Specialist Vehicle Repairs Plant, fleet, leisure & interiors

Anything that is not a standard car. In practice that means plant and machinery, HGV cabs and trailers, commercial and fleet vehicles, caravans, motorhomes, boats and vehicle interiors. The damage itself is usually familiar (scraped panels, dents, scratched paint, kerbed bumpers, faded or peeling finishes) but the size of the vehicle, or where it sits, makes a conventional workshop repair impractical.

What changes is the preparation. A steel HGV cab, an aluminium panel, a fibreglass caravan body and a textured plastic bumper all want different abrasives, different primers and different handling before any colour goes near them. Get that wrong and the basecoat and clear coat sit on top of a surface they will eventually let go of, which is why a cheap repair on a big vehicle rarely lasts a winter.

• Excavators, dumpers, telehandlers and site plant
• HGV cabs, curtainsiders and trailers
• Commercial vans and fleet cars
• Caravans, motorhomes and boats
• Lease vehicles due back with the finance company
• Interiors: leather, dashboards, carpets and trims

We come to you for most of it. The mobile vans carry paint mixing, spray and curing equipment, so a technician can work in your yard, at a depot, on a construction site or on a driveway, and the vehicle goes back into service without ever being trailered anywhere.

Some work still belongs in the body shop at Radcliffe. Full resprays, heavier panel damage, anything needing a genuinely dust free environment, and larger leisure vehicle jobs are better done under a roof with proper extraction. We tell you which it is when we quote, rather than turning up and discovering it.

Weather sets the limit on site work. Rain, blowing grit and low temperatures all stop lacquer hardening the way it should, and the result of pushing on regardless shows up months later as a dull patch or a lifting edge. We would rather move a booking by a day than hand back a repair we know will fail.

Get the damage repaired before the vehicle is inspected. Leasing and finance companies check returned vehicles against a fair wear and tear standard and charge for anything outside it at their own rates, item by item, which is normally a good deal more than the repair would have cost you.

Our lease return packages are built around exactly that. We look over the vehicle, tell you which marks are likely to be charged for and which will pass, then repair the ones worth repairing. Light stone chips on a bonnet and a faint scratch that polishes out are usually inside the standard, and we will say so rather than invoice you for work that changes nothing.

Timing matters more than people expect. Book the look over a few weeks before the return date, while there is still room to get the work done without rushing it.

• Kerbed alloy wheels and scuffed wheel trims
• Bumper scrapes, corner scuffs and cracked plastics
• Door dents, trolley dings and car park damage
• Scratched and chipped paintwork
• Cigarette burns in seats, carpets and trims
• Scuffed leather bolsters and marked dashboards

Yes. Cigarette burns in upholstery, carpets and trims, damaged leather and scuffed or cracked dashboards are all repaired on site, using filling and colouring products chosen to suit the material rather than a single all purpose kit.

Be clear about what an interior repair is, though: it is cosmetic, and it is a temporary measure. A burn that has been filled and colour matched looks right and will stand up to an inspection, but the fibres that burned away are gone and nothing puts them back. If you want the fault dealt with permanently, the section of upholstery or the carpet needs replacing, and we will tell you that up front rather than sell you the same repair twice.