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OEM Forum

Technical clinics and panel discussions provide a wealth of automaker information and answers

If you had to come up with perhaps the one best reason to attend I-CAR's annual meeting each summer, the choice would probably be clear: The unbeatable opportunity it offers to hear from - and question - the OEMs' top collision repair specialists.

This year's meeting, for example, included technical clinics by a half dozen automakers, sharing the latest in repair guidelines, handing out free manuals/CDs and offering a glimpse of what lies ahead. And a panel of OEM representatives spent well over an hour in an open Q&A session, responding to questions on everything from information availability to adhesive bonding and new structural foams.

If you weren't among the 650 attendees at this year's meeting, here's a sampling of the information discussed.

Information availability

As previously reported in INSIGHT, virtually all the automakers have made their service and repair information available to consumers and the aftermarket via websites. So what's it going to cost your shop to access that information? It depends on which auto manufacturers' information you need.

While the automakers agreed to make the information available and affordable, what classifies as "affordable" seems to vary by company. Virtually all of the OEMs offer rates for both short-term (24-72 hours) and longer-term (per-month or per-year) access, and some offer options such as per-document or per-model rates.

But the rates for this access vary widely. Hyundai and Kia, for example, have made access to all of their information free of charge. Volvo, on the other hand, starts at $87.50 for one month's access to information on one model, and goes up to $3,500 a year for access to all its online information.

How much specific collision repair information is available on the sites also varies by manufacturer. Nissan and GM, for example, are among those offering a fair amount of sectioning information; others offer very little.

"What we'd really like to do is try to create a general sectioning procedure that you can use on the bulk of our vehicles, rather than a specific repair per vehicle," DaimlerChrysler's Daryl Porter said at the I-CAR event, at which he was giving away CDs with a 400-plus page collision repair manual on the automaker's new Pacifica. "It's something we're looking at. I don't know if we'll be able to pull it off or not."

Porter said his goal is to sell enough advertising in the manuals and CD collision repair information products his company creates in order to give them away at no charge other than a small handling fee. And while such information is also available on the automakers repair information website, Porter said it may be less expensive to order it through the company's toll-free phone service (800-890-4038). Products include Daimler Chrysler's dentless paint repair guide (product No. 81-170-03004), plastic repair guide (81-170-00012), and the second version of its welding and weld bonding manual (81-170-03005).

A summary of the OEM websites and access options and costs for all the automakers is included in this issue of INSIGHT and is also regularly updated at the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) website (www.nastf.org).

"Knowledge of what's available from an information standpoint" is perhaps the key challenge facing technicians, GM's Jack Aho said during the discussion at I-CAR's annual meeting. "There's lots of information available today, but a lot of people don't know what's available and a lot of people don't have access to get it, at least not right at their toolbox."

Bonding, welding - or riveting?

The automakers were also asked if their positions on adhesive bonding had changed. "It's widely known now that we say it's okay for exterior panels," Aho said. "We're going to hold it there."

"Nissan does not recommend the use of adhesive bonding as an alternative to welding," Steve Przybylo of Nissan North America said. "And they have no real plans in the future to change that."

That holds true for Toyota as well, according to Roger Foss, although he said that's subject to change as the automaker continues to do research and the adhesive products continue to evolve.

DaimlerChrysler supports the use of adhesive bonding but only when used in conjunction with some welds.

"We don't want to see adhesives used by themselves," Porter said. He was able to stump some of those in his technical clinic at the I-CAR annual meeting by asking if the welding should be done before or after the adhesive dries.

"Let it set up first," Porter said. "You get a cleaner, better-protected [weld] nugget than if you weld on wet."

But Raymond Coker, a collision repair instructor with Mercedes-Benz, said his company is throwing another methodology into the mix: riveting of structural parts.

The company started calling for such riveting in 1999 with its CL500 and 600 vehicles, expanded it into small areas with its 2002 C-class production cars, and now calls for its use in even more areas on the 2003 SL model 230 and 2003 E-class model 211. Riveting is the recommended repair method for these vehicles in such areas as the front and rear frame rails, some areas of the rocker and quarter panels, the rear inner and outer wheelhouses, the spare tire wells, rear body panels and rear frame cross-members.

Mercedes cites four reasons for the move to riveting. The boron and other heat-sensitive steels used in these vehicles are weakened by the repeated heating that welding requires. Eliminating welds reduces the chances of corrosion. There are applications where you cannot get to both sides of the metal to use resistance welding. And testing in Germany, the car maker says, has shown that the correct rivet applied the correct way is as strong as weld, so the process requires no other adhesives.

One downside is that the only approved rivets (which have a Mercedes part number) can be expensive - 65¢ to as much as $2 each, with 80 to 90 of them needed, for example, for one front frame rail. They are an aluminum rivet, specially coated to avoid galvanic or electromechanical corrosion.

Perhaps another downside: the appearance of the rivets may be a good indication the vehicle has been repaired (Mercedes is not yet using rivets at the factory). But Coker said the rivets are put from the outside in, meaning only the smaller head is on the outside, and are then covered with seam sealer.

"The rivets are not in any area that the customer can, say, open the hood and see them," Coker said. "The only way they will be visible is if someone, say a...company doing a third-party inspection, puts the vehicle on a lift and takes some body cladding off the bottom of it and sees these lumps under the sealer. And if they scrape it off and see a rivet, they're going to say, "Who in the hell butchered this car?" That's when we as a company will step forward with the documentation. Because the factory is standing behind this. If these guidelines are followed, it's a guaranteed repair process."

Coker said the riveting process involves aligning the two parts, drilling holes one at a time and placing a fastener in each as you go, taking it all apart to debur all the holes, then riveting it all together.

"What we don't want people, particularly insurance companies, to think is that this is a faster repair process, because it is not," he said.

If the same area is damaged in a subsequent accident, a new set of rivet holes would need to be drilled, he said.

Mercedes offers training on this and its other repair procedures at two training centers on the east and west coasts, and dealers can send shop personnel - either those from the dealership shop or an independent - at no charge other than travel and hotel costs.

Structural foams

While most of the automakers at the I-CAR annual meeting said they aren't using or planning to use structural foams, GM is.

"We've got it in a number of vehicles," GM's Aho said.

Unlike the acoustical or sound deadening foam used in many vehicles, structural foam is dense (31 pounds per cubic foot) and extremely strong (it's sometimes called "featherweight concrete") and is used to reinforce joints and stiffen the body, particularly as today's larger vehicles add weight above the beltline, such as entertainment centers hanging from minivan roofs.

Determining what is structural foam and what is acoustical foam can be a bit difficult because acoustical foam can be both rigid or flexible. But selecting the wrong replacement can be a real problem since acoustical foam expands up to 1000 percent, while structural foam expands only 100 to 300 percent. And it obviously can have a big impact on the vehicle's performance.

One quick test for technicians is that acoustical foam, whether rigid or not, can be easily penetrated with a screwdriver, while structural foam cannot.

Aho said GM's Service Parts Operation's vision is to work with engineers so that where structural foam is used, it will be replaceable as a block rather than a pumpable application to avoid the problem of too much or too little being used.

"Where we don't have that, we will try to apply a service part with the foam already in it," Aho said.

Other automaker news

Attendees at the I-CAR annual meeting also learned that starting with the 2005 model year, GM will only offer complete 1-piece body sides, not available in several pieces as they have in the past. Sectioning to use only as much of that piece as is needed is still an approved procedure, GM's Randy Boyd said, but the part will only be available as a whole.

And Toyota offered repair information on its 2004 Sienna minivan, introduced earlier this summer and loaded with newer technologies such as run-flat tires, 1-touch power sliding doors, dynamic laser cruise control and optional rear-view camera. A complete collision repair manual is available (publication 00400-BRM11-7U, available online or by calling 800-622-2033).

Some good news: The tire pressure warning system can be reset at the dash without a trip to the dealership.

The bad news: A special Toyota tool is required if the front-end sensors - which read the reflection of a laser off objects in front of the vehicle to adjust the cruise control - are serviced, removed or replaced.

It also includes more multiplex communication systems, which, for example, can get power to the power window even if the motor is unplugged (thus making it important to fully disconnect the battery).

"All of this information is out there," one shop owner attending the I-CAR annual meeting said. "But here you get a whole lot of it in a short time, with the chance to ask the OEMs a whole lot of questions."   o

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