When Your Car or Pickup Truck Needs Some Body Repairs
The owner of a car or pickup truck is responsible not only for its engine care, but also for keeping the vehicle’s body in good shape, and for more than one reason. Auto body services are always available to make windshield replacement, hail damage repair, and bumper repair happen, and many of them can also double as an auto paint shop. The vehicle’s owner can find these auto body services online and through word of mouth, and they might prefer a brand-name service for a Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc. What sort of hazards might damage a car’s body, and how can these dents, cracks, and scratches impair the car’s performance?
Body Dents
It is common for car owners to consult auto body services when their car’s body is dented in one or more locations, and these dents compromise both the car’s performance and aesthetics. What can dent a tough car body? Large hail is a good example, since heavy hail can pound dents right into the car’s roof, hood, and trunk during bad weather, such as pieces the size of golf balls or larger. Any car parked outside, in the open, runs this risk. And it’s not just hail; heavy tree branches can fall on a car and put huge dents in it, and glancing blows and other minor auto accidents on the road will do the same. In some cases, a car slides on slick ice and hits a fire hydrant or mail box, damaging the bumper or denting the doors. And, of course, there is the risk of vandalism, when a vandal throws heavy objects at a car to dent it or strikes it with something, such as a tire iron.
Large dents in a car are considered ugly, and they will lower a car’s resale value. What is more, those dents disrupt the vehicle’s aerodynamic qualities, which slows it down while driving and lowers its fuel efficiency. The average car owner doesn’t have the tools to fix this, so they can look up local auto body services that provide dent and ding repair, and take the car there for work. The employees will remove any dented metal piece and pound the dents out from the other side, restoring each piece’s original shape, and they can do this for the soft aluminum rims on a car, too. If the rims are cracked deeply, though, they need to be replaced entirely.
Cracked Glass
It’s not just the car’s metal body or rims that may suffer from blunt trauma. Many of the hazards that dent a car’s body can also put cracks on its windshield or windows, too, and cracks are an even bigger problem. Whether a crack is long or shaped like a spiderweb, cracks are liable to keep expanding across the glass as the car is used (due to air pressure), and the windshield might even shatter at some point. This is a serious safety hazard, and for this reason, a car with a cracked windshield will likely fail an auto safety inspection. Not only can vandalism, hail, and falling tree branches crack the glass, but so can flying debris that comes loose from a truck on the road. Not all truck crews secure their cargo properly, and cricks or stones might go flying around and hit cars behind the truck.
Most often, a cracked windshield will simply be replaced all in one piece to restore the car’s safety standards, and this will also boost the car’s resale value and make it look much better.
Paint Work
On a final note, such blunt trauma can also put scratches on a car’s paint or scrape it off, such as collisions, vandalism, and falling tree branches. Damaged paint is ugly, and it exposes the car’s metal to air (causing it to rust). So, at local auto body services, a car can have its paint touched up on any affected area, and skilled car owners can do this themselves at home, if they also have the primer and sealant on hand. They sand down the affected area, apply primer and paint, then sealant, and allow all this to dry before driving the car again.