If your late-model car, truck, minivan, or SUV boasts a lightweight build, superior fuel economy, and greater crash safety than its predecessors from previous generations, you most likely have an aluminum vehicle. Aluminum offers some remarkable benefits, but it also poses challenges for body shops.

Fortunately, you can still have those dings, dents, crumples, and other issues repaired with the same success that you might expect for a steel-based vehicle. Here are some key points to understand about body repair work for aluminum cars.

Aluminum Vehicles Have Become Commonplace

Aluminum has grown increasingly common and popular as a principal construction material for vehicles over the past 4 decades, currently holding a close second place against the longtime favorite, steel. The relatively light weight of this metal allows automakers to build more fuel-efficient, eco-friendly vehicles.

Aluminum also offers some important safety advantages over steel. A pound of aluminum can absorb twice as much crash energy as the equivalent pound of steel. This quality allows automakers to design cars with larger crumple zones, which provides greater safety for occupants while still maintaining a light weight.

In recent years, aluminum automaking took a giant leap forward when Ford decided to use this metal for the manufacture of its most popular model, the F-150 pickup truck. As a result, a larger number of drivers than ever now own aluminum-based vehicles, with the trend showing every sign of continuing.

Aluminum Calls for Special Tools and Techniques

For all aluminum's advantages as an automotive material, the increasing popularity and prevalence of aluminum vehicles have created some fresh challenges for owners who need to get body damage repaired. Aluminum behaves very differently from steel, meaning that it requires different repair tools and techniques.

For instance, steel responds well to traditional high-heat welding methods. By contrast, the relatively thin sheet metal used in aluminum body panels can easily overheat and cause the metal to decay. Instead of welding aluminum body panels, technicians may need to attach the panels with rivets and adhesives.

Smoothing out a wrinkled or dented aluminum body panel also presents some special challenges. While body shop technicians can hammer or stretch a steel panel back into its previous contours, aluminum requires the use of controlled heat, the manipulation of pins attached to the panels, or even the total replacement of a panel.

Aluminum Certification Helps to Ensure High-Quality Results

Don't assume that every auto body shop can work on aluminum cars. Shops must invest in not only the correct tools and materials but also in the training and education necessary to repair aluminum bodies successfully. Unfortunately, only 15 percent of North American body shops have the necessary training and certification.

To rest assured that your car will receive the expertise it requires, choose a body shop whose technicians hold an official verifiable aluminum certification. Additionally, Ford insists that shops conform to Ford's own comprehensive list of requirements before they can work on Ford products, which include its aluminum models.

Aluminum Repair Doesn't Have to Cost Extra

Before aluminum vehicles hit the marketplace in droves, body shops found them more time-intensive and labor-intensive to repair than their steel counterparts. Even though aluminum car bodywork requires different kinds of training and equipment, however, these differences don't necessarily cost you more.

The gap between aluminum and steel repair costs has traditionally come down to insufficient tools, skills, and training. An auto shop with the proper experience and certification can usually perform a body repair on an aluminum vehicle in about the same amount of labor time as a steel repair might take.

Cambron Body Shop proudly offers technicians with aluminum certification, so when you bring your aluminum car to us, you'll receive skilled, cost-effective work and beautiful results. Contact us today.