Page 48 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Jan-Feb 21

Mixed Material Repair
48
PAINT&PANEL JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021
OLD SCHOOL DOESN’T CUT IT ANY MORE
GARY WOOD FROM I-CAR TALKS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES AND DANGERS POSED BY MULTI-MATERIAL BODY STRUCTURES.
HERE IS NO HIDING FROM THE
face that repairs now have to be
approached with a new way of thinking and an alternative skill- et. “Things ain’t what they used to be” has never been a more accurate statement when it comes to cars with re- pair challenges previously reserved for prestige vehicles already filtered down
into ‘mum and dad’ cars.
Applying traditional repair methods
to cars with multi-material construction is nothing short of dangerous for the customer. It’s more than possible that you will adversely affect the crash per- formance of the vehicle and that it won’t
protect occupants as it was designed to. As vehicle structures become ever more complex, even minor damage to a load bearing component could potentially lead to a major failure in the vehicle structure. Any type of failure has the potential to
cause significant injury or worse.
OEMs are providing us with more in- formation than ever before to carry out repairs to their highly engineered vehi- cles and it’s never been more vital to fol-
low their instructions.
OEMs are now moving away from full
aluminium bodies to bodies constructed from a mixture of different materials, most notably, High Strength and Ultra
T
s