After raising seven children through their teenage years, I've had my fair share of experiences with selling used cars that have body damage. As a child saved up to buy a newer car, I was relied on to find a way to sell their old one for the most money possible. I have learned that fixing small dents and other aesthetic issues with your vehicle is a great way to significantly increase the sales price you ask when you put it on the market. But not all dents are worth paying to have fixed because it won't affect the value much. Whether you are just trying to make the money back that you've put into your vehicle or you're trying to make a profit, hopefully the pages on this website will give you some insight into what's worth putting your time and effort into fixing and what's best left untouched.
If you have been in a car accident and your vehicle sustained damaged, one of the first things to think about is where to take it for auto collision repair. During the repair process, there is a good chance your vehicle will need a paint job.
Here are three painting techniques used by auto body shops.
Car Paint Code
Even though you think your car is just plain red, there are actually various shades of red that different car manufacturers use when they make a vehicle. When taking your car in for an auto body repair job, the shop will need to know the exact color of paint used on your vehicle.
If your car still has the original paint, this will be relatively easy to do, thanks to car paint codes. For example, if you have a 2017 Ford Mustang that is Race Red, the car paint code is PQ. Besides looking it up on the internet, other places to find the car paint code include:
It's important to note that even if you know the car paint code, the auto body repair shop might not be able to match it exactly. This is due to variations in colors used during the manufacturing process.
Blending
If an exact match can't be found for the color of your car's vehicle, an auto body repair shop might use a technique called blending. Blending tricks the human eye into thinking the paint matches. It's usually only done when certain parts of the vehicle, such as quarter panels, need to be repaired.
An auto body professional simply paints the parts of the vehicle that are adjacent to the ones getting repaired. Even though the panels will have a slight variation of color, it should not be very noticeable.
Spectrophotometer
If your vehicle has an atypical paint job, such as if it is an iridescent or metallic color, it may be nearly impossible for an auto body professional to find the exact color for your vehicle.
This can be especially problematic when they have to make a door or other large car part match the rest of the vehicle. In cases like these, a technologically advanced device called a spectrophotometer can come in handy.
A spectrophotometer measures the intensity of light and can find the exact hues of the paint on your car. Using this data, along with your vehicle's specific color paint code, auto body professionals can come up with an exact color.
To learn more, contact a company like Chehalis Collision Center.
Share20 June 2018
