These are important questions. A used car dealer may know the history of the vehicle, but most of the time the cars and trucks that you see on a local car dealer lot come from auctions and your dealer will not know the history. At least half of the time you trade in your vehicle it will end up at a dealer auction. And MOST of the time you turn in your leased vehicle it will end up at auction. So how are we supposed to know what happened to this vehicle that we are eying? What am I getting into here?

The first thing to do is to go to either end of the car and squat down at the corner, such as by the tail light, and look straight down the body of the car, down the body line starting with the quarter panel, down the doors, and right up the fender. Notice the shine or reflections that you are getting off of the paint? That is where you want to start. Are there sections shinier or flatter than others? Does everything line up? Are there any ripples at all? It should look like a nice mirror reflection. If the surfaces of each panel look different, this could be an indication of poorly done body work.

Next, feel the paint all the way around the car. All of the painted surfaces should feel the same. Feel the bumpers and the hood. These are common spots to repaint. Are there any spots on the car that are a little rougher than another? If so, then you have good reason to be suspicious.

If a car has a pinstripe or graphic kit, look along the edge of it to see if a body shop painted part of a body panel. One trick a painter will use to save some work is to only paint part of a panel (if they can get away with it) and only repaint a small area that was most significantly affected by body work. If that is the case, the painter will probably do his masking right next to a pinstripe and try to paint either above it or below it. He will use the stripe line as a stopping point for his paintwork. Feel the edges of the stripe. Do you feel a sharp edge? It’s probably been repainted then.

Finally, always look for hints of over spray or an old color that give away an undisclosed paint job. This requires checking door jambs, under the hood, in the trunk and under the gas cap door. Putting in a little extra time while shopping for your vehicle can save you a lot of time and money down the road.

Best of all, buy a used car from someone you trust, be it a dealer or an individual. And never, ever jump at a deal that seems too good to be true. It almost always is.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, specializing in body kits and car and truck graphics, and is based in San Diego CA. Find more information on auto accessories at http://www.customautotrim.com/

Case and point, in the Ohio Valley and the northeastern states like Pennsylvania, New York or New Jersey, one of the most popular truck accessories on the market would be the truck tonneau cover. This is truck accessory purchase is totally weather related because people in the northeast have to put up with a lot of cold, wet and snowy weather in the winter and want to try to keep their truck beds dry if they can, and keep the snow out as well. Yes, a tonneau cover looks nice, and yes it might help you save a few gallons of gas on a nice long trip, but the main reason that customers ask for the tonneau cover would be to keep out the weather.

In the southern states like Florida, Texas or Arizona they have different problems to deal with. The sun! Can you imagine having too much sun? I know its hard to do, but when thinking about what auto accessories you want to add to your car or truck it has a lot to do with it. The sun can really beat / burn things up if left outside every day.

In the southern states the most popular accessories that people add to their trucks are the stainless steel accessories including nerf bars, rocker panel moldings, billet grilles and truck bed rails. Why? Stainless steel wont burn, deteriorate, shrink, crack, fade or anything else like that. Thats one of the reasons that the southern folks like to dress up their trucks with chrome accessories.

Most of the time the influence starts at the dealer level, being maybe your local Chevy, Dodge or Ford dealerships in your area. They seem to be the guys that would initially test aftermarket accessories like these on your truck, and after they dress up and sell a lot of them in town, the potential new customers see these vehicles driving down the road and actually start calling the dealers asking for the parts they see.

Sometimes customers dont know what to ask for, for example a stainless steel nerf bar is sometimes referred to as a chrome nerf bar, a chrome tube rail, side bars or side steps, but many suppliers of aftermarket truck accessories such as those at Custom Auto Trim are well versed in synonyms in the business. They will know what you are looking for.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, a car accessories company based out of San Diego CA. Find more information on nerf bars at http://www.customautotrim.com/

The major players in the body kit game are: Wings West, Extreme Dimensions, Kaminari and Xenon. Ask around; see which kits your friends or competitors have used. Do you like your body kit? Are you happy with the decision they made? Is your body kit shown in movies like The Fast and the Furious? Why do you like it and why don’t you like it? Our friends are loaded with useful information in this area.

Wings West body kits and ground effects are among the best in the world. They have a great reputation and for good reason it is well deserved. They are especially well known for their great fit on your car and they use premium materials made out of urethane which is similar to what your OEM parts are made of (very flexible). Wings West has an especially great line of bumpers and bumper covers, wings and side skirts. The company is renowned for its award winning work on Ford Mustangs, Dodge Chargers and Honda Civics, though their kits are made to work with numerous other makes and models.

Kaminari produces body kits and ground effects and has a reputation for turning cars into aerodynamic replicas of current-day race cars, and uses your existing body lines to make any components that are added appear to flow with your new body lines. They make the car look like it was built with the body kit in mind the whole time. Though many of Kaminari parts are made of urethane, their fiberglass body kits are probably the best quality kits on the market. If really great fitment is important to you, Kaminari may be the way for you to go.

Extreme Dimensions is another company that turns out high quality and very efficient body kit materials. These fiberglass and Duraflex beauties are made entirely for the showoff and they will get your vehicle to grab a lot of attention. They are aggressive, sleek and they give the impression you are topping the speed limit by more than the customary ten-miles per hour.

Xenon delivers first-class urethane body kits. From accessories to full body kits, Xenon has products from fender flares to a large variety of hood refinements, especially for the Hummer H3. Xenon body kits are made of urethane materials and focus is on the overall end appearance and fitment on the vehicle.

Making the choice that is right for you is the most important thing. Doing a little homework upfront will pay off in the end, and you will be happy with your choice. You can usually find all of these body kits and many other car and truck accessories online and you can get them shipped right to your front door.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, a car accessories company based out of San Diego CA. Find more information on body kits at http://www.customautotrim.com/

Some wonder why such a rigid shiny tube on the side of a truck is called a nerf bar. Sometimes people refer to them side steps or chrome tubes because they cant grasp the concept of “Nerf Bar” as being a hard shiny stainless steel object. “Nerf” material, like the material used to make soft footballs, baseballs & frisbees you may have thrown around as a kid, doesn’t really relate to some hard chrome tube you would use to step on to help you step into your truck.

So here it is. The nerf bar was a tubular device that was originally intended to be fitted to the side of a racecar – often single seaters like a midget race car that competes on a race track.

“Nerf” is also a racing term that refers to a small bump (rub) between two vehicles. When one driver bumps the other car in order to pass it, they call it nerfing.  Nerf bars protect the sides of the vehicles and keeps their tires from rubbing. Without them, the fast spinning tires can come in contact with each other causing the cars to lose control, or flip. Sometimes having nerf bars on your truck is a good way to help protect your wheels and body kits, however rub a stainless steel nerf bar up against a concrete barrier and you can expect to need to replace it. I’ll have to say sometimes I wish I had the old style nerf bars, because I’d occasionally like to bump into a few people myself on the freeway, but I guess you just cant win.

It turns out that in some instances it is quite possible to do so without harming the part depending on the body kit part that you are working with, and it would obviously depend on the knot. So can I tie it into a:

 - Square Knot?   - NO
 - Figure Eight?   - NO
 - Overhand? - Well, read on…

Lets take a urethane Air Dam - it is very flexible and if you twist it into a million directions it wont break or crack, so I would say YES you can tie your air dam or probably even your side skirts in a pretzel shaped overhand knot. Let me just say at this point that i think you would probably be the only person that I know that has a knotted body kit, so good for you . However if it were fiberglass you would never be able to do that. Fiberglass parts are not flexible and if you try to bend them like that they will crack or break in half. Thats why people buy urethane body kits, for the flexibility alone. To prove the point we took a urethane front air dam (lip) by Wings West that was for an Acura Integra and took before and after pictures.

Here it is tied into a knot:

Here it is after we untied it:

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