ReinCARnating Cars

About Northwest Tinman and the Cars we have....

___Hi, I am Tim the Tinman. We are a Body Shop and licensed Used Car Dealer. Because we're a small town / neighborhood body shop we handle a variety of work including insurance repairs and complete paint jobs as well as restorations, rust repair, and street rod work on some older cars. The one thing we don't do is the real heavy collision work for insurance companies even though I personally have 15 years experience doing those types of repairs. The equipment needed for the heavy frame work would take up too much space, and quite honestly, as I've gotten older, I prefer to stick with the types of work that I consider more fun.
___So, while we certainly have the skills to fix heavier damages, we prefer to stay away from the nasty stuff as far as collision go.
___When a car gets damaged, the insurance company generally uses a value based on 60% of the retail value of the car. If the costs go over that 60% level, then they total the car. But their costs also include things like towing, storage, & rental car costs. Quite honestly, a lot of cars get totalled that just aren't hurt that bad.
___That's where we come in, we look through the auctions for those cars and, trust me, there are a lot of them. We watch the major auctions in North & South Seattle as well as Portland where there are literally hundreds of cars a week that get auctioned off. Obviously some of those are really hurt bad, but there are always some that are worth our reinCARnating efforts.

What We Look For ... Our Policies

___We don't fix cars with heavy frame or structural damages (yes, Unibody cars do have frame components, they're just built into the body instead of being seperate).
___We don't fix cars that have had the Airbags deployed.
___We let every prospective buyer know about the immediate history of the car and keep pictures available of what it was like before we worked on it.
___We like theft recovery vehicles (at least the ones that weren't totally stripped). Quite often we can get them with little or no damages to them.
___Being a paint shop, we will often give the car a quality complete paint job rather than just spotting it in.
___One way we can save these cars is by specializing in certain makes and models. This allows us to buy one car just for its parts which we can use to fix the other cars. Currently we have 6 Honda Accords in stock. Two of them we bought just for their parts. That way we don't have to run to the dealer every time we need something. One parts car might help to repair 3 or 4 other cars.
___We look for cars that arent't hit right on the frame rails. Often times they may look worse than other cars. I've seen cars that don't look damaged at all, but have hidden damages to the frame, while other cars looked worse because they took a hit above the bumper where their sheet metal took more damage instead of the bumper and frame. We'd much rather have the car that had the sheet metal damage than the car with the frame tweaked.
___We use our skills and knowledge to bring you some great roadworthy cars at prices that are well below market.

Some Salvage Title Car Tips ...

___If you're the type of person that worries alot, so that even with all of our assurances and a great price, you would still be uncomfortable having a car that has been in a wreck; don't buy one, from us or anyone else.
___If you buy a car with a salvaged title, you should disclose that fact if and when you ever sell the car.
___Always ask for pictures of the car from before it was fixed (assuming you're buying from the people who fixed it).
___Ask about Airbags; have they been deployed, and if so were they replaced properly. Some rebuilders put dummy covers in place of the real airbags. They can do this if they disclose it, but MAKE SURE you know what the car has for airbags. I've heard of some horror stories where the car had no airbags, and it was disclosed in the fine print but never verbally stated or made clear to the buyer. As mentioned above, we don't fix cars that have had their airbags deployed.

Want more info...

___Come on in to our lot and we'll be happy give you a quick "crash" course (sorry for the pun) on how to tell if a car has been wrecked before. We can also show you how to tell if a car has been re-painted. Stop on by!

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