When you get your vehicle back from an auto body shop, it’s tempting to just breathe a sigh of relief that you finally have it back, and drive away without taking a proper inventory of the repairs and making sure everything looks/feels/operates as expected. The time you have to do this is right before you drive away from the repair shop, so don’t miss that chance. If something is wrong, you want to catch it before the liability is no longer with the repair shop. So what should you do? Here are our tips for examining car after collision repair.
Get the Closeup
Get up close and personal with the work done. Check over the places you knew needed repairs, and make sure to clarify if there were any additional repairs needed that you may not have spotted before you dropped the vehicle off. Keep an eye out for obvious changes in paint lines, or if there are still visible scratches. This is your chance to really examine the details of what your shop did, so don’t be afraid or feel weird about looking with a critical eye.
Take a Step Back
As important as it is to look closely with a critical eye, it’s also important to step back and look from a distance. Sometimes, things that weren’t so obvious up close and personal become clear when you’ve taken a step back. The key to making sure everything looks right is taking a peek from different angles. Each new perspective lets you see potential issues that you may not have seen from another angle.
Examine Alignment
Alignment can sometimes get messed up in the repair process, so examining this is crucial. If your car isn’t aligned properly, you could find yourself back in the repair shop sooner than you think, and you could be damaging your tires, forcing you to replace them before they would have needed replacing otherwise. Not to mention misalignment puts more of the workload on one half of your vehicle, making other parts wear out faster on that half, too.
Be Critical About Color
This is one of the things many drivers don’t realize will bother them until it’s too late to do anything about it without investing more money. Your repair shop should have matched your vehicle’s paint exactly through color matching, but make sure that’s true upon closer inspection. Make sure it doesn’t look drastically different in the sunlight, or from an angle. This is a big deal, and you’re allowed to be extra critical about it. After all, you’re the one who has to drive the vehicle around every day, and if the color is off, chances are it will get under your skin after awhile.
Which Parts Were Used?
Ask about what kinds of parts were used in your repairs. Manufacturer approved parts are the preferred choice. Some shops will use after-market parts that won’t hold up as long, may not fit quite right, and could break down faster, leaving you back in the shop before you know it. At the very least, you should KNOW what parts were used in your vehicle’s repair, and what kind of warranty they may have.
Take it for a Test Drive
Ask if you can take the vehicle for a test drive (if the shop doesn’t offer) before signing away their responsibility. Sometimes issues aren’t obvious until you’re driving and hear a sound that’s off, or feel something pulling one way or another where it didn’t before.
Speak up
If you see any issues or feel/hear anything during your test drive, you have to speak up! Let them know you have concerns about the job done, and ask what can be done to remedy them. You should be able to trust your repair shop to work with you to do the best job possible, and they should be willing to address your concerns with either information to help ease them or a plan of action to correct any mistakes they may have made.
Getting your vehicle back can be an exciting time (you know, minus the repair bill), but don’t let the excitement stop you from ensuring the job was done well, and your vehicle truly is ready to be back on the road.
