HOW IT WORKS:
After years of subletting out glass work, European Motor Car Works president Kye Yeung has started to make a concerted effort to bring glass work in house at his Santa Ana, Calif., shop.
“We were finding that was a huge loss in our profit because our sublet was so high and we had to put up with the damage, and obviously, the wait time,” he says. “Just coordinating all of that is usually a hassle.”
Since then, Yeung has invested in numerous glass tools available in the market, including the WRD-Spider Glass Tool, which the shop uses to remove glass.
While there are numerous glass removal tools available on the market, most of them use some type of sharp object—such as a knife, cutting blade or stainless steel wire—which can nick the painted surface, upholstery or the composite. Those nicks added time to the repair process because the surface would then need to be sanded down and epoxy primered to fix the imperfection.
Because Yeung’s shop works on a lot of Aston Martin vehicles, which are made of carbon fiber and composite, Yeung purchased the WRD-Spider Glass Tool as an alternative for those vehicles. The WRD-Spider Glass Tool uses a nylon braid (Yeung compares it to a fishing line) that cuts the bond path without hurting moldings, upholstery and composite. In essence, the tool uses a low-speed drill and drive shaft that connects to the fiber line equipment.
“We were able to remove the windows with relative ease compared to the other systems available to us,” he says. The tool isn’t a “cure-all,” Yeung says, as it doesn’t do small quarter glass windows, but he says that for larger quarter glass, front windows and back glass, it’s allowed the shop to perform the glass removal in house and with lower risk.
“We still use the sublet people on certain type of repairs that we don’t have the time,” he says. “On the smaller stuff where the car is going into the paint shop and we don’t have time to wait, it gives us a great alternative to do it in house.”
THE RETURN:
Yeung says it took roughly 10 windows to recoup the cost of the tool. In addition, he says that reducing the amount of nicks that occur during the glass removal process has cut down on the extra hour or so that corrective process would add to the repair time.
Although the spools of line do need to be replaced, he says one spool will last for three or four windows, which is more than the one-time-use stainless steel wire he was using before.
Finally, he has been able to continue to reduce the amount the shop relies on subletting out glass work, which he says has helped maintain a lower cycle time and save time in the front office when it comes to coordinating and checking in on the sublet work.
CLICK HERE » Interested in knowing the impact of a particular collision repair product in the shop? Send your suggestions to [email protected].
