Auto Body Painting for Concord

The hood that followed a gravel truck to the 400

Look at the hoods in a Concord parking lot and you can tell who commutes behind the trucks. The concrete and aggregate yards along the rail line load all day, and the tandems climb out of Concord on the concession roads toward the 407 and the 400 with a fine spray of stone coming off the tailgate. Sit behind one from the yard gate to the highway ramp and the leading edge of the hood, the top of the bumper and the base of the windshield pick up dozens of chips. Do it for a year and the hood looks sandblasted, and every chip is a hole in the clear coat where salt can start on the steel.

That is the Concord paint job we see most, and it is not one a touch-up pen fixes. Chips through to primer need the panel sanded flat, primed and refinished as a whole; a pitted bumper top needs the same. The second most common is the opposite problem: a fleet van whose white has chalked on the roof and doors while the box behind it, made of something else, has not.

Mixing for fleet white, lettered doors and a leased pearl

White is the colour Concord runs, and white is harder than it looks. Every manufacturer makes several, and a van door that has faded under three summers of Highway 7 sun is no longer any of them. The code gives us a starting point; the door gives us the answer. A first mix goes onto a spray-out card, the card is held to the van in corrected light, and the tint is nudged until card and door read as one. Then the colour is carried past the repair into the neighbouring panel, because a hard edge between old white and new white is what the eye catches from across a yard. If the door carries lettering or a partial wrap, we say so before the panel is stripped so your sign shop can be booked for the day it comes home.

The sales rep’s leased sedan is the other end of the same job. A pearl or a three-stage colour with a scraped fender has to match from across a client’s lot and pass a lease-return inspection later, so it gets the same spray-out card, a blend into the door and the hood, and the lifetime warranty on paint and refinish that goes with every panel we spray. A refinish here is documented, which helps at the return.

• Tint adjusted against the panel in corrected light, not just mixed to the code
• Colour carried into the neighbouring panels so there is no edge
• Lettering and wraps flagged before any panel is stripped
• Lifetime warranty on paint and refinish, in writing

Booking booth time around a working vehicle

Paint has few surprises, which makes it the easiest job to schedule around a van that earns its keep. Our estimator writes the estimate from photos the same business day, the booth day is booked, and the vehicle comes east on Highway 7 or the 407 once. A hood or a door is usually a few working days including the cure; a full side on a van is longer, and we say how much longer when we book. If the fleet can only spare the vehicle at the end of the week, we plan the drop-off for the Friday.

Insurance rarely enters into paint. Chips and chalking are wear, and wear is nobody’s claim; the estimate is a cash number and we write it plainly so a fleet manager can put it beside the vehicle’s value. Where another driver damaged the panel, the refinish is part of that collision claim and runs through it.