Bradan Coachworks

Hey guys I am excited to announce we are finally adding collision repair to our paint shop! For the past seven years we have turned down accident repair work because we lacked the equipment to properly repair accident damaged cars, but now we are upgrading the body shop and changing the layout, gearing it towards expansion. This overhaul will benefit both our paint and restoration work while allowing us to add a collision shop. We will be turning nine years old this April, and to celebrate, we are adding collision repair to our list of services.

We will blog the start-up phase and try to answer any of your questions. We hope you enjoy following the process. Although our collision repairs will be geared towards high-end cars, we are non-discriminatory and will work on all makes and models.

 

We finally bought an Alignment rack from a Search auto center liquidation. The hunter hawk Eye alignment system is considered the best on the market and will be a major asset to both our service and auto body shop.
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All lighting was converted to LED. What a difference in the shop!
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The repair shop and auto body shop will be painted with ucoat it epoxy paint. This will help brighten up the work areas.
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Our shops an old school bus repair shop. The floors were beat up and stained from years of heavy duty work. We had to grind the floors down to etch the surface for paint.
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We relocated our lifts to the other side of the building to create a production line setup. The concrete was only 3" thick in sections so we had to install reinforced concrete pads. 6,000 lbs of concrete, sand, dirty in our tow truck with no signs of slowing down!
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It will take 3-4 weeks for the concrete to dry and reach its full strength!
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All walls painted high gloss white. A formal waiting room installed upfront.
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This was bitter sweet for me. Our first spray booth was taken down and sold to another group of guys just starting out.
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I flew to Munster Germany to visit the Glasurit factory and get trained in color mixing, blending, and all BASF products. Were certified in there 22,55, and 90 paint lines now. Training and factory support will help us out with older color codes converted from lacquer to solvent based and even water on modern cars.
It takes a full day to tour the whole factory it's a mini city. Its BASFs center of production, research/development, and marketing.
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Anytime I travel to Germany I make it a point to get some laps in at the Nurburgring. By far my favorite race track.
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Porsche set the ring world record that evening. For anyone that hasn't watched the lap video yet its a must!



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random cars around the track.
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Riding the speed limiter on the autobahn in a BMW m4.

 

some video from the Ring.

 

Visting our friends at Ruf Automobile.
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More.
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Were excited to announce our most recent equipment addition, our CarBench Muraena Jig Bench. Made of German steel and built in Massa Italy, this jig bench allows us to repair exotic vehicles to aircraft precision. Carbench is the only frame jig with OEM approval from Ferrari and Maserati. It also carries other OEM approvals for BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Rolls Royce to name a few.
If you have ever heard that cars are never the same after an accident, that is because other shops are using benches with only 4-10 fixture points. Ours has over 100. That means we can truly restore your vehicle to the same condition it was before collision.

When shopping for Jig benches viewing the factory was very important to me to understand the company, equipment quality, and all machine features. Carbench was the only manufacture that welcomed me with open arms. Every other brand manufactured there jigs in Indian or China. I offered to travel to the factories regardless and was turned down.
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Car bench writes all the bodywork repair manuals for Ferrari and is the only Jig bench approved by them. They had the F12 superfast in the factory to design all the tooling required to repair it. These are the prototype fixtures.
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Each bench starts out as a bar of German steel. This is a cross beam that supports each fixture. Most manufactures use a low quality steel and just drill a hole through the beam and run a nut and bolt setup. Carbench uses the highest quality steel so they are able to thread the actual cross beam without worrying about pulling the threads out.
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Each main frame rail is fully welded in a single pass. Every other bench on the market is stitch welded to avoid warping or cracking the low quality steel....
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This is the actual pull post that straightens out accident damage. Every post is made start to finish in the factory and quality tested before shipping.
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This is the actual jig post that takes most of the stress during pulling. Most manufactures bragged how theres is solid steel and how strong it is. The problem is the pulling power of the pull post is stronger then the jig post. So if you bend a post you have no way of knowing so every car after that is pulled to an incorrect tolerance.
Carbench made a cast hollow post that intentionally breaks if the pulling force is exceeded. I love the engineering Carbench puts into every single part of the fixture.
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This is a completed main frame of the jib bench. Lorenzo and his wife own Carbench together and proudly knew every design feature start to finish.
In this photo Lorenzo is showing me that you can see all the machining marks and welds on the finished product. They dip every bench is a Galvanized bath to prevent rusting. Every other manufacture covers there steel in paint to hide all the imperfections.
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This shows the original Ferrari 360 modena front frame structure jigged to the bench. When Ferrari originally built the 360 chassis with Alcoa it was solid Aluminum. Carbench had to reverse engineer the chassis and section is to make it repairable in the future.
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