By John Yoswick
Dealing with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is becoming a significant portion of the bottom line of any repair order for collision repairers. That’s adding both challenges from a technical and production standpoint, but also new opportunities for increased revenue and profits.
Here are a variety of perspectives on the topic from shops, automakers, trainers and calibration equipment and service providers.
Vehicle conditions can be an issue
At an industry event earlier this year, Bob Pattengale, technical systems manager for Opus Intelligent Vehicle Support, discussed some of the challenges collision repairers face in calibrating ADAS. Pattengale cited as an example a vehicle that had one or two tires damaged in an accident.
“Typically we’re looking to make sure the vehicle has the same wear patterns on the tires all the way around the vehicle,” Pattengale said. “If you’re a shop and you have a brand new tire on the right rear, but the other three are at the 70 percent or 80 percent worn level, what’s the decision? Is the insurance company going to pay for all four new tires? Or just the one? That’s something the industry needs to answer. Technically you should have a matching set of tires.”
Using the Honda procedures to calibrate the blind spot monitoring system on a late-model Accord as another example, Pattengale noted that proper calibration requires a full tank of gas. Sandbags could be used to simulate the weight of the gas — about five pounds per gallon — in a vehicle without a full tank, he said, but they need to be placed in the portion of the vehicle just above the fuel tank. On the Accord, that means some weight on both the left and right sides of the vehicle because it has a saddle fuel tank.
“We need to try to be as accurate as we possibly can to mirroring a full tank of fuel,” he said.
Pattengale, who prior to last year spent more than a dozen years with Bosch, said he realized early on in his current position he needed to think differently about calibrations in a body shop versus a mechanical facility. On one of the first vehicles he calibrated in a body shop, he found that a screw used to adjust a radar unit was seized up, a not uncommon problem depending on vehicle age and geographical area, he said.
“The area in that shop being used for calibrations happened to be in the paint prep area,” Pattengale said. “I’m thinking that since this thing is locked up, I’ll spray a little WD-40 on it. I had to take my mechanical hat off and think about that that spray could definitely create an issue with paint.”
In some cases, he said, such ADAS units may need to be replaced because they cannot physically be adjusted.
“The physical radar itself is not bad, but the bracket that holds it, or the device that adjusts it, is not functioning or in the proper position,” he said. “That can be an unexpected item [during repairs].”
A trainer’s perspective
At another recent industry event, Bud Center, director of technical products and curriculum for I-CAR, offered some examples he’s seen of the impact of collision repairers not following OEM procedures when it comes to ADAS calibrations.
Center said I-CAR went to a shop to shoot a video related to adaptive cruise control on a vehicle the shop had repaired and was ready to deliver.
“The vehicle we were looking at had been in the shop for hail repairs, so they removed the front bumper cover but only for refinish,” Center said. “There was no damage to the bumper cover. They didn’t realize that as they were putting it back on, however, that the cover bumped the sensor in the front for the adaptive cruise control. They assumed everything was good. Then we get there to perform the test, and they came to realize, oops, the car was sitting in the done line, ready to go back to the customer, but the system did not function. It was something just as simple as removing the bumper cover for refinish purposes that had an impact on the system.”
In another example, Center said I-CAR calibrated a vehicle’s collision-mitigating braking system using an OEM scan tool, procedures and targets, and found the system worked as intended.
“Then we took that same vehicle, ran it through a calibration process using non-OEM targets and equipment,” Center said. “We took the car back out into the parking lot. I have video of it on my phone. We were all amused by watching this [object the system should detect] get punted about 100 yards across the parking lot, because the car didn’t even slow down. Looking at them visually, the OEM and non-OEM calibration targets looked the same. The procedure the aftermarket tool told us to use appeared to be the same. But clearly something was off. It didn’t work. Again, it’s following those OEM procedures that is critical. We have to do it.”
Sublet concerns lead to new in-house revenue opportunities
Many U.S. shops that recognize they don’t have the facility, training, or equipment to perform ADAS calibrations are often subletting that work to new-car dealerships. Unfortunately, an increasing number of shops are reporting concerns they have about those dealerships not adequately performing ADAS calibrations.
Sam Zamir, co-owner of Collision Consultants Auto Body & Paint in Los Angeles, said shops need to know whether sublet providers are using appropriate tools and have the type of space and facility — with a level floor, for example — to do the calibrations properly. He said his company had to stop subletting calibrations to a particular dealership, because there was no indication or documentation from the dealership showing they had filled the fuel tank of vehicles when that was required as part of the calibration procedures.
“When I confronted them about it, they kind of brushed it off as if it’s not even important,” Zamir said. “We just stopped using that dealership altogether.”
Jason Mignogna, owner of the Collision Shoppe in Greensburg, Penn., found himself in a similar situation.
“When we asked some questions to the dealers, we found they were sometimes giving us prices [for calibrations] that didn’t include an alignment, because they didn’t know that it was a required part of it,” Mignogna said.
His solution? Buying his own alignment and calibration equipment in late 2019 and leasing a small building to do that work in-house.
“We’re looking at revenue sources that we’ve been giving away,” he said. “We wanted to better manage our turn-around time, but the biggest thing was we wanted to make certain we were getting the work completed correctly.”
Other collision repairers concur.
“We see this as a growing part of our business, and we’ve really embraced this high-tech portion of the industry, ADAS work,” said Darrell Amberson of LaMettry’s Collision, which has 10 collision shops and two mechanical shops in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market.
Technical challenges may ease
Some other good news for shops: ADAS calibrations may get easier as automakers fine-tune the systems.
Technicians will have the option to perform either dynamic or static aiming of the behind-the-windshield camera on the new 2022 Honda Civic, for example, thanks to the vehicle’s new driving support system.
Honda said the new multipurpose camera doesn’t include a millimeter radar unit, and that in-shop or on-the-road calibrations are both possible depending what the shop’s facility or road and weather traffic conditions allow.
The 2022 Civic is also equipped with a new style of blind spot information unit that also simplifies the aiming procedure. Prior model blind spot systems required a specific radar aiming inspection procedure. The new system is capable of self-learning while the vehicle is driven more than 18 mph.
Honda cautions, however, that it is important to reset the blind spot learning status (using Honda’s i-HDS software) when one or both of the radar units are removed and reinstalled, after repairing the rear body panel where the radar unit mounts, or when certain diagnostic trouble codes are set. Those test driving the vehicle should be aware that until the self-learning is complete, the reset system is limited to 9.8 feet of detection.
Still, while some ADAS calibration processes may get simplified over time, they are likely to provide plenty of challenges — along with opportunity — in body shops for the foreseeable future. •
John Yoswick, a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore., who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988, is also the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (www.CrashNetwork.com). He can be contacted by email at john@CrashNetwork.com.
