CIC: Better welding, documenting test drives

By John Yoswick

Collision Industry Conference (CIC) committees have recently tackled topics ranging from better welding practices to OEM procedures and new ways of documenting increasingly detailed vehicle test drives.

Toby Chess, an industry trainer who leads CIC’s “Technical Presentations” committee and who has conducted more than 6,000 I-CAR welding tests over 15 years, said at least five automakers — Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Audi/VW/Porsche — have OEM procedures with detailed instructions for performing destructive testing on plug welds and spot welds prior to welding on a vehicle.

Ford’s procedure, for example, is three pages long, with specifications for the size and shape the weld nugget should be based on the thickness of the metal being welded. Some automakers call for spot welding with the E-coat in place, Chess said, while others say it has to be stripped off. He said he’s amazed at how many shops he’s in lack a vice, often needed as part of the destructive test process.

Also during the committee’s presentation, Kye Yeung, owner of a Southern California shop certified and specializing in high-end vehicles, said weld testing can be done using coupons, but that it’s important that the tests be done on comparable materials to what will be welded; he suggests using some of the damaged material removed from the vehicle or, if sectioning, using some of the excess material from the new part being installed.

Yeung said that electrical output can vary throughout the shop, so he suggests moving the vehicle — and doing the destructive test welds — in the area of the shop where you know there’s adequate power. He also said it’s a good idea for shops to have standardized operating procedures related to welding.

“At our shop, we take the wire out of the welder after the repair,” he said. “So when a tech pulls up the procedure, he has to start from square one and not make the assumption that the welding wire that’s in the machine is for that job. It’s a process you should instill in your shop, even though it might take a little extra time.  They could be getting a poor weld because they’re using the wrong material.”

Yeung said his shop also holds “weld-off competitions,” with the winner receiving a free lunch.

“It takes your A-techs who weld well, and your lower-skilled guys who are aspiring to do well, and allows them to do that comparison,” Yeung said. “It makes them practice during the week. It brings everybody up.”

New type of vehicle test drive

CIC’s “Emerging Technologies” committee has adopted a new definition of a “dynamic systems verification (DSV) road test,” in an effort to distinguish test drives done to check advanced driver-assistance systems with those more traditionally done just to verify standard vehicle performance, such as checking for wind noise, pulling conditions or vibrations. 

The DSV road test, according to the new definition, checks for those items but also requires “qualified shop personnel to identify and confirm performance of…advanced vehicle features and systems including driver assistance and safety systems, such as advanced cruise control and safety restraint systems.”

The committee hopes to have the definition adopted and used by the automakers and estimating system providers.

During one of the committee’s recent presentations, Jake Rodenroth of asTech suggested that shops provide more documentation of what’s involved in such road tests.

“How about you document the ‘in’ and ‘out’ mileage of the vehicle,” Rodenroth said. “How about you include a Google map of where you drove. Uber gives us a little map of our trip on every receipt, yet we don’t do that when we do a road test. If you’re in L.A., maybe you had to get to the suburbs to meet the requirements for that road test. Explain that. What systems did you check? Tire-pressure monitoring, blind-spot monitoring, traction control? Explain what you did.”

Failure to follow OEM procedures can be costly

Automaker repair procedures were the focus of another committee discussion at CIC, including discussing how the procedures are developed and tested. Scott Kaboos, chief collision repair instructor for American Honda, said he had an opportunity to see in Japan how the company’s body repair manual is written. Computer simulations are used as the vehicle is being designed to consider, for example, how to address an area of a vehicle that will be inaccessible to a repairer needing to replace a spot weld.

“If it can’t be spot-welded, we know that flange has to be wider so we can MIG braze it, or it has to be made of different materials so we can actually MAG weld it,” Kaboos said. “That kind of blew my mind when I saw it. I’ve been a technician all my life. I never thought that some manufacturer would be thinking about fixing this wrecked car two or three years before it’s built.”

If the vehicle includes new materials or structure, or a sectioning procedure that hasn’t been tested and proven on other Honda vehicles, Kaboos said, more physical testing is done. “We actually do crush tests on those actual parts, and ultimately we end up with crash tests on vehicles.”

Based on the discussion at CIC, collision shops — even dealership shops — that realize mid-repair that they failed to follow OEM repair procedures shouldn’t expect too much help from the automakers. John Eck of General Motors said a dealership shop called GM because a technician had cut too far forward into a T1 truck, not realizing the automaker has a sectioning joint for the rear-end.

“They said, ‘Now what,’ and I asked, ‘How much did you just buy that truck back for because it’s done,’” Eck said. “The technician had been chopping up trucks so long that he didn’t [research and learn] we actually made an easier repair process by putting a sectioning joint in the back so you could repair it in a more efficient, cost-effective manner, saving more vehicles by lowering the cost of repair. The technician made a big mistake that day. It would have been a simple one if he’d just looked at the procedures.”

Mark Allen of Audi of America offered a similar experience about a shop — that had claimed it was I-CAR Gold Class and factory-trained by several European automakers, when it wasn’t — that made pulls to the all-aluminum rear structure of an Audi Q7.

“That was about $86,000, because they cracked the cast-aluminum frame rails,” Allen said. “So, first, don’t misrepresent yourself. And second, follow the repair procedures.”  •