Our car is in the shop to have some very very minor crash repairs. They will apparently have to replace the rear fender, plus straighten one small crease in the rear quarter panel. We have been told it will take 5 working days.
What takes all the time? Presumably you strip off the fender and some internal trim (an hour or so?), bash the dent out (similarly?), then fair it up with filler. I’ve done some very minor home repairs and my recollection is that the filler sets very quickly. I would have thought it wouldn’t take more than say half a day to put on the filler and then fair it up (particularly if you are an expert and have the right tools and consumables immediately to hand).
Then it’s got to be painted. Whenever I’ve worked with automotive spray paint, its fast drying/recoat times are remarkable. I suppose there may be special enamels and they may have to be baked or something. Maybe they are very slow to bake and you need several coats. I don’t know.
Then you’ve got to re-assemble, which would be a bit slower than dissassembly, but I still would have thought no more than a couple of hours to refit the trims and fender.
Well first off there are other cars in the shop so they are not always working full time on your car due to internal scheduling (don’t whine, shit happens)
Off the top of my head, I would guess the schedule might be
Day one disassemble pound out dent, test fit fender, and apply bondo.
Day two sand and reapply bondo, final fit of fender. (there could also be some inner structures that are being replaced/ repaired, that they will be messing with on day one and two)
Day three final sanding and mask off the car. Masking the car takes a fair amount of time. Eveything that is not being painted has to be covered. Paint spray can get everywhere. masking takes a couple of hours minimum. Surface prep of the area to be painted.
Day four paint and dry
Day 5 buff, clean and deliver.
Don’t forget that the stuff that the shop ueses is of a different grade than what you buy at an auto parts store. Quality will be better, and drying time may be longer.
Five days does not seem unreasonable to me, but IANA auto body guy
One reason that the shop may schedule work like this is to get some economies of scale. That is, it might be more efficient for a guy to spend a full day doing filler jobs, a different day sanding, and so on. Closing out one type of work (cleanup, storing tools & supplies, etc.) and starting up another incurs a certain amount of overhead. Plus activities like sanding vs. painting are likely to be done in completely different areas.
IANAABG but I do handle total losses for an insurance company. Listening to me is a little like talking to the coroner about a routine apendectomy, but I’m pretty familiar nonetheless with body shop work.
Simple answer? Depends on what you mean by “replace the rear fender.” A fender, technically, is a bolt-on part found on the front of the car on either side of the hood/bonnet. Remove and replace in a flash for the most part. It’s wheel-well covering counterpart in the rear of the car is the quarterpanel and its replacement is another proposition entirely. It doesn’t bolt on, it has to be fitted and welded, the weld seams ground down and filled & polished, and then painted. It’s a relatively straightforward procedure involving the removal of the back windowglass, rear side window glass, disconnecting taillights, removing the rear bumper assembly and finally cutting off the panel. And then of course, once everything’s welded,ground & polished, the car has to be put back together. Normally this procedure runs between 13-24 hours of labor. At $80/hour in addition to a $300 panel, many older cars are “total losses” as the result of a damaged quarterpanel! On average your car is getting about 5 hours of attention per day.
And body filler is NOT shaping compound! When it is used (correctly) it is typically only in a thin film to fill hammer marks and weld seams–it’s part of the car manufacturing process in fact, so forget about ever owning a car that hasn’t got any Bond-o on it. Those cases where you see a 1/2-inch thick slab of putty cracking and delaminating from an old wound? Bubba did that–and he’s not a qualified repair tech. A quality repair takes time, as does a quality body panel replacement. These things aren’t made out of Legos.
Insurance companies have deals w/ autobody shops. They pay less when the job is not completed on time. So the Ins. CO’s flood the local shop, then starve them, so the auto body shops can’t hire a bigger staff and always run some late.
Such has been my experence w/ a autobody shop owner.
I asked at the repeir place that did a repair for me a few years ago. The reason is that the coats of paint are baked on (with lights from memory) at the end of each day overnight. The guy said that no matter how small the resprayed area is it takes just as long to cure the paintwork as it would for a total respray.
Shit I missed that it was a quarter panel being replaced. I saw fender and bolts, and glossed over the rest. :smack: Hell, yes five days is reasonable.
No, you didn’t miss a thing. I never said a quarter panel was being replaced. The quarter panel has a very minor ding, no way is it being replaced. The ding will just pop out and have to be faired up and repainted.
In the back of the car, what would be called the fender if it were on the front (covering over the wheel and tire) is known as a quarter panel. So if you say replace the rear fender, that translates to rear quarter panel. Now you say the quarter panel is not being replaced. I give up, I have no clue what work is being done to your car.
But even with that said, the body shop knows how long the job will take. They do not get paid any more if they keep your car an extra day or two. In fact, space is usually limited at the shop so it is to their advantage to get your car gone ASAP. But as I said in the first sentence they know how long the job will take. They are professionals they know their business.
Here is something I have heard said in many a mechanical shop, and I would guess it is also said in body shops when someone wants a 5 day job in 3 days
Chill, Rick. You seem to have assumed from the outset that I am whinging. I’m just curious. Everybody I have talked to said beforehand: “expect it to take about a week” and sure enough, that’s what the shop said. OK, so it takes a week. No biggie. I just wondered what takes the time. Idle curiosity is the watchword of these boards!
As to the repairs, you have to understand that I am working through a difficulty. American Car Part Terminology is not my first language. I have to try to translate.
They are replacing what in Australia we would call the rear bumper. The bit that used to be chrome but is now colour keyed plastic. The bit at the very rear across the car.
They are also taking out a small ding in the passenger side rear quarter panel.
