Paint Thickness Tester measures atomic discrepancies in your car's paint job
The Paint Thickness Tester is a cheap keychain device that promises to help you avoid bringing home a lemon from the lot of your local sleazy used car Guido by telling you when a car has well-hidden touch-ups in its paint job:
Place the test probe on the car roof, for example. By pressing a button, the paint thickness tester will store this paint thickness as a reference value. Now, by placing the test probe on any part of the vehicle body, you can compare it with this value. You will immediately determine whether parts of the body have been replaces or repainted and if the purchase price is suitable.
I've never owned a car, so maybe someone can fill me in: if a paint job has been touched up skillfully and it's not visible to the naked eye, why does it matter if it isn't all the original coat? It seems pointless to me. Still, I guess $20 is a cheap enough price to give you some empirical proof of your used car not being worth the sticker price when you're brought into the negotiating room.
Update: Uh. Yeah. Duh. Peter S. Conrad explains why this is important in a way that makes sense even to a committed, non-license-carrying pedestrian like myself: "Well, for example, a car that has the same thickness paint all over has probably never been in a crash, probably doesn't have big rust holes filled in with Bondo, etc."
Paint Thickness Tester [Official Site via OhGizmo!]
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Well, for example, a car that has the same thickness paint all over has probably never been in a crash, probably doesn't have big rust holes filled in with Bondo, etc. That's why it matters if it isn't the original coat :) I do a webcomic about a couple of mechanics, so I pretend to know about cars twice a week. Is it bad form to link to my comic from here? Maybe, so I won't. But I will tell you it is called "Lou's Garage."
Plus, since it is a keychain, you can test your work after you key someone's car.
Feel free to tell us about your own creative works! Either directly, or in comments, so long as it's contextually relevant.
This device might help you spot crash damage, but only if the car has been spot painted and only if you happen to put the detector on the exact spot that was painted. If the car was given a full paint job the detector will be useless. Anyway, you can check for repairs made with putty by using a magnet (well, or cars that have metal bodies, anyway.)
The price is GBP9.99, which is quite reasonable. Can car dealers outsmart it? Yes, but they won't. Painting a body panel is under $100. Sanding the entire car and then painting it, properly, is over $1000. Replacing a bent fender is also MUCH more expensive than bondo-ing it.
The usual ways to tell if a car has been crashed are to sight along the top of the "shoulder" of the car, and see if it's straight; or to tap on the body panels in likely spots and feel for the dull thud of Bondo (fiberglass putty used to fill in a dent, rather than replace a body panel or pound out the dent).
Both sighting and tapping require skill, this tester only requires patience (you should test lots of places).
Why do you care? If a car was in an accident, even if the body panels and suspension/drive train parts are fixed, chances are the frame is bent, and this will reduce the safety of the car in a crash situation, and will also cause many of the parts near the wheel to wear out more quickly.
Now, I've driven lots of cars that were "reclaimed" from accidents (sold by insurance companies to auto reclaimers, who then fix up the car and sell it), and there's often very little wrong with the car. Maybe the frame is straight. However, reclaimed cars are sold at auction for very low prices, so the opportunity for an unscrupulous dealer to make a windfall is right there.
So this paint tester is a pretty good tool to help you make sure you pay the correct price for the car.
You might also consider getting CARFAX records for the car, which will accomplish pretty much the same thing. But then you don't get this clever gadget. I wonder what ELSE it will do?
This is interesting. We recently traded in our old car, which was getting rusty and had been in a couple minor accidents (the sides were scraped against a parkade pillar, for instance). We touched up some of it, but left a lot of it alone.
I hope they don't try to scam someone by selling it for much more than it's worth -- maybe $1500-2000. But they probably will. Sigh. Hey, I just checked trader.ca and found it's selling for $1700. Good!
Wouldn't CARFAX only report major accidents? We never had any single thing go wrong that was over the insurance deductible, but there were a bunch of little things by the end.
Aside from the valid cases which Peter mentions (used car inspecting, etc.), the only other types I see using this are car nerds inspecting their far-too-expensive custom paint jobs.
i work in the vehicle graphics industry and if a vehicle is being wrapped we offer a 3 year guarantee on factory paintwork,
however if a repair job has been done the guarantee is invalid and when the wrap is removed it is more likely to pull paint away from the vehicle.
ill be getting one of these
very usefull....i advise you to take it......and read the manual before use it...