protecting your car's finish from tree damage

People often think of auto body repair as significant damage repair to your car after an accident or collision. There are many services auto body repair shops offer, and in some cases, the damage is minor but fixing it can make your car look better. Sometimes, repairs can even add value to the vehicle. 

Inspecting the Damage

If you have some dents or dings in your car or truck's body and want to have them fixed, an auto body repair shop is the perfect place to take the car. The shop technician will look over the damage to the body and determine what needs doing to fix it. 

The tech will give you a detailed estimate of the damage repair before starting any work. The tech may offer you several options if there is more than one solution for the damage. The tech may even suggest one solution over another if it offers higher-quality repair, but the choice will be yours to make.

Making Repairs

If a dent is small and not very deep, the technician may be able to pop the dent out using a tool that pulls the sheet metal back into its original shape. If a dent is deep or has a crease to it, pulling may not work because the metal can stretch when the dent occurs. Pulling out a deep dent often leaves a deformation in the sheet metal, and sinking it back to its original shape is extremely difficult. 

Sometimes filling the dent with body filler and shaping it to match the contour of the body of your car is the best option for dents that can not be pulled easily. If the dent is going to require a lot of filler, it is often better to replace the sheet metal with a new part, or cut out and patch the area with new sheet metal. 

In almost all of these scenarios, the car will need to be painted where the repair was made, but a good auto body repair shop can match the new paint to the paint already on the car, accounting for fade over time and damage from the weather, so that once the new paint is sprayed, it will be tough to find the repair. 

If the auto body repair shop fixes many small dents and dings on the car, they will likely recommend painting the entire car. Spot painting many places can mean having to match the paint several times, especially if there is uneven fading or color shifting in the original paint.

For more information about auto body repair, contact a local auto repair shop.