ATC Students’ Guide to Collision Damage
As aspiring automotive technicians begin their post-secondary technical training, they learn the fundamentals of automotive body damage and repair. One of the primary duties of Pennsylvania technicians in the collision repair field is restoring vehicles to their pre-accident state.
If you’re thinking about enrolling in an auto tech program, Automotive Training Center (ATC) has a wide variety of courses that can provide you with the education you need to enter into the industry. To help you understand what kind of vehicle damage you may encounter in automotive training school and as a professional technician, continue reading for the ATC students’ guide to collision damage.
Anatomy of an Accident
Vehicles are designed to absorb front- and back-end collision damage with a series of crush zones that collapse to prevent more serious damage. Because the most common damage to vehicles occurs in these types of collisions, the crumple zones come in handy because they help to decrease the risk of serious, expensive repairs and passenger injuries.
That being said, these types of accidents will leave noticeable damage that a driver will trust you to repair properly. And since front- and back-end collisions are common, you’ll surely see them throughout your career as an automotive mechanic.
Frontal Damage
When a driver is involved in a front-end accident, there’s a good chance that the hood of their vehicle will experience the most damage, depending on the accident severity. Car hoods are built to buckle and collapse in order to absorb the damage and prevent windshield penetration and damage around the passenger area.
An automotive technician will properly evaluate the status of the hood damage. Small dents to the hood can be fixed using paintless dent removal, while severe damage will likely result in a hood replacement.
Rear Damage
A vehicle’s rear bumper experiences most of the impact of a low-speed rear collision. Rear bumpers are built with aluminum, steel, rubber, or plastic, depending on the make or model of the car. Some bumpers are constructed with foam-cushioning material or specially placed brackets to act as crash energy absorbers. The rear bumper will absorb the accident energy to keep it away from your trunk, fuel tank, exhaust system, and vehicle frame.
Rear bumpers are designed with crumple zones for energy absorption, which results in physical dents and warping post-accident. An experienced automotive technician can modify small dents from taps to the rear bumper, but a significantly warped and dilapidated bumper will most like go the same route as your car’s hood: replacement. It’s an easy fix for automotive technicians, and it could save the vehicle owner money.
Vehicle accidents occur regularly and auto repair schools teach students to understand how a vehicle handles accidents and what the common repairs are.
If you’re interesting in learning more about automotive collision repairs, you can download ATC’s ebook Dents and Damage: The Car Lover’s Guide to Vehicle Restoration.
More about collision damage:
