Main bay
Collision repair
Measured on a computerized laser system and straightened on our own unibody and frame racks before a single panel gets adjusted, so the car that leaves drives as straight as the one that came in undamaged.
Chapter 01
A hit does more than dent the panel you can see
The part of a collision a customer notices is almost never the part that decides whether the car drives straight afterward. A curb strike, a parking lot tap, a rear end at a Cedar Rapids stoplight, the visible damage is a crumpled bumper or a creased door skin. What you cannot see from the driver's seat is what happens underneath it: the unibody or the frame rail absorbing that energy and moving a few millimetres out of square. A few millimetres at the rail can show up as a half inch of misalignment by the time you get to the door gap or the hood line.
That is why panel gaps change after a hit that looked minor. A door that used to close with one solid motion starts needing a second push. A hood that used to sit flush at the fender now sits a hair proud on one side. Those are not cosmetic complaints, they are the car telling you the structure underneath moved, and a shop that only fills and paints the visible panel without checking that structure is guessing at whether the rest of the car came back true.
Wide shop bay with several vehicles in for repair and the open garage door letting in daylight
How we sequence a repair on the main bay
Every car that comes into the main bay at 815 3rd St SE gets anchored and measured before anyone reaches for a wrench. We put it on our unibody and frame straightening racks and run the computerized laser measuring system against the manufacturer's factory specification, not against a guess or the shape of the car sitting next to it. That measurement is what tells us how far out of square the structure actually is, and it is the only honest starting point for the rest of the job.
Once we know exactly what moved, the rack pulls the structure back to spec first, before any bodywork or paint gets touched. Only after that does the decision get made panel by panel: repair the existing metal, or replace it with factory replacement parts where the damage is too deep to pull back cleanly. Our licensed technicians make that call the same way on every car, small tweak or extensive rebuild, because the sequence, measure, straighten, then decide repair versus replace, is what keeps the finished car honest rather than just presentable.
Panel adjustment is the last step, not the first. Once the frame or unibody is straight and the parts decision is made, we fit and adjust each panel against its neighbours until the gaps run even all the way around the car, the same discipline whether it is a fender bender or a full rebuild.
Chapter 03
How you can tell it was done right, months later
A properly straightened car should not announce itself. The panel gaps should run even and consistent all the way around, the doors and the hatch should swing and latch the way they did before the hit, and there should be no pull to one side when you're driving down the highway at speed. That last one matters more than most people realise, a frame or suspension that was straightened out of true will often drive fine at 30 miles an hour and start pulling noticeably at 60, and it will wear the tires unevenly on one side within a few thousand miles.
If any of that shows up after a repair somewhere else, it is usually a sign the structure was never properly measured in the first place, just cosmetically patched. That is the gap our process is built to close, and it is backed by a lifetime warranty on the craftsmanship of the bodywork, not just the paint. If you're not sure whether a repair elsewhere was done right, or you need an honest look at a car that just got hit, call the shop at (319) 365-4627 and describe what you're feeling. Tommy and the team have been doing this at the same Cedar Rapids address since 1958.
Andrews Collision is rated 4.5 out of 5 from 145 Google reviews, and every repair carries a lifetime warranty on the craftsmanship of the bodywork.