Industry Insight with John Yoswick
—John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com). Contact him by email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.
Automakers: Collision Repairers Must Ensure ADAS Calibration Procedures Are Followed
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The importance of proper ADAS cal- line in the service information is: do ibrations was a key focus as the So- this on a flat floor.” Kaboos said the other noted reciety of Collision Repair Specialists with Ed Attanasio (SCRS) brought collision repairers quirements—proper air in the tires, a and automakers together at an event full tank of gas—are also important. in Las Vegas during the SEMA Show. “Anything that changes the ride Scott Kaboos, assistant man- height or ride angle of the car is going ager of collision repair training and to throw off all the geometry,” he said. technology for American Honda, told those attending with the OEM Collision Ed Attanasio Repair Technology Summit that automakers call for many calibrations to be done on a level floor with good reason. “We did a little test,” Kaboos said, noting Honda’s service information says there can be no more with Ed Attanasio than 1 degree of pitch or slope to the Scott Kaboos of American Honda said testing floor when performing calibrations. at the automaker’s training center demonstrat“Traveling around to a lot of our dealed the need to perform ADAS calibrations on a erships, we found that most of their level floor when called for in the procedures floors do not meet that requirement. So we started asking How “You’ve got to pay attention to all of withourselves: Ed Attanasio important is this? Is this really detri- that.” mental?” Subaru of America’s Ted Hicks Kaboos said the Honda training said during the same SCRS session center in Illinois drove a new Civic at that complete repair of the underlying the NHTSA target used to test emer- metal where an ADAS camera or ragency auto-braking, and the system dar is attached is also critical. worked 10 timeswith in a row, stopping Stacey Phillips “I asked a panel of technicians in the vehicle three or four feet from the Dallas: what’s the single biggest probtarget as designed. lem you’re having with calibrations of “So then we took that same car blind-spot monitoring radar units and and put the rear wheels in our drain the EyeSight cameras that come from in our wash bay at our training cen- body shops after a repair,” said Hicks, ter,” Kaboos said. “We Stacey calculatedPhillips the a regional technical training manager with slope on that, and found that the car for the automaker. “They said that the was sitting at a 1.6 degree incline. We panel that the camera or unit mounts re-aimed the radar, using the factory to has got to be exactly correct. If the specifications and tools. When we sheet metal behind it is bent, the radar were done, the scan tool said aiming unit or camera will never point in the was complete. There were no codes. right direction.” with Stacey Phillips One problem: that metal is often We test drove the car around the block. It gave us no indication there was any- behind trim or covered by the bumper thing wrong with the car. There were cover, so some shops may not repair no lights on the dash.” it. But then the vehicle was driven at “Nobody cares what the sheet the same NHTSA target. metal looks like, right,” Hicks said. “We had very different results,” “It can be wrinkly as all get-out and with Stacey Phillips Kaboos said. “It honestly blew nobody’s going to care because the through that target at 20 miles an hour bumper cover is going to cover it or like it wasn’t even there. The light on the EyeSight camera is going to covthe dash didn’t blink. It didn’t beep at er it. I’m here to tell you: It matters. us. It just punted that target. That was Please find the reference points in the a big eye-opener to us on the training service information.” side as to how important that one little Kaboos said he also has some
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concerns that shops often aren’t doing needed calibrations. He estimated between 5% and 10% of Honda’s certified collision centers are doing their own ADAS calibrations in-house, while some use a mobile service or a stand-alone calibration center in their market. “But still, the majority are subletting to the dealers,” Kaboos said. “I’m not going to make a judgment either way, as long as you’re getting it done properly.” He said CCC Intelligent Solutions pulled final repair appraisals for Honda vehicles over the course of a year that “had an event that would have required a calibration of one of these systems.” Of those, only 20% listed a calibration. “Eighty percent of the cars that were in accidents that needed to have a calibration did not get one,”
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Kaboos said. “At least it wasn’t on the estimate. So unless they did it for free, and they didn’t put it on the estimate—highly unlikely, right—it didn’t get done. That scares me.” Also during the session, Taylor Jozwiak, collision R&D workshop manager for Rivian, talked about how that new company produces collision repair procedures for its vehicles. Jozwiak said his “internal body shop” in California, which includes body and paint technicians and an “estimating specialist,” works closely with the Rivian service engineering team, “which creates our repair procedures in CAD.” “As we all know, CAD is great from an engineering standpoint, but some things get lost in translation when transferred over into reality,” Jozwiak said. “So that’s where my team comes in. We take the repair proSee Procedures Are Followed, Page 39
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