Tech Session—Dorn’s Body & Paint

By John Odden

Barry Dorn, Vice President of Dorn’s Body & Paint greeted 16 Shenandoah Region members with coffee and a bountiful array of pastries for an introduction to the advanced elements of collision repair of premium vehicles. Dorn’s Body & Paint is one of two Porsche Factory Certified repair centers in Virginia and the only one in central Virginia. Dorn’s is also factory certified for Tesla, Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, BMW, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo. Factory certification requires extensive personnel training and a broad investment in equipment to meet manufacturer’s specifications.

To see the photo gallery from this event, click here.

We were presented with the complexities of working with the combination of a steel structure and aluminum panels. Due to galvanic action of dissimilar metals, the two materials cannot come in contact with each other. Very specialized bonding materials must be used to insure the two materials do not interact. With the increased government mandated mileage requirements of motor vehicles, the automobile manufacturers are using more aluminum to reduce weight and increase fuel economy. We learned that there are very few collision repair operations that have the ability to work with aluminum. An interesting point with aluminum is that it has no “memory” whereas steel has memory. Steel is inclined to resume its original stamped shape and aluminum does not. This makes repair of aluminum a very challenging undertaking.

We had the opportunity to view a current model Range Rover which is all aluminum including the frame rails. The vehicle had a front end collision which damaged the initial 18 inches of aluminum frame rail. The engine and transmission required removal to perform the repair. Dorn’s cut out the damaged portion and welded new aluminum frame rails to the existing frame. This required, in additional to aluminum welding, eight different factory specified rivets and a special bonding compound manufactured by 3M which is only available for purchase from the UK. The Range Rover was on a special jig to insure proper alignment of the frame. The repair cost for this vehicle was approximately $50,000.

All in attendance received a very detailed education on the sensors that current automobiles have. These include backup cameras, distance detectors, blind spot monitors, and adaptive cruise control. Barry Dorn, who is on many national collision-repair boards and councils, shared with us that the paint thickness is a critical component for these sensors to function properly after a repair. An additional layer of paint can make a sensor inoperable. Paint thickness is now a critical component to collision repair. The sensing safely systems in current automobiles are called ADAS, Advance Driver Assist Systems. After a collision repair, it requires twelve hours of calibration to recalibrate all of these safety systems. Porsche, Audi, Tesla, and Mercedes Benz are the leading manufacturers providing these advanced systems.

A common maintenance service to prolong tire life and reduce wear is a front-end alignment. Barry shared the common service provided is typically “toe and go”. The two other critical adjustments besides toe adjustment are castor and camber. Today’s cars monitor the steering angle through a Steering Angle Inclination Sensor. These sensors must be reset after each front-end alignment. Not having these important sensors reset to the new settings can cause a vehicle rollover in a crash-avoidance maneuver. How many shops actually address the Steering Inclination Sensor? Less than 1% have the equipment to perform this very important component of a front-end alignment.

We were treated to a delicious lunch from Panera Bread and our choice of YETI thermal mugs with the Dorn’s Body and Paint logo and Porsche Collision Repair Center embossed on them. Flow Porsche provided a beautiful 2018 metallic gray Porsche Panamera for us to view during our session at Dorn’s.