Vehicle Body Repairs in Stockport

By mixing on site and testing before committing. The mobile unit carries the paint mixing system, so the colour is made up from the manufacturer code at the car rather than ordered in beforehand. It is then sprayed onto a test card and held against the panel in daylight, because a five year old car has usually drifted away from its own code.

The blend does the rest. Instead of stopping the new paint at the edge of the repair, the technician fades it out across the surrounding area so there is no line for the eye to catch, then lacquers over the whole blended section. The finish is checked outside in daylight and against a reflection before we leave, not under a lamp.

• Stockport town centre and SK1
• Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme
• Bramhall and the SK7 driveways
• Hazel Grove and SK6
• Heaton Moor and SK4
• Workplace parking off the M60

Scuffed bumper corners and kerbed lower trim, in that order. Large cars on modern estates with narrow gateposts and tight turning circles pick up damage at the front corners and along the sill trim, and because those panels are often textured plastic rather than painted metal, the repair involves rebuilding the grain so the patch does not sit smooth against the surface around it.

After that it is stone chips and car park dings. Chips concentrate on bonnets, front bumpers and mirror caps on anything doing regular M60 miles, and they matter more on a premium car because the deduction at trade in or lease handover is proportionally larger. Dings with unbroken paint often come out with paintless dent removal, which keeps the original finish untouched.

Cosmetic damage to the outside of the car that has not gone through or distorted the structure of the panel. That covers dents and creases, scratches from light marks to deep key damage, scuffs and scrapes along wings and doors, stone chips on bonnets and front panels, cracked or kerbed bumpers, faded and split plastic trim, and rust that has started around a chip or an old repair.

It does not cover accident damage. If a panel is torn, an impact has pushed the shell out of alignment, or something behind the panel has been damaged, that belongs at a full accident repair centre and we will tell you so rather than hide it under filler and paint.

Most of what we see is small damage that has simply been left. One chip on a bonnet is nothing. Thirty of them, plus a scuffed bumper corner and a dented rear door, is what makes a five year old car look ten.

• Dents, dings and creases in any panel
• Scratches and scuffs, superficial through to bare metal
• Stone chips on bonnets, wings and door edges
• Cracked, scuffed and dented plastic bumpers
• Key scratches and other vandal damage
• Faded, scuffed or cracked textured plastic trim
• Surface rust, cut back and repainted at the body shop

Stockport is fourteen miles from Radcliffe, about thirty minutes, so it sits inside the routine mobile area rather than on a planned route. The concentration of premium cars in Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme and Heaton Moor means colour matching gets more attention here than in most places.

We work throughout Stockport and the SK1, SK2, SK3, SK4 postcode areas, typically 30 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes Stockport town centre, Cheadle, Bramhall and Hazel Grove.