Yes, most modern refinishes are cured when they come out of the oven. The oven? Yep! Auto Body Shops are equipped with car sized ovens! No, not for giant cookies though that’s not a bad idea. The materials that are used to paint your vehicle are actually cured when heated at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. When the vehicle comes out of the booth it may feel “tacky” but should be a workable surface immediately including wet sand and polish. So if you just picked up your vehicle after it has been painted or repair it’s safe to say you can wash and wax it at your leisure. No shop should give you a vehicle back that can not be. If they say you can’t wash or wax it for any period of time, most likely they’re either using inferior techniques or products.

Depending on frequent your auto repair shop rental insurance may be a good idea. Most policies offer rental insurance at a small additional cost per year ($30-80) to cover your rental if your vehicle is in an accident/incident. When people change their insurance to a new one they may find that there premium is much lower. It’s not always that they’re saving you money but instead they may be taking things off from your old policy like rental insurance. The one time you may need rental you could rack up 10x what you would spend in that ten years in additional charges on your premium. I do know one thing, when people come in after an accident and realize they don’t have rental and how much it actually costs per year, they run to there agent and add it.

There are many reasons why your bumpers and adjacent panels (fenders,quarter panels) may look like different colors. The most common is, that’s the way the factory made it. Believe it or not your car that is in one piece in your driveway was in a thousands of pieces all over the world. Your painted parts are no different. A lot of factories may paint your bumper in texas and your fender in detroit. Therefore the variants in color between different people mixing it, environment, how long it’s stirred and sprayed all are factors. Some people believe that when you spray paint on a plastic bumper and it’s next to a metal part there may be a slight color difference even if it’s the same paint. This holds true in certain circumstances especially for pearl paint. It essentially can make the beautiful pearl color you see change direction therefore changing the way it looks in the sun.

This is a question we hear everyday in the collision business and i can’t speak for every state but in New York State, YES. There are set regulations and rules for NYS that do not allow insurance companies to tell you where you have to go for car repairs. The set of rules are called NYS Regulation 64 and it’s your protection. Insurance companies may use terminology making you believe you have to take photos of your vehicle and send it to them or that you must get an estimate from one of there shops first. This is false you are free to do what you want. In all cases the best thing for you to do is before doing anything, contact your auto body repair facility. They will guide you through the process and help you do what’s best for you, whether you know it or not.