At a Society of Collision Repair Specialists’ (SCRS) OEM Summit session during the 2024 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, representatives of Rivian offered a detailed look at the process it used to develop its collision repair frame rail sectioning procedures.
“It is quite a large job to replace a frame on our vehicle,” Kelly Logan, director of collision repair programs for Rivian, said at the start of the session. “So having these localized repairs are very important for cost of ownership for our customers, for making sure their vehicles can be repaired after accidents. When we started, I didn’t realize this was going to be a three-year process.”
Dan Black, senior manager of service engineering for Rivian’s collision repair program, pointed to one aspect of the now-published front frame rail sectioning procedure that highlights the need to follow the procedures carefully.
Kelly Logan said Rivian will begin conducting repair audits in its certified body shops.
“One unique thing you will notice with our front frame rails is we have a skip stitch, but it’s a legitimate skip stitch,” Black said. “You don’t fill the stitch. So you apply a portion of a weld starting at the corners, the top two corners preferably. Do not fill in the stitch, because if you do, you will create too much of a heat-affected zone and we will get an undesirable performance as a result of that.
“It’s an easy instance, in my opinion, to over-repair,” Black continued. “The gaps between the welds need to be there [for the crash force] to load in the way that was intended. If we add too much strength to the joint, we’ve actually gone backward and weakened the joint because there’s too much heat applied to that environment where the metal is hypersensitive to heat thresholds.”
As with most other automakers, Rivian has specified the adhesives that are to be used in its rivet bonding applications.
“In all of our vehicles, we use 3M 7333 and Lord Fusor 2098 in terms of our approved structural impact adhesives,” Black said of the front rail sectioning. “We use those throughout our entire vehicle in many other application areas.”
Validating the Procedures
The Rivian representatives also described the process they used to validate the procedures once drafted.
“We go through each repair procedure with a technician who has not done it before,” said David Sosa, manager of Rivian’s collision research and development workshop. “We take a fully drivable vehicle that we have in the workshop…and we grab one of the technicians in our workshop -- usually different levels, somebody who’s a little more skilled all the way down to somebody who has a little bit less skill -- and we have them do this entire procedure and follow the steps.
Dan Black said the company’s repair information spells out specific adhesives to be used in its rivet bonding procedures.
“In most cases, we will record the whole process. We’ll allow them to take notes. We’ll time study it as well. This is really to get a technician’s perspective,” Sosa explained. “Do the repair procedures make sense? Is there an easier way of getting the point across to a technician? Is there something that’s a little bit confusing? Can we get a better angle on the picture that we have in the procedure, because as the technician’s looking at it, maybe he doesn’t know which side he’s looking at: looking at it from the bottom to the top, from the left to the right? So we really want all that feedback.
“And our validation techs don’t hold back,” Sosa added. “They really let us know if something needs to get changed, if something needs to get improved, if there’s a better way of doing this.”
Sosa said the Rivian workshop is equipped with a lot of different tools and pieces of equipment they may use while physically doing the procedures all the way through.
“We look to see what works best, what tools may not work, where we may not have the right access,” he said. “We may even take that a little bit farther and see which collision centers in our network have those tools, or we can reach out and say you’re potentially going to need a new tool to do this procedure. We take all that feedback, and if there are any changes that we have to do in the procedure, we give that back to [the] team.
“We’ll then have discussions around: Is there a better image we can use here? Is there an additional step? Is there a note? Is there a warning? Is there something that we have to put in to really make the life easier for the technician who is going to be doing this repair out in the real world?” Sosa said.
The SCRS OEM Summit during SEMA included a panel of Rivian representatives explaining how their repair procedures are developed.
Logan said feedback on the procedures doesn’t end there.
“I think that’s another important thing to stress, that we do take input from our certified collision network out there on our procedures,” Logan said. “Having that kind of full feedback loop from our collision centers is important. I know for myself as a technician, having had some really bad procedures in my past life, you think: Who developed this thing? So we actually have a very open feedback loop so our network shops can get that feedback to us.”
Logan said he once saw a comment from a technician on an industry Facebook group that said automakers only create repair procedures to total out cars.
“That made me really mad, to be honest with you,” Logan said. “That’s the farthest thing from the truth. You’ll see in this presentation all the work that went into developing the procedures. We want our vehicles repaired, we want our customers to remain in their vehicles after accidents. And obviously, safety is critical.”
Rivian Will Audit Repairs
Logan also said Rivian does plan to conduct onsite audits of repairs at its certified collision repair centers.
“The technicians go through the training, they look at the repair procedures, so no one is intentionally not wanting to do it properly,” he said. “So it’s like ‘trust but verify,’ right? Going out there and making sure that everyone understands.
“We’ve seen it: we get questions that come in from our network shops, just misunderstanding what the information is. You can interpret a procedure one way, or maybe you didn’t go into our repair guidelines and our repair manual,” Logan said. “The repair procedures themselves are just how to handle that particular part. But if you go into the service manual, we have repair guidelines that talk about welding, that talk about the welding wire and gas, weld prep, all these different things. Those are the kind of things that we really stress.
“You really have to do your homework and you have to do the research, and you have to become knowledgeable of our vehicles when you’re a technician,” Logan added. “And that’s not really different than any vehicle out there today.
“I joke all the time: It used to be easy to fix cars, right? It’s not easy anymore,” he concluded. “You have to research the repair procedures, and you have to do what the OEMs are stating in their repair procedures.”
John Yoswick