Mobile SMART Repairs in Wigan

Out on the A58 and then down the M61, which is a straightforward 30 minute run and means a Wigan booking does not swallow a day in travel. In practice that keeps waiting times short, and if another job in the borough finishes early there is sometimes room to add a small repair the same afternoon rather than pushing it into the following week.

The quote comes first, though. Photograph the damage close up and take a second shot of the whole panel from a few metres back, then send both with your WN postcode. Within 24 hours you get a fixed price with no obligation, along with a straight answer on whether the repair suits your driveway or needs to come into the Radcliffe body shop.

• WN1 and WN2 Wigan town centre and the east
• WN3 and WN4 the south of the borough
• WN5 the western side
• WN6 Standish and the north
• Leigh and Ashton-in-Makerfield on the same run
• Workplace and depot car parks across the borough

Wheels and bumpers lead the list. Narrow lanes with deep kerbs on the Standish side scrub alloy rims, and a pothole hit at the wrong angle can flatten a rim edge as well as marking the face. Painted and powder coated wheels can be refurbished on the vehicle at your address; diamond cut faces have to be machined at the body shop instead.

After that it is the everyday cosmetic list: scraped bumper corners, key scratches, faded and cracked textured plastic trim, and stone chips across the bonnet. Trim work is worth mentioning because it is often assumed to need replacing. The grain of the plastic is rebuilt during the repair, so the finished area matches the texture around it rather than sitting on the surface as a smooth patch.

A SMART repair works by treating only the damaged area of a panel rather than the whole panel. The technician washes and degreases the area first, because polish, tar and traffic film will contaminate anything sprayed over the top, then works out how deep the damage actually goes.

From there the area is flatted back through the clear coat and feathered out into sound paint so there is no hard edge. If the metal or plastic underneath is dented or split, that is rebuilt with filler or plastic welded before any paint goes near it. Then primer, a basecoat mixed to your vehicle paint code, and clear coat over the top, each coat cured before the next. The colour is blended out into the surrounding paint rather than stopped at a line, which is what makes the repair disappear.

What actually gets done depends entirely on the damage. A small dent where the paint is still intact is pushed out using paintless dent removal, with no filler and no paint at all. A cracked bumper needs plastic welding from behind before the face is filled and refinished. A stone chip on a bonnet may only need touching in and flat polishing.

Wigan is 15 miles from Radcliffe via the A58 and M61, around 30 minutes, so we regularly combine a mobile visit in the town with jobs in Standish, Leigh and Ashton-in-Makerfield on the same day rather than making separate trips.

We work throughout Wigan and the WN1, WN2, WN3, WN4 postcode areas, typically 30 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes Wigan town centre, Standish, Leigh and Ashton-in-Makerfield.