Life is full of surprises and collision workshops are no different in coming up with the unusual. The encounters of US workshops with unusual repair situations may offer helpful insights.
Some US body shops have encountered unusual issues related to collision-damaged vehicles that may offer lessons for repairers elsewhere as well.
Kris Wyatt of Wyatt’s Paint & Body in San Bernardino, California, says his shop had a pick-up truck sitting in the shop’s lot crash-wrapped because of a broken sunroof. It rained shortly after the truck was crash-wrapped, and then a few days later, the sun came out.
“The rain had gathered in the crash wrap, creating a small pool of water,” Wyatt says. “Then the sun shone through that water, which acted like a magnifying glass. That actually burned the seat and the door trim panel. I would never have thought this would happen.”
As Wyatt joked, the crash wrap did its job by keeping the water out, but the combination of the pool of water and the sun did some not insignificant damage to the interior of the truck.
Police get called
Ryan Clark of Eustis Body Shop, which operates eight shops in the state of Nebraska says they recently had a 2023 Nissan Altima SV in one of his shops for a routine quarter panel hit. When writing the repair plan, the shop determined it would be necessary to replace the left quarter panel on the vehicle. Part of the procedures for replacing the quarter panel is to remove the back glass from the vehicle.
“We had a sublet provider remove the back glass,” Clark says. “Another required operation is to disconnect the battery, something we performed multiple times during the repair. The first time the battery was reconnected in order to move the vehicle to a different department, the local police department showed up. The police officer asked if there had been a collision near our shop. We had not heard anything relative to a nearby crash, nor did the officer divulge what type of vehicle had triggered the ‘crash event notification,’ so we moved on.”
“The second time we reconnected the battery, after the back glass was removed, the police showed up again,” Clark says. “It was at this time that the police told us that it was SiriusXM satellite radio that notified the police of a crash event. We told them they were welcome to take a look around the shop, and we determined it was the Nissan Altima leading to the crash notification. We hadn’t disconnect the rear antenna, so at first we were confused about what could be causing these calls. However, we did notice during disassembly that the amplifier in the rear glass was damaged upon removing the back glass. This amplifier is embedded in the urethane itself, and there was no tangible way on this vehicle to remove the back glass without damaging the amplifier. There was urethane surrounding the disconnect, so we were unable to remove the amplifier prior to removing the back glass.”
Clark says he told the officer the crash notification would likely happen again when the shop next moved the vehicle from the paint department back to the body department.
“He told us he has to act when he gets these types of calls, so he would have to show up again,” Clark says.
“We looked through Nissan TechInfo again, and still couldn’t find a way to disable the SiriusXM radio.”
The police eventually showed up a third time. Clark eventually got in touch with a representative from Nissan.
“Nissan disconnected the SiriusXM for us, and the next time we reconnected the battery, the police did not show up,” Clark says. “It was the proper fix. We contacted Nissan once repairs were complete, and they turned back on the SiriusXM, we went through our normal post-repair routine, and everything was functioning correctly.”
Clark says he subsequently found out there is a work-around in the service section of TechInfo. But the police officer told him he’d had similar calls to other body shops related to General Motors vehicles when OnStar hadn’t been disconnected.
“We pull procedures on every vehicle, but it just goes to show that there are still things in these newer cars we must be prepared for so we can educate the customer on the potential issues that may arise,” Clark says.
Pre-tensioners bending mounting bolts
The president of a multi-state airbag and calibration service in the United State is concerned that the rear seatbelt pre-tensioners in some late-model Honda vehicles are damaging the main mounting bolt for the belt on the upper portion of the C-pillar when they fire with no passenger wearing the belt.
Gary Trudeau of Automotive Calibration Specialists, which has locations in four U.S. states, says he was unable to locate a procedure for repair of the issue from the automaker.
“A 2024 Honda CRV was the first one found with this issue,” Trudeau, who also owns the mobile service provider Gary’s Airbag Service, says. “When the pre-tensioner goes off with no one in the seat, it yanks straight down, and I don’t think it was designed to have that much force pull straight down. It actually bends the metal, it pulls the stud downward. There’s about a 15- to 20-degree angle difference between a good one and bad one.”
Trudeau says he’s seen the same issue with the 2023 Honda Pilot as well. Neither vehicle has rear seat sensors that tell the vehicle whether there are passengers there when there’s an airbag – and belt pre-tensioner – deployment.
In theory, he says, the bolt could be straightened, but there’s the also the issue of the weld holding that bolt to the vehicle structure.
“As a trained body technician told me, if you take a structural [repair] class, you know that weld itself is good for about three bends. So the pre-tensioner bent it down, if you bend it back up, what happens on the next collision? It could fail.”
But it also would be a very intrusive repair to fix the issue, Trudeau says.
“It involves both inner and outer quarter panels, and the roof,” he says. “What might have started as a front-end collision gets maybe a $5,000 repair added to it. And who wants to repair it without a statement from Honda saying this is how they want it repaired.”
Trudeau is concerned the issue might be “happening a lot” and that shops might not be noticing it or just rebolting in the seatbelt.
He says he had the vehicle towed to a Honda-certified shop after the customer contacted Honda and that’s what the automaker recommended. Now he’s waiting to see the vehicle after it is repaired there.