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Screech! Slam! Bang! The dreadfully unnerving sounds of a car accident. Immediate concern, of course, is for the drivers and passengers.
Later, attention turns to the wrecked vehicles. But sometimes damage that seems irreparable to the untrained eye is merely a work in progress to someone like 20-year auto repair veteran Bradley Weschler, owner of Brad's Autobody in Bethpage.
Weschler, whose dad gave him a junk car to learn on, a compressor, and his first set of tools at the age of 15, wasn't happy just straightening cars, fixing and painting them; he wanted to find an easier, more convenient and more cost-effective way to do it.
An inventor at heart -- he'd devised any number of gizmos over the years from a spark plug that needed no wrench to a saber saw powered by a pneumatic tool -- he laid awake nights dreaming up better ways of fixing cars.
Now he is the proud patent holder for Quick Stick, a unibody frame straightener like no other. It is the basis of Weschler's company, Quick Stick Inc, that sells his product from coast to coast. And none of it would have happened without what Weschler calls an "amazing phenomenon." But more about that later.
A unibody straightener is a device used to pull the unibody of a car that has been mangled in an accident back to its original dimensions.
Most of the machines that do this are large, cumbersome devices that cost $25,000 and up. Set-up time is about an hour and a half, high ceiling space is...