MPa strength ratedpillar reinforcements.” Another rea-son why Toyota states that the “B”pillar reinforcement on a 2009Corolla, Prius and Camry are re-placed in their entirety. The Venza onthe other hand has a laser weld nearthe bottom of the reinforcement,which separates the upper portion of590 MPa steel and lower portion 440MPa steel. The “B” pillar reinforce-ment can be sectioned using an openbutt joint on the lower portion of thepanel. I-CAR has just introduced anew class called TOY 01 and it is amust for repairing today’s Toyotas

correctly. Another class that I wouldrecommend for estimators, apprais-ers and body technicians is I-CAR’sPOP 01. This class deals with theOEM’s recommended repairs forToyotas, Hondas and the Pontiac G8.Lastly, I would like to discuss thetraining program from Toyota.

Toyota University has a numberof excellent classes. You can take aclasses on refinishing (2-day hands-onclass), Color matching, Hybrids, Non-structural repairs (2-day class) andstructural repairs (also 2-day class). Iattended recently the Toyota structuralclass with Joe Di Donato. The firstday we went over the theory of theToyota Structural repairs and the sec-ond day we installed a rail section in aCamry. The class uses the latest equip-ment and Joe is an excellent instruc-tor (not as good as me, but realclose—just kidding). The class inopen to anyone. All you need is aSPIN number (get it from your localToyota dealer) and sign up on line andthat is it.

The best thing of all is its cost.It’s dirt cheap for what you get. Hopethat I was able to give a better insightinto the repairs of Toyotas.


Genuine Parts And AccessoriesMaking the cheap parts work takes R&R — and they don't pay you for that. So insist on using genuine Suzuki parts in the first place.It's good for both your customer and your business.Get your parts from the crash parts specialists.

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NOTE: Be especially careful of theglue that holds the shield in place;once it gets on your arms and yourclothing, it can easily stain the interior.Cover it with masking tape so it does-n’t rub off.2. Inspect the glue locations along thedoor beam (the front doors have fiveglue points to check) (Figure 1).3. Use a plastic scraper to scrape offthe old sealant from the door skin anddoor support at the affected loca-tion(s) (Figure 2).

NOTE: The door skins are very deli-cate. Using metal scrapers or wedgescan ding or stretch the metal, damag-ing the door skin and possibly ruiningthe paint finish on the outside.4. Scuff the area with Scotch-Brite toclean up any remaining sealant and topromote a good bond (Figure 3).5. Apply the new sealant to the origi-nal area(s) only. Be careful not toapply too much (Figure 4).6. Install the door panel in the reverseorder of removal, and note these items:

• If any clips are damaged, replacethem.• Replace any damaged cable fas-teners.• The latch cable should be fixed tothe cable fastener with the latch in theunlocked position.• Make sure that the connectors areplugged in properly and the cables areconnected securely.• Make sure the window and thepower door lock operate properly.• When reinstalling the door panel,make sure the plastic shield is in-stalled properly and sealed around itsoutside perimeter to seal out water.7. Avoid opening and slamming thedoor until the adhesive sets (4-6hours). If you must close the doors,keep at least one window down. If theoutside temperature is below 70 de-grees, leave the vehicle inside theshop while the adhesive cures.8. Repeat steps 1 thru 7 on any otheraffected doors.

For more information on OE re-pair information, please visit:www.alldata.com/promo/abn5tt/

NOTE: This Repair/Service Procedureis excerpted from a Technical Service

Bulletin published by the vehicle man-ufacturer, and is intended for use bytrained, professional technicians withthe knowledge, tools and equipment todo the job properly and safely. It is rec-ommended that this procedure not beperformed by “do-it-yourselfers.”

©2010 ALLDATA LLC. All rights re-served. All technical information, im-ages and specifications are fromALLDATA Collision. ALLDATA is aregistered trademark and ALLDATACollision is a mark of ALLDATA LLC.All other marks are the property oftheir respective holders.

Honda and Accord are registeredtrademark names and model designa-tions of Honda Motor Co. Ltd. 3M,Ultrapro and Scotch-Brite are trade-marks of 3M. All trademark namesand model designations are beingused solely for reference and applica-tion purposes.


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the DOI didn’t believe we have a prob-lem other than tracking the parts.

These are facts and while I ampurposely not trying to sound politi-cally correct, you can see we lack de-fined leadership because we all have adifferent agenda. I have my agenda andI dislike being treated like a fool andhaving substandard aftermarket partsshoved down my throat. It’s not the factthat I am being forced to use them butthat people continue to insult my intel-ligence by telling me they are the same.

Someone expects me to deceivemy customers for their monetarygain. This is such a stupid issue thatwe should be embarrassed as an in-dustry for even wasting our time andenergy discussing it. Call a spade aspade and move on but please quittrying to prove that aftermarket partsare the same as OEM because no mat-ter how many foo foo certificationcompanies you start and no matterhow many stickers you stick on them,they are “NOT” the same.

We have asked many insurance ad-justers to bring their family cars by andlet us install an A/M core support andbumper assembly for no charge. Eventhough they swear they are ‘like kindand quality’ we still have no takers. I re-ally doubt that I could get any A/M ven-dors to take me up on my offer.

So we need a defined collision re-pair process defined by the OEM’s, notthe insurer. The use of programs such asALLDATA® and Verifacts™ should bemandatory. We need leadership that iswilling to call a spade a spade (the CRA).

We need laws that protect theconsumer from substandard repairs(Jackie Speier). We need an InsuranceCommissioner (David Jones) that en-forces the law and an industry thatmake his department accountable. Weneed to stand up against the politicallycorrect associations (tell the truth) anddemand leadership that is directed atour best interest as collision repairers.We will never be able to please every-one (too bad) but doing what is right isalways the safe road to follow and I stillbelieve that, when people have choice,most will do the right thing.

We need a real shop certificationprogram (the kitemark program run byThatcham® in the UK comes to mind)that is going to upset the majority ofshops. You have no business repairingcollisions if you are not qualified to doso (Sorry for sugarcoating it).


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autobody news setepmber 2010 southwest edition

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