Over the years, many different trends have come and gone in the car accessory field. Trendy fads that were once popular include neon under body kits, 13″ wire wheels pushed out, neon washer nozzles, headlight and taillight covers, air shocks and huge rear spoilers, just to name a few. These days, many of the same styles from the past are still popular but with a slightly different interpretation or style.

One such item that has come and gone over the years is smoked headlight and taillight covers. These items were very popular in the mid to late nineties and sales slowed down early in the new millennium. However, many people still like the look of blacked out headlights, just without the many downfalls of lexan covers such as bad fitting parts, issues with the covers coming off due to installation with double-sided tape, and the biggest downfall of these items: dramatically reduced light after dark. These products also came under close scrutiny by local law enforcement officials over the years for their reduction in light that caused many accidents. Read the rest of this entry »

Painting your motorcycle can be a very big step for an individual. This is one of the easiest ways to express individuality and personality. This process should not be taken lightly and choosing the right body shop will make all the difference with the end result. Another reason you may find you need to paint your bike is if or some reason it has sustained body damage. The latter is a whole other topic and will actually be covered in a different article.

Before beginning the process one very important thing you should ask yourself is, “Do I plan on doing any custom work to my bike?” The reason is, you don’t want to put down a large sum of money for a gorgeous paint job only to turn around 6 months later and decide to get a stretched tank or a “Fat Tire Kit” installed on your bike, both of which would require repainting of certain pieces. If your answer is no to this question then the next phase is deciding what you want done. Do you just want a color change? Do you want a two tone? Do you want artistic renderings or graphics of any type? Finally, most often the hardest question of all…. What COLOR do you want? Looking through motorcycle magazines can often times answer these questions, or even going to a body shop that paints motorcycles can often offer assistance with these questions. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years car salesmen have gotten a bad rap! Is this justified? Well I can tell you from being in the automotive repair business and seeing what the car sales industry is like, this “rap” is well justified.

For instance, at one Chevy dealer where I provided my service a customer had brought in his Yukon (this was a few years ago so I do not remember the make for certain, the vehicle had double rears doors) to have some work done to it in the service department. The vehicle was having one of the rear windows replaced.

The technician damaged the paint while replacing the window. They asked me to repair the door, meanwhile I did not know that they had not informed the customer that the vehicle’s paint had been damaged and they were repairing it.

This is a particularly bad situation because if the customer wanted the repair flawless then the repair is better off being done inside a sterile body shop. Not in the parking lot behind the service department. The worse part of this is they had not informed the customer of the damage and were not giving the customer the option to decide who he wanted to repair the damage and how it was repaired. Read the rest of this entry »