Vehicle Body Repairs Mobile & body shop across the North West

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

It depends entirely on whether the paint is intact. If the dent is smooth and the paint is unbroken, we use paintless dent removal, working the metal back to shape from behind the panel with rods and picks. Nothing is filled and nothing is sprayed, so the original factory paint stays on the car, which is always the better outcome.

Where the paint has cracked, or the dent has a sharp crease, or the panel cannot be reached from behind, PDR is not an option. The area is then flatted back, filled and shaped in stages rather than in one thick coat, sanded flush and feathered into the surrounding paint, primed, sprayed in a colour matched basecoat and lacquered.

Either way the finish is checked in daylight and against a reflection, not just by hand. A dent repair that reads correctly under workshop lighting can still show as a ripple in the sun, and that is the point at which a repair either passes or does not.

The large majority of body repairs are done where the car is parked. The mobile body shop carries the paint mixing system, spray equipment and curing lamps needed for dents, scratches, scuffs, chips, bumper damage and trim work, so the car stays with you and is usually driveable the same day.

Rust is the exception, and it is a firm one. Corrosion has to be cut or ground out, the sound metal treated, the area rebuilt and then repainted, and that needs the extraction, lighting and cover of the body shop at Unit C, The Yard, Rear of Constellation Mill, Radcliffe. We do not attempt rust work on a driveway.

Larger jobs come in too: damage running across several panels, repairs that need a bumper removing to be done properly, and anything where the car needs to sit somewhere warm and dry while the paint cures. Weather decides the rest, because basecoat and lacquer will not flash off correctly in rain or near freezing conditions, so we would rather move a booking than hand back a finish that fails within the year.

Because once a chip has gone through the clear coat and basecoat to the metal underneath, it stops being cosmetic. The panel is then open to rain, road salt and grit, and corrosion starts at the edge of the chip and creeps outwards under the paint around it, where you cannot see it happening.

By the time a rust bubble shows on the surface, the damage under the paint is already wider than the mark you can see. Left long enough it perforates the panel, and a hole in a wing is a far bigger and more expensive job than the chip that caused it. Touching in a fresh chip and flat polishing it is quick, cheap and stops water reaching bare metal.

There is a money argument as well as a mechanical one. Chipped, scratched and dented bodywork is the first thing a trade buyer prices down and the first thing a lease inspector writes on the sheet. Sorting it beforehand normally costs less than the deduction.