Alignments Too Critical for Collision Repair Shops to Not Do Them In-House

During a recent meeting I had with my SPARTAN 300 20 Group, we reviewed some vehicle crash test videos posted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, like one showing a side crash test of a 2022 Toyota Corolla.

A preventative maintenance alignment what people were talking about years ago when they said, “Set the toe and let it go” are the typical $89 alignments to make sure the vehicle handles properly and the tires don’t wear unevenly.

trying to avoid that by putting some weight in the vehicle instead: Stop it! Follow the OEM procedures. I have seen only two automakers that give you procedures for how to do that instead of filling.

We may also have to do some advanced diagnosis. The subframe could be misaligned, for example. If you let the subframe bolts loose and it jumps, that tells you it’s got some pressure on it. You may also have to adjust a cross-member for torque steer.

There’s just a lot more that we have to do.

Being able to do alignments inhouse is also important because I believe that in order to write an

37% of shops said they were paid “always” or “most of the time” for a pre-diagnostic alignment by the eight largest national insurers. That was up to 45% in last year’s survey.

In the video, if you watch the tires on the vehicle as it gets pushed sideways by the sled, you can see they leave black marks on the floor just as they would if they scraped against the pavement in a real collision.

Watching this, the question came up: Could that create flat spots on the tires?

One of our group’s members checked the run-out on tires on collision damaged vehicles in their shop using the Hunter Road Force Elite, and found more than 27% of the tires they checked did have flat spots.

That led us to a discussion about alignments. We know more and more vehicle system calibrations require an alignment prior to the calibrations. And more and more alignments require a calibration of some system after the alignment. It won’t take you long looking through automaker repair procedures to know more and more automakers are saying an alignment is necessary any time a vehicle has been in an accident. Electronic stability systems are just one of the systems that rely on the vehicle being properly aligned.

Given all this, I believe in today’s collision world, you really need to be able to do alignments in-house.

I know some of you will say: But the bill-payer only wants to pay me $89 for an in-house alignment. But let’s remember there are at least four different types of alignments.

Still, about two in five shops acknowledge never having sought to be paid for this important process.

By Ed Attanasio Autobody News

Chris Slack manages a parts department at Ivan Gandrud Chevrolet in Green Bay, WI, that employs 30 people, including eight counter people and three service technicians.

part of Michigan with a fleet of 18 trucks.

Gandrud has been exhibiting at SEMA for the past four years, after attending it the four years before that. Autobody News asked him about the show and its impact on his business.

Q: What were the central issues that shops and parts suppliers were dealing with in 2022?

performance and collision customers at the show so that is nice also.

Q: How has SEMA changed since your first show?

A:I think there will be fewer collision shops and also fewer wholesale parts dealers.

The department carries an inventory of approximately $5.5 million, consisting of mechanical, collision and performance parts, and is an authorized Mopar dealer that sells genuine Mopar parts online. With 30-plus years of experience under his belt, Slack is succeeding in a very competitive marketplace. He’s well-known for being one of GM’s largest parts operations in the country, serving all of Wisconsin and

A: We have been dealing with a bunch of issues but the biggest is backordered parts. So many parts are unavailable from the manufacturer. We have been trying to make it seamless by buying parts for our customers from other dealers across the country. We have bought more parts from other dealers than ever before, but if that’s what it takes to get a car finished and out of our customer’s shop, then that’s what we have to do.

Q: Do you see value in a show like SEMA for dealer parts suppliers?

A: SEMA is a great show for us because we have a large Chevrolet Performance parts business. We see a lot of our

A: I think SEMA has changed from a performance show to a more complete automotive show. Now even the service manager and the collision shop manager should attend and visit all the vendors and attend training.

Q: Do you think parts availability will improve significantly in 2023?

A: No, maybe by the end of 2023, availability is improving but very, very slowly.

Those are definitely the three top concerns. We need a bigger facility because we need more inventory which means more people and more delivery drivers. We have had to cut back on our delivery area because we don’t have time to deliver to all our customers.

Q: What will your sector look like in 2025?

The parts dealers are under a lot of pressure right now. Our discounts from the manufacturers have dropped because of availability— many parts can no longer be ordered at a truckload discount but instead we have to special order it one at a time to get the part at a much lower discount. Delivery expenses have gone up, personal costs have gone up.

But as the large MSOs buy up all the collision shops, they are demanding bigger discounts. That’s a business model that doesn’t work. The collision shops should instead work on getting a higher labor rate from the businesses that control that.

Q:If a young person was going to enter this industry, what would you tell them?

A:Now is a great time to get into the parts and collision business. Demand for qualified people has never been higher. Every collision shop and wholesale parts department in the state is hiring right now.