What happened to panelbeating?

[superjackal]

Is panelbeating a lost art? I had a few people around me with moderate damage to their cars receiving buy-outs for their car as the estimates for work are higher than the value of the vehicle.

Back in the old days (10+ yrs ago), you’d damage your car and it was roughly $100 panel and paint. These days, they only seem to quote for replacement panels and this quickly outstrips a car’s value.

Is this a scam or just economics? It seems a lot of vehicles are being taken off the road for no reason.

Does anyone actually still “panel beat”?

[Hitcher]

You can't beat the unbeatable. Plastics, for example, can be licked but not beaten. High-tensile steel, particularly where it's double-skinned, is hard to ameliorate percussively. Same deal with aluminium.

Prices too come into play. Why bother spending hours knocking and tapping something when an untarnished replacement can be had at a reasonable comparative cost?

"Panelbeaters" too have for many decades been the masters of Bog and Bondy, rather than the princes of Tap and Thud, so be careful not to damn them with faint praise.

[Edbear]

You can't beat the unbeatable. Plastics, for example, can be licked but not beaten. High-tensile steel, particularly where it's double-skinned, is hard to ameliorate percussively. Same deal with aluminium.

Prices too come into play. Why bother spending hours knocking and tapping something when an untarnished replacement can be had at a reasonable comparative cost?

"Panelbeaters" too have for many decades been the masters of Bog and Bondy, rather than the princes of Tap and Thud, so be careful not to damn them with faint praise.

Yup! While many do have the skills and talent, it simply isn't cost effective to the insurance companies to try to repair modern car panels. Cars aren't made out of soft mild steel these days and construction is far more complex, too, with composites making up a large percentage of the vehicle.

[pzkpfw]

Same with much electronics. Who has the time to mess around with finding a dead capacitor on a video card? Just bung in a new video card ...

[p.dath]

Back in the old days (10+ yrs ago), you’d damage your car and it was roughly $100 panel and paint. These days, they only seem to quote for replacement panels and this quickly outstrips a car’s value.

Whenever I have had something done it has been around $500/panel.

[FJRider]

You can't beat the unbeatable. Plastics, for example, can be licked but not beaten. High-tensile steel, particularly where it's double-skinned, is hard to ameliorate percussively. Same deal with aluminium.

Prices too come into play. Why bother spending hours knocking and tapping something when an untarnished replacement can be had at a reasonable comparative cost?

"Panelbeaters" too have for many decades been the masters of Bog and Bondy, rather than the princes of Tap and Thud, so be careful not to damn them with faint praise.

Add to that ... in the days of real steel panels ... beating out dents was the easiest option. (and panel-beaters were almost artists in this regard) But the coke can thickness of vehicle panels ... and with the often complex form of some panels ... the metal (if it actually is metal) panels are too badly stretched to "beat" back into the original shape.

And as nowdays ... some panels are structural features of the vehicle .... and have to be intact and unaltered to keep their strength. "Bog" just cant replace that strength ...

As "Write-Off" value of a vehicle is not full market value ... (one third of ... I think) it doesn't take that much for the insurers to make the "Write-off" call.

[pete376403]

Might not be the dents. Once the airbags have deployed, virtually the whole interior of the car (door pillar bags, sde curtain bags, dash panel, steering wheel, etc) needs replacement. Then there's the glass...

[ducatilover]

It's a good question.
Nobody does metal finishing anymore, and they haven't for a very long time. Unless they're doing specialist work (nobody wants bog in an e-type)
The buy-outs isn't horribly surprising. I know of many insurance approved panel beaters who charge retarded amounts of money and only do average work. Often buying a new panel can be cheaper than panel beating it (not surprising), on the flip side, plenty enough insurance jobs do get repaired (my brother had a Lancer GSR that had $6k spent on repair and the valuation was around $10k) and a few grand doesn't get you much these days either...
The reason cars are hanging around with dents is money, not many of us can afford to pay somebody to repair a panel and 99% of the time it'll just be cosmetics so it doesn't effect performance etc.

I do some metal finishing when the mood strikes me and it's not an easy thing to do and it's very, very time consuming.


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[Scuba_Steve]

All I can say is, Welcome to the side effect of vehicle insurance.

[Swoop]

Sadly it is not just a lost art in that profession. Quite a few other professions are standing on the edge of extinction, and they do not know it...


Sent from a telephone box using key-tapping skills.

[awa355]

If you look at many trades, they have changed so much within the last 30 years, mostly in the materials they use and the techniques to work with those materials. Plumbing, building electrics.

200 years ago, a 'Master Plumber' was a guy who could dig an open drain in a straight line. The old panelbeating skills were something that would give a tradesman a sense of pride and accomplishment to look at a rebuilt mudguard or panel alignment. And not all panelbeaters were highly skilled either.

[Flip]

Now days the paint is expensive and difficult to match.

[Edbear]

Add to that ... in the days of real steel panels ... beating out dents was the easiest option. (and panel-beaters were almost artists in this regard) But the coke can thickness of vehicle panels ... and with the often complex form of some panels ... the metal (if it actually is metal) panels are too badly stretched to "beat" back into the original shape.

And as nowdays ... some panels are structural features of the vehicle .... and have to be intact and unaltered to keep their strength. "Bog" just cant replace that strength ...

As "Write-Off" value of a vehicle is not full market value ... (one third of ... I think) it doesn't take that much for the insurers to make the "Write-off" call.

It never could but that didn't stop many from trying.

[Motu]

The modern High Strength Steels (HSS) don't have ''memory'', the old thicker mild steel panels could be skilfully manipulated back into their original shape. The older 2 previous generation panelbeaters before bog was invented used lead for filler, and it was expensive, they could pound out a panel to original shape with little or no filler....given enough time to do a quality job. HSS can't be put back into shape so easily, and can't be heated or filed, or gas welded. Folding up a patch out of mild steel is not a valid repair anymore.

[leathel]

Rent, wages etc have gone up... used parts have gone down, Used car value has gone down, Used to repair all sorts of panels, Now I can't repair for the cost of the guard... Still repair as much as possible but the economics just don't work.... Why would you want to pay someone more time to repair your guard when its cheaper for you to replace it.... Sad but true

Lots of parts have to be loaded on certain sites for insurance companies and the wreckers put low prices to get the job... we get less markup and less chance to repair... the only winner is the insurance company

Cars older than a few years drop in value so fast a slight nose to tail can total losses the job pretty quick and no money in that .... Sure aint what it used to be

Cut and weld nose and rear cut repairs we do a lot of, some doors are worth good coin so we can spend time on those, rear guard are weld on and expensive to replace so repair plenty of those...then there is chassis straitening you can't bolt those on, But front guards and doors are mostly bolt on.