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Alex Wardle Tom's Custom Autobody

http://tomscustomautobody.com      604-931-3441

Mark:  Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local; we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia;  how’re you doing today Alex?

Alex:  I’d doing great.

Mark:  So we’re going to talk a little bit about key scratches which is something that I’ve got some experience with; I guess the target vehicle today was a 2014 Lexus RX350. What happened with this vehicle?

Alex:  Well, this vehicle was like a lot of vehicles out there, the customer had damage on it that he didn’t realize was so bad.  It came into our store and we had a look at it we kind of formulated the car been keyed across the car.  The original thought that the scratches could just be polished out and unfortunately with key scratches they really can’t.  So I’m going to bring up some photos here and just show you.  So this is the subject vehicle, it’s a 2014 Lexus RX350 and the colour on it is silver lining metallic; it’s got a specific flake, it’s a very nice colour and it’s very common in our marketplace here in metro Vancouver, very common car and so what had happened was this gentleman’s car had been at the, at one of the larger shopping centres and it came back and his car looked like it had been vandalized and it was clearly vandalized, you can see here that one key scratch coming across the back door, someone had gone so far as to actually physically key scratch the front bumper and damage across the back door and our customer knew that the damage on the front bumper, he knew that this damage on the front bumper could not be polished out.  He figured that he had to have that painted but over here on the doors the damage actually looked not as significant, he thought that these scratches just could be buffed out which is a real common, which is a real common kind of thought from consumers is that the damage is never as bad as it is.  Well if you run your nail across the scratch, what happens is if it sticks on that clear coat, that shows you that the scratch has gone through the coats of clear and actually down to the base layer of paint and actually has damaged that paint base layer of this silver lining metallic so essentially what has to happen is this car ends up having to be refinished and so at the advice that, at our advice he made a comprehensive claim  with his insurance provider, his deductible was fairly minimal, I think it was $300, relative to the total damage on the car so if we go back to the photo of the car, essentially he had damage, key scratch damage from the front bumper across the fender and across the two doors and onto the rear quarter.  So it didn’t look all that bad when you looked at the car but when, once you saw the dollar value of the repair it was quite extensive, it was about $4,500 in damage and essentially here’s the finished product.  We ended up having to repaint the quarter by the tail lights, the back doors as I suggested and then we also repainted the front bumper and this is car just after it had been demasked and come out of the spray booth.  So it’s a fairly significant amount of damage and it requires, it requires, really this car took about three to four days of work to actually prep and get the whole side of the car ready to be refinished and then there’s a whole extensive process around matching this, matching this metallic, getting it right because you’re painting the side of the car and obviously, you know it’s something that we guarantee so we want to make sure that the preparation is done, it’s done really well and all of the, all of what makes this paint job good really comes into the prep work, comes into everything that happens before it goes into the spray booth and then our painter will come in and paint it and refinish it and then when it comes out it actually now goes into our detail department where it is here now and it actually gets polished and so it goes back to the customer looking great.  It should come back just looking like it’s came out of the, came out of the show room.

Mark:  So when you guys are painting that are you actually going up into the pillars and onto the hood and I don’t know how, to get the blend?

Alex:  Well in this case we didn’t have to blend onto the hood because there was very little damage on the front fender but we would’ve blended the colour through the front fender, we also then would have painted the bumper, the doors and so forth so even if there’s a little bit of damage, generally if that damage is within 14 inches of the other panel we would blend the colour across, especially with the metallic because the metallic flakes will land differently than when it was first, when it first went through the factory and so it’s really important that if you don’t want to see a difference in the colour of the metallic that you blend as much as possible and that allows for a really good refinish.

Mark:  So there you go; if your baby has been scratched by some evil person at the mall or somewhere else like happened to me at my Jetta on both sides then these are the guys to call.  Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam, they’re serving Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, hell all of Vancouver, give them a call 604-931-3441, they’re super busy right now as we’ve had a lot of snow and it’s not normal for us in Vancouver.   Check out their website, tomscustomautobody.com .  Thanks Alex.

Alex:  Thanks Mark, see ya.

service@tomscustomautobody.com

https://plus.google.com/108373087426493182876/about

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Alex Wardle Tom's Custom Autobody http://tomscustomautobody.com 604-931-3441 1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC service@tomscustomautobody.com

Mark: Hi it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam. How’re you doing this morning Alex?

Alex: I’m doing great on this snowy Wednesday.

Mark: I’m sure, you’re just happily loving this weather as all the rest of of complain about it. so we’re going to talk about a BMW X5, what was going on with this vehicle?

Alex: Well this is a 2016 BMW X5 35D, so this is the last generation of the diesel that BMW is going to make and so what we’ve got here, I’m just going to bring up some photographs of it.  So what we’ve got here is, a customer of ours that in December had been sideswiped by someone and so this is a very busy individual and we actually have a valet estimating team that went out to his office, took a look at it and out initial shots show here that we’ve got a damaged door and there was a little bit of damage on the rocker panel. So we went back to the shop, did up the estimate and found out that the rocker panel was backordered, so we ordered that in from Germany and we scheduled an appointment for him three weeks later. He and we discussed that it was probably better for him to drive his nice X5 instead of one of our courtesy cars, not that our courtesy cars are bad but not much beats his X5. And so he stayed in his car for three weeks while the part came from Germany. So this is a photograph of the the truck here in one of our stalls here in the store and as you can see here, the driver’s side door shell is crunched and the body lines by the arrow there don’t match up and so our assessment on the road was right. We had a new door shell and with BMW’s you actually don’t replace the outer skin you’ve got to replace the door shell. This door shell was to the point where we really didn’t want to give the customer the car back with the door repaired and filled with Bondo and just wasn’t going to make for a nice repair, so we ordered a new shell from BMW. We also took a look at this rocker damage and you can see here that the lower portion of the door, where the black arrow is, was damaged, and that was the piece we had backordered. So when we start a repair, a couple things to note that when we start repair on something like this we use a large welding blanket there just to protect the interior of the car from any sparks or any Bondo or anything getting in the car. We also noticed that when we pulled off the rocker, you can see down here there is some bare metal scraped in here, on the very bottom of the rocker panel and that shows that there was actually hidden damage in behind and so we actually ran into a couple of parts that we didn’t for see that also had to come from Germany. So those came in. There is only so much x-ray estimating that you can do when the car is in until you get it torn down. So those came in and you can see here that we actually had to pull the rocker back out and then we repaired it and then refinished it. One of the big things with this car is with this white, is that we were not only are we painting the door, but we were then refinishing the fender and the rear door, just to ensure that the colour match is perfect when it goes back to our customer. So after a week of waiting in the store while we had the parts come in, we have a finished product here, this BMW X5, you can see here the body lines on the door are all lined up and we’ve painted the rear door, front door and the fender and got this car looking back to brand new. This X5 only had 3000 kilometres on it and so we got it back to our customer looking great and he’s happy and that was it. So this is a picture of our new store in Port Coquitlam, I thought I’d include this today and that just shows you this is where this vehicle went. We specialize in high end vehicles at this store which would be Lexus, BMW and Mercedes and that was the story of that vehicle.

Mark: Awesome Alex, so if you’re looking for high end repairs on your best vehicles or just good repairs on your solid everyday beater that you need to keep running, these are the guys to call. Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, you can reach them at 604-931-3441 or check out their website tomscustomautobody.com. Thanks Alex.

Alex: Thanks very much.

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Alex Wardle - Tom's Custom Autobody

http://tomscustomautobody.com      604-931-3441

Mark:  Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia; how’re you doing this morning Alex?

Alex:  Fantastic, how are you Mark?

Mark:  Good, so we’re going to talk about a 2006, 2016?

Alex:  2006 Nissan Pathfinder, yeah.

Mark:  So what was the challenge with this vehicle?

Alex:  Well the challenge with this vehicle is its age, so I’m just going to put pull up the photos for you so you can quickly have a look, so the challenge here is the age of the car and the amount of damage.  So as your vehicle gets older, obviously the value of the vehicle depreciates and when you get into an accident, what happens if your value of the vehicle is less than roughly seventy percent, if the value is, sorry if the repair is about seventy percent of the value of the vehicle the insurance companies will tend to want to write it off.  Well a lot of vehicles and a lot of customers, they like each other and so this customer here who is driving this Nissan Pathfinder didn’t want to lose his vehicle to a write off because he knew the maintenance of the vehicle and he knew that any amount of money that the insurance company gave him for his older Pathfinder was not going to get him a replaced vehicle so essentially what we did here is, this customer as you can see was in a fairly substantial front end accident on the passenger side and I’m just going to pull up the next photo and you can see here that the, he’d hit something pretty hard.  Hood is completely destroyed, fender destroyed, headlights, grille, bumper, all those pieces got replaced and some of the, some of them concerns when we started to look at this was we first of all we checked to see whether the airbag modules were ok and whether airbags had gone off and in this case they hadn’t.  Some people will be surprised about that but there’s actually no damage to the frame rail where the airbag sensor is mounted and so when we go back to this photo here, this arrows pointing, because the other concern that we have is that possibly that the vehicle has shifted from the passenger side to the driver’s side, it’s shifted over, just based on the fact that it got hit on the corner.  All those things were ok, airbags didn’t go off, and the actual rad support and the vehicle wasn’t, the vehicle wasn’t shifted, there was no frame damage, so that allowed us to put together a repair plan, the insurance approved the repair plan and you know a week later we had this Nissan Pathfinder looking back to brand-new for the customer and so here’s a couple of shots here of the car when you know, upon, upon completion and essentially you know, the car is looking back to brand new and better than brand new because it’s paint prior to the accident was a little bit damaged and so we were able to fix the chips, fix the chips on some of the fenders on the driver’s side when we blended that, when we blended that fender to match the paint and so we actually got the front end looking better than it was before it came in, so that’s, that is, that’s what we did with that Nissan Pathfinder.

Mark:  So what was replaced on the car, so the fender was that a new fender or did you, was that and a new bumper, a new hood as well?

Alex:  That’s right, so we would have put a new fender, a new hood, and a new bumper and new lights, and a new grille in the front.  We have a price matching program with Nissan and so we would have gone out and got Nissan to match pricing of aftermarket parts and we’d have put on OEM parts there to make sure that the customer is getting his car back to as close to original as possible and so all those parts be new on the car, they’re not repaired just because those parts are beyond repair, so all the stuff you saw on the front end there was brand new.

Mark:  Beauty. So if you have a well-loved vehicle that’s been in a bit of a fender bender, these are the guys to see in North Burnaby, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam in the tri-cities area, Maple Ridge even North Surrey get a lot of customers.  Tom’s Custom Auto Body, you can reach them at 604-931-3441, book ahead, they’re real busy or they’re at 1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam.  Thanks Alex.

Alex:  Thanks very much, bye.

service@tomscustomautobody.com

https://plus.google.com/108373087426493182876/about

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http://tomscustomautobody.com      604-931-3441

Mark:  Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local; we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam; how’re you doing Alex?

Alex:  I’d doing great and yourself?

Mark:  Good, so we’re going to talk about a recent repair on a pretty new, fancy, fancy Mercedes-Benz, the 2014 E63 AMG; what was going on with this car?

Alex:  Well this is, this is for the E Class sedan, this is as fancy as a it gets and so what I want to talk about today is just when you’re choosing a repair shop to really choose someone who knows how to detect the damage and so what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at this Mercedes and this Mercedes was broken into right before Christmas so I’m just going to pull up the photos right now and so what we’ve got here is this, this is a, this Mercedes Benz here is now after it’s been repaired so what we’re going to just go back here and I’ll show you the damage.  So the damage here looks like any other regular day break-in and what you got here is someone has smashed the glass and just broken in and essentially gone in through that passenger side window and subsequently the glass has landed kind of as you can see where my blue arrows are there on the center console, on the seat, on the floor mats and they come in over the, over the dashboard. So when you’re dealing with a very high-end car or for that matter with any car that’s had glass breakage you know that normally when someone looks at their car they instantly look to see what they have lost here, right, so in this case the cigarette lighters still there and some garbage there on the seat and they also look right at the glass, just see okay I got to replace the glass.  Well a real true look at it shows that there are nicks and scratches out of the paint on the door so automatically above and beyond the fact that the glass got to get replaced on this car, this door has to get painted.  Well as you can see this is a pearl white Mercedes, so it’s just more than just painting the door, it actually is now actually painting the door and then blending the front fender and painting the rear door and when we go back into the interior, you know once, once we had cleaned up seat and vacuumed out all the glass there didn’t appear to be much damage to the car but on closer inspection these are very high-end seats.   Their ventilated which means that they cool as well as heat and so the ventilation as means that they’re perforated, well, there’s some scratches and nick’s in there, in that perforation.  The insurance company in this case did not want to pay to fix the ventilation, did not want to pay to fix the, did not want pay to fix the, sorry to replace the seat, they only wanted to fix it and so, and originally they didn’t want to pay to fix it so what Adam did through his negotiation with the insurance company we actually got the insurance company to replace these seat covers and to replace the dashboard.  Standard procedure in a lot of shops is just to have someone sublet coming to repair, well on a ultra-high end vehicle that repair is just not going to stand the test of time and it’s not going to look good so we actually went back to ICBC in this case, negotiated with them and got them to replace the seat covers and you know, just to give you an idea of the value of these two parts where the blue arrows are, that was worth about ten thousand dollars in additional, additional cost to replace those two items but you’ve got a vehicle that was worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars plus new and so essentially you know, that you got to maintain that vehicle, you’ve got to keep that vehicle right and so it just shows you that looking at it and really looking at the damage and being concise with it really helps get that car back to pre-loss condition.  So it’s very important, also we ended up painting the rear door here, the main front door on the side and then the fender and as you can see here, we’ve got a very good colour match with this pearl white. As we talked about last time we do use our, we do use our paint camera as well as the spray out car to make sure that pearl white is bang on right and that car gets back to pre-loss condition which is our mandate.

Mark:  So when you’re negotiating with ICBC or any insurance company, I’m sure that can be a bit of tricky, difficult thing, is it because you’ve got such long term relationships with them or you’re more a more preferred shop, like what gives you a little bit extra clout or you’re just really persuasive?

Alex:  Well it comes down to good honest management.  We’ve, we’ve been dealing with ICBC at Tom’s since 1978 so over those years we’ve built up a trust between both parties and so they will come down and view the car and they know that if they’ve got to come look at something, we ask them to come down and look at it, there’s obviously a reason for that and so it takes that trust level between partners to look at it and say listen we can’t fix this and get it right for the customer, so in this case we have to replace it and the ICBC and any insurance company’s mandate is to bring your car back to pre-loss condition and so you just need someone on both sides of the table to understand that, to make sure your vehicle gets repaired right.

Mark:  So there you go, if you need some repairs on your high-end or regular vehicle, body repairs, these are the guys to call in Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster or even North Surrey.  Tom’s Custom Autobody, you can reach them at   604-931-3441 or check out their website tomscustomautobody.com. Thanks a lot Alex.

Alex:  Thanks, have a great day.

service@tomscustomautobody.com

https://plus.google.com/108373087426493182876/about

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Tom’s Custom Autobody 2016 Lexus RX 350 Body Repair

Alex Wardle

http://tomscustomautobody.com

604-931-3441

1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC

service@tomscustomautobody.com

Mark: Hi it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam, award winning, excellent autobody repair shop for the Tri-Cities area,  how’re you doing today Alex?

Alex: Great, enjoying the cold weather and the snow

Mark: Yeah, I bet you’re enjoying the cold, snowy, icy mess out there

Alex: Yeah it makes for busy times

Mark: I bet, so we’re going to talk about a Lexus, a 2015 Lexus RX350, what’s different about this repairing on this vehicle?

Alex: Sure, what’s different about the vehicle I’m about to show you is the colour, so Lexus has decided to bring out what’s called a Matador red and I’m just going to bring up the photo here and show you, it is probably one of the hardest colours in the industry to paint and to get right. And so what we’ve got here is actually a 2016 Lexus RX350, and this is a car after we’re done, we painted the two doors and we matched it to the rear quarter and bumper, and you can see all the lovely snow in our parking lot there, but what’s really hard about this is getting sure that the metallic and the metallic flake matches across the car so you don’t have any colour imbalances. So what makes kind of our process a little different than a lot of other shops is we’ve got a brand new, state of the art, 31 foot spray tech booth with brand new lighting. That helps because then my painter can see and check the colour clearly, but one of the other secrets of our industry is that we also use what is called a RapidMatch X5 camera. So Lexus has on the engine bay of their car has the colour and that’ll give you three variance but what we also do one step further is where we actually can take a photograph of the colour and that colour then will get translated into into an extra coat and what allows us, it allows us to adjust the variance to get the exact match based on what that car has, because each car, even though it has the same colour comes down the assembly line at Lexus or at Ford or wherever it may be, will be slightly different. So we use this colour, this is provided, we use this colour camera and this is provided to us by PPG who is our paint manufacturer, and it really ensures a perfect colour match and that’s kind of what makes us a little bit different is that we really strive to make sure that the colour is perfect. So when you get your Lexus back, you can see the different shades of the colour on the doors, depending on where you are in the door and the reflection there, match perfectly when you get the car back.

Mark: So that sounds like really complicated process, is that why a lot of other companies don’t do it?

Alex: It’s a complicated process. A lot of suppliers just don’t have that technology to give to their stores. That camera itself is about $6500 dollars, so you’ve got to really invest in the equipment, the spray booth and the camera equipment and really good paint, really makes a difference. And there’s all kinds of variations of paint that you can buy and all kinds of variations of clear coat. So we buy the top level paint available to us and then we put on the best clear coat that we can. We don’t skimp with our materials because that is what’s going to last on the car for the next ten years that you own it, is that clear coat and the colour. You know a lot of shops can get the repair right but the colour is what you live with every day and that’s got to be really right.

Mark: So I can imagine there is a lot of training and experience with your technicians that is required in order to operate even all this stuff and make it work, is that true?

Alex: Yes, that’s very true. So our painters, we have two painters they go through training every year, they do about 16 hours of training and they go back to the manufacturer, they train in state of the art booths as well, similar to ours, and essentially what happens is they’ll go through, they’ll learn how to use the colour camera, they learn how to do a spray out card to maximize the minimum difference in the variation between the paints and that really, the continual training along with the best paint and technology, really provides a really good finish.

Mark: So there you go, if you’ve got a new vehicle and it’s got a fancy paint job and you want it to look fantastic again, in case of life’s little issues and ice and snow, these are the guys to call in Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Burnaby, New West, even north Surrey, they get a lot of customers. Tom’s Custom Autobody, you can reach them at 604-931-3441 or check out their website tomscustomautobody.com. Thanks a lot Alex

Alex: Thanks very much

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New Location Tom's Custom Autobody, Port Coquitlam

Alex Wardle http://tomscustomautobody.com 604-931-3441 1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC service@tomscustomautobody.com

Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam. How’re you doing today Alex?

Alex: I’m doing fantastic, how’re you doing Mark?

Mark: Good, so you survived the move and that’s what we’re going to talk about today, is you’ve opened a brand new location for Tom’s at 1830 Kingsway in Port Coquitlam. Tell us about that.

Alex: We have, so we’ve opened two new shops. We have Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam now on Tupper Road and I’m now sitting in our brand new shop which is Tom’s Custom Autobody in Port Coquitlam at 1830 Kingsway and I’ll just pull up a shot here of our new building. so about a year ago we started down this road of getting a new building and essentially what happened is we bought this big building and we converted it into a brand new collision shop and this shop is absolutely brand new from front to back, it’s 13,000 square feet, we handle all types of insurance claims here, for example, we’re an ICBC car valet store, we handle Family Insurance, Canadian Direct Insurance, Intact Insurance and many out of province insurance companies. So if you’re traveling from Alberta or from the rest of Canada, we do work with many of the other insurance companies that are not necessarily native to British Columbia. One of the things that makes this facility really neat, is that we’ve got a brand new state-of-the-art aluminum room which is 2,400 square feet and it’s curtained off, it has brand new aluminum welding equipment, great for the new F150 and great for any year of the higher end Mercedes, BMW, Audi and a lot of other cars that are now starting to substitute aluminum parts on the car in order to keep it nice and light for fuel economy savings. So that’s something that’s not common in the industry to have these new rooms. One of the other things we invested in when we came here was a new state-of-the-art 3D electronic  measuring system by Chief, so we now can pull up the frame specs on your vehicle if your car has been in a larger accident and we can get that vehicle right back to manufacturers specifications with 3D imaging and a print out on the vehicle. We can tell instantly if your frame is out or not out based on laser measuring which is really neat. The other thing that is kind of cool is that we have invested in two brand new spray booths that are full downdraft capability at 31 feet, so that allows us to push through a lot of the larger vehicles that we’re seeing in the marketplace today which would be like your quad cab F150’s or F350’s or Dodge trucks or anything of that nature, all the way down obviously to still doing your BMW, but those larger spray booths allow for a better finish on larger vehicles because the vehicle fits fully within the downdraft capabilities. So this is the picture of the building during the day and here’s a photo of our building at night. So one of the things we did, we invested in all kinds of new LED lighting throughout the building and that also is on our exterior signage which really makes it really kind of neat, and of course to go along with this we also have 12 new courtesy cars and those range from 2015-2016 Volkswagen Jetta, Toyota Corolla, and also Camry. So we’ve got everything from the smaller to the larger courtesy cars to handle our customers.

Mark: So there you go, Tom’s Custom Autobody. If you’re looking for service for your vehicle in case of a crash, scratch, repaint, whatever you need, these are the guys to look after you in Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Burnaby, even New West and Surrey, they’re servicing a lot of customers from those areas, so give them a call 604-931-3441 or check out their website tomscustomautobody.com. Thanks a lot Alex

Alex: Great, we’ll talk to you next week.

https://plus.google.com/108373087426493182876/about

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http://tomscustomautobody.com/   604-931-3441

Mark Bossert:  Hi, it's Mark from Top Local. We're here with Alex Wardle of Tom's Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, a very highly rated long term, excellent car repair and autobody repair shop. How are you doing Alex?

 Alex Wardle:  I'm doing great Mark, and yourself this morning, how are you?

 Mark Bossert:  Good, recovering from my cold walk. We're going to talk about vandalism, something that I'm familiar with, a bit of key scratches on a Mercedes. I had this happen to my car, so I'm interested to see, what do you guys have to do to fix this?

 Alex Wardle:  Sure. What we're going to do here is we're going to go have a look at ... We have a 2006 Mercedes-Benz E320. A lot of people consider that, now, an older car. It's ten years old but it's still quite valuable. A customer of ours had their car parked in Coquitlam and someone had come along and keyed the driver's side and passenger's side of the car and the keying was sporadic; someone had run the key down the side of the car and it was kind of on and off on the panels. It wasn't straight across. She didn't think she had that much damage, because on each panel it kind of came on and off, on and off but it was fairly significant.

 I'm just going to pull up a couple of photos of the car here. What we've got here, in this photo, is that you can see that this is the photo of the Mercedes in our estimating bay. We're looking at just kind of the pathway here of which this key scratch is going down. The key scratch is actually in between the two yellow lines. It's a fairly significant repair because ... I'm just going to flip here to the next one where the car is actually in mid-repair right before it's going to go into the booth.

You can see that, number one, to get this car back to the pre-loss condition, all the parts along the side of the car have to come off. That means the tail light comes out. The bumper comes off. The window belt moldings come off, which in this case, luckily, they weren't chrome moldings but they were black rubber molding. The door handles come off. The door moldings and front bumper and so forth come off.

 The grey areas along the side of the car, that's actually the primer. We've actually sanded the key scratched out, primed the car. This car is literally about to go into our paint booth to get sprayed. The grey area is where we're going to be putting new color. The area where you can see the base color of the car, which is an obsidian black, that color will still remain. Everywhere where there's grey is where there will be new color on there. In this case here, we're doing a complete refinish on both sides. We're not blending the clear on the sail panels. The sail panel is the area that goes up from the back trunk up on towards the roof. We don't blend that. We always refinish all the way across; it gives you a far better finish. In this case we're going to blend the trunk because there's a little bit of metallic flake in there and we want to make sure that the color matches onto that trunk. Mainly, the most important thing is that all parts are off the car.

 One of the things that we think works really well is we always use a premium clear. In this case today, we're going to use a PPG EC700 clear. That is for ... It'll give it a very durable shine and a long-term finish. There are lots of clears on the market, in the marketplace, and like anything, there is good, better and best. We feel that PPG products, the high end of their spectrum offer some of the best clears. They put PPG clear on ... A lot of the manufacturers use it when the cars are actually getting manufactured, so we like to use it as well and their base coats provide for excellent color matching. Five years down the road, it's really the quality of the clear that sets the job apart versus some of the less expensive clears that are out there on the market. We feel that ... We don't want to, necessarily, skimp on the materials. We want to make sure that the products we're putting on your car are the best to give it a good, long-term finish that you'll be able to polish and love for years later.

This damage, while the customer thought it was quite light, she's roughly got about 3,500 to 4,000 dollars in damage, which she didn't really recognize. It really affects the car's value if you don't fix it. That gives you an idea of what we've got going into the paint booth this morning, and to give you an idea of how we treat every car with ... We like to treat every car like it's our own and make sure that we're getting the best job we can and get those cars back to pre-loss condition for our customers so they can enjoy it for another ten years.

Mark Bossert: That, of course, is ... That's being mirrored on the other side, whatever scratches on the other side are being done, you just didn't have pictures of that?

 Alex Wardle:  Yes, that's right. It's being mirrored on both sides. On the other side of the car everything is off the car as well. The only thing that we're not painting, in this case, is the trunk ... I'm sorry ... is the hood. The trunks being blended but the hood is not being painted in this case because the key scratches didn't get close enough to it.

 Mark Bossert: Right. That gives me a good picture of how much work you had to do on my car when you did it on both sides. Same thing.

 Alex Wardle: Absolutely. As you remember, it is a lot of damage on there and it's not inexpensive. When you go to resell that car, you want to make sure it looks as good as it can because, you know as well as I do that, when the buyer comes along and sees that kind of damage on there, when the car transitions between owners, that insurance claim to have that key scratch is null and void. That vandalism claim does not follow to the new owner. It's important to deal with that while you own the car.

 Mark Bossert:  All right. If you're looking for great repairs on your vehicles, if you've got any scratches, bumps, bruises on your baby, these are the guys to see in Port Coquitlam, Burnaby, North Burnaby, Surrey, New Westminster. They're the best. Tom's Custom Autobody. Give them a call, 604-931-3441. Check out their website, tomscustomautobody.com. They're opening a new location in Port Coquitlam really soon. We'll let you know more about that as we get closer. Thanks a lot Alex.

 Alex Wardle:  Perfect. Have a great day.

 Mark Bossert:  You too. 

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2015 Subaru Impreza WRX Repair  Tom's Custom Auto Body

Alex Wardle http://tomscustomautobody.com 604-931-3441 1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC service@tomscustomautobody.com

Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Alex Wardle of Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, BC. How’re you doing?

Alex: Fantastic, how’re you doing this morning Mark?

Mark: Good, so we’re going to talk about a 2015 Subaru Impreza WRX, it’s a pretty fancy vehicle, what happened?

Alex: It’s a very fancy vehicle. So I’ll just pull up a couple photos here and what we’ve got is, we’ve got a customer of our’s car that was coming through an intersection and she was hit on the passenger side front, as you can see here. The hood is completely destroyed, headlight is gone on both sides, but more so on the right side, fender is destroyed, the bumper is mangled. This car was towed from the accident scene to our store as we’re a preferred provider with our insurance company, and so it was towed in and we’re now disassembling and getting ready to repair this vehicle. So in this next shot here, you can see that it wasn’t that bad of an accident, she just came out into the intersection and basically somebody was late running a light or the stop sign and essentially just clipped the front end. There is a couple of major things upon teardown we kind of found so major damage which I’ll sow you here next. So basically where I put the circles here, these are the frame rails of the car, so this is the main structural component to your vehicle and these frame rails, especially the one here in the right of the photo, so the drivers side, is swayed over quite a bit. So our job is to put this vehicle on the frame machine and square up the rails, measure it such that the car is back within industry specs and within the specs that Subaru would specify on this car, and then pull the car back into square and then obviously, there are certain items here like the rad support and all the mechanical on the front that we’re going to be replacing over the next couple weeks to bring this car back to pre-loss condition.

Mark: So since this is a pretty high performance car, does Subaru specify a little bit tighter tolerances for some of this stuff?

Alex: For sure, yeah their tolerance on the frame specs are very, very small so we have to pull it within millimetres of what the original specs are. So our store managers would basically download the Subaru data on the frame and they’ll have all the cross measurements and so forth of where each point is got to be relative to the other points and so we will pull within those specs, they basically, and bring that frame back over and then obviously when we’re putting things back together then that allows all the OEM Subaru parts to fit right back in nicely. That ensures all your gaps are back to normal and such as the finished product looks like it did before it drove out of the showroom. This car here’s only got 5,000 km’s on it, so it’s brand new and obviously our customer is not obviously happy, the accident wasn’t her fault but you know, accidents do happen. It’s our job to make it unhappen.

Mark: So, we’re going to follow this through while you guys repair it and then what the finished brand-new looking product looks like at the end?

Alex: That’s right, yeah.

Mark: Awesome, so if you’re looking for fantastic service, a company that does autobody repair, not in your backyard, not on the cheap, but precision autobody repair that will bring your car back to new, these are the guys to call. Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, they service Coquitlam , Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, North Surrey, North Burnaby - pretty much everywhere, they’ll look after you. Give them a call 604-931-3441 or check out their new location launching soon - 1830 Kingsway in Port Coquitlam. Thanks Alex

Alex: Thanks very much Mark, have a great day.

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Trunk replacement on a 2013 Merecedes Benz G63 AMG Coupe

Alex Wardle http://tomscustomautobody.com 604-931-3441 1830 Kingsway, Port Coquitlam, BC service@tomscustomautobody.com

Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local Lead Generation and we’re here with Alex Wardle of ColorWorks and Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam. How’re you doing Alex?

Alex: Fantastic, how’re you doing this morning Mark?

Mark: Good, so Tom’s I guess you had a little bit of a, you have a steady stream of cars that you guys have repaired but you do some pretty tough stuff, so I know Mercedes have some unique kind of cars these days and we’re going to talk about a trunk replacement on a 2013 Mercedes, is that right?

Alex: Yeah, we’re going to talk about replacing the trunk on a 2013 Mercedes G63 AMG Coupe, so originally this car was probably about a hundred and fifty, a hundred and sixty five thousand depending on how it was optioned and we just happen to have on in the shop right now which had a little bit of a rear-ender so we’re replacing the trunk on it. There’s a couple things to look at, I’ll just pull up a couple of shots here of it, so we can go through it. So what we got here first off is, I’ll just switch over here to this photo, we’ve got here first off is, we’ve actually got the Mercedes kind of into our paint department right now and we have put the new OEM trunk on it. A couple things my body technicians always check before it goes to paint, before it even gets close to looking like new, is we check the gaps in the corners by the tail lights, as you can see where I’ve got it circled, then up against the rear glass. So we want to make sure that the gaps are right and the trunk is sitting exactly where we want before we put any paint on this car. So that’s one of the major things we check, of course where you’re generally using, with Mercedes Benz we’re generally using OEM parts which is really nice because the fit and finish is as new. As we switch over here, again as we look down the driver’s side of the car, we’re checking that the lines of the rear trunk watch the lines on the corner of the car because once it’s painted and once it’s set in place, it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to adjust. And then as we look down the side of the car you can see that the trunk is going to get new pearl, a new pearl white finish and on both quarters, right and left are going to be blending through both quarters on the colour. And then as we move over to the side of the car, some of the things that make us a little bit different as we remove all of the belt moldings on the side of the car and such that you see I put a mark there on the rear quarter glass for the belt moldings has have been taken off all the way around the sail panel and that allows us to get a really, really good coating of clear on there, and it also just allows for a much better finish. So what will happen now that this belt molding is off the car is that will now clean it and get it ready to go. Such as when it goes into the paint booth that both sides of the car will get a fresh new coat pearl paint and our job is, of course is to make this car come back to kind of pre-loss condition.

Mark: So pre-loss condition, when you mentioned that, that’s basically to translate it for you know, a dumb guy like me, is like it was before it got hit basically.

Alex: That’s right. Our mandate with our insurance partners is to make sure that when you walk in the door to pick up your car at the end, that it should be, look as new. So obviously, the newer, nicer the car when it comes in, the more likelihood it’s going to look like new when it goes out. But on a 2013 car there’s probably very little damage on it, that obviously is different if you’ve got a 1997 Pathfinder with a little bit of wear and tear. But the newer the car, the mandate is that when it comes in, if you’ve been in an accident, it comes in and it goes out it looks as new when it goes back out.

Mark: So if you’re in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam New Westminster, North Burnaby, South Burnaby, these are the guys to see. Tom’s Custom Autobody, they’re located at 1830 Kingsway in Port Coquitlam. You can call to book at 604-931-3441. Thanks Alex

Alex: Thanks very much, have a great day.

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http://tomscustomautobody.com/   604-931-3441

Mark: Hi, it’s Mark Bossert here, we’re talking about Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, BC, we’re here with Alex Wardle, he’s the owner and general manager. How’re you doing today Alex?

Alex: Fantastic

Mark: So there’s some exciting changes happening at Tom’s, what’s going on this year?

Alex: Well, after 35 years we’re moving and adding a new location. So we’re building a brand new facility to serve our customers better at 1830 Kingsway in Port Coquitlam, BC and we’re also adding a new facility in Coquitlam at 845 Tupper Avenue.

Mark: So there you go, Tom’s Custom Autobody is making some changes. So what else, have you guys added some new equipment and some new capabilities as well?

Alex: We have. In 2015 we added a whole bunch of new aluminum welding equipment, some spot welders and arc welders that allow us to keep up to the changing times of the vehicle so to be able to repair the new Ford F150, the 2015 and 2016 F150 and any of the new panels that are coming on the latest Lexus, BMW or Mercedes.

Mark: so if you’re looking for a shop that is keeping abreast of the times, growing, preferred providers for a lot of places for your Lexus, your Mercedes, all the high end stuff, but also your Fords etc-these are the guys to call in Coquitlam-Tom’s Custom Autobody. Check out their website tomscustomautobody.com

Alex: Thank you

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Tom’s Custom Autobody - Excellent and Quality Repairs - Testimonial

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com  604-931-3441

So I’ve taken my vehicle to the shop for several different occasions. I’ve had  a couple different cars, one had a lot of damage from paint over spray they did a great job of fixing that up. I had a courtesy car the whole time. The service was done quickly, it was all done through ICBC.  Really happy with the service they did there. I have an auto repair business and people are constantly asking me who do you recommend for auto body, I refer lots of people to them and I’m just very happy with the service. I get good reports back from all my customers who’ve gone there. They love the valet service, the pick up and drop off, the courtesy cars. I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone to go there.

Bernie Tom’s Custom Autobody Customer

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Tom’s Custom Autobody - Excellent Service, Great Work - Testimonial

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com | 604-931-3441

I got in a car accident last year and so I took my car to the shop. Well right off the bat, the service was excellent  and they provided me with a courtesy car and they also dealt with the ICBC stuff as well. I didn’t even have to worry about doing any of the paperwork or anything and in the end the job they did on my car was amazing. It looked totally brand new and they even detailed the inside of my car for me which I didn’t even expect. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to all my friends or family because of the great work that they’ve done.

Wil Tom’s Custom Autobody Customer

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Tom’s Custom Autobody - Car Accident Repair - Testimonial

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com | 604-931-3441

Very recently I got into a very large car accident, I was terrified because I never been an accident that large. I contacted the shop and within minutes they were able to have my car towed to their repair shop and provide me with a courtesy car in the meantime. The repairs were done very quickly and the service throughout the entire process was outstanding. I would recommend them to absolutely  everyone

Sheetal Tom’s Custom Autobody Customer

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Tom’s Custom Autobody - Superb Craftsmanship, Excellent Customer Service - Testimonial

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com | 604-931-3441

You never get into accidents, right? Well it needs to look that way and running a busy catering business with a fleet of vans, it’s really important to us that our vans always look tip top shape. So what’s fantastic about the team at the shop is that we’re always looked after. As soon as our vehicles get there, they’re looked after efficiently, the craftsmanship is superb, the customer service is fantastic and they even look after all of the ICBC details we don’t have to. Making our lives that much easier.

Nicole Tom’s Custom Autobody Customer

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Tom’s Custom Autobody - Quality Team, Quality Workmanship - Testimonial

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com | 604-931-3441

My wife was recently in an accident. Thankfully no injuries, it was a really low velocity impact but the damage was significant. We called their team right away and they were able to help us with everything to do with ICBC. A courtesy car was available for us as soon as we got there. It was really low stress when all was said and done. My wife felt the same way. She said that when she went to pick up the car, not only was the car fixed but they detailed it, everything was washed. There was no sign of any of the damage. I can’t say enough about their team, not just the quality of their work but the quality of the service and the quality of the people and how they worked with us.

Kenn Tom’s Custom Autobody Customer

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Tom's Custom Autobody - Accidents Happen!

http://www.tomscustomautobody.com  604-931-3441

Accidents happen, give the vehicle you rely on every day the treatment it deserves from our team at Tom’s Custom Autobody in Coquitlam, BC. We have been giving drivers in the Tri-cities peace of mind for over 35 years. We provide quality services for auto body repairs and painting services. We pay attention to detail ensuring that your car looks like new when it’s returned to you.