Question about bodyshop blending paint

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velobard

New member
My car's going into the shop tomorrow for some bodywork after some storm damage. Because of the damage they're painting the roof and most of the right side of the car. Because of some other issues I'm having them paint the hood, trunk, and bumpers. That leaves the left side of the car. I've been leaning toward having them go ahead and paint the left side as well because after my last repair job I could see a difference in the shade of red from the repainted panels to the fenders, but that shop didn't blend the paint onto the fender. The paint on the left side of the car is near perfect, which is pretty good considering the car's 5 years old with 97k miles. What are the odds that if the shop does a decent job of blending the paint down the adjacent panels that I'll be able to see the difference vs just going ahead and paying them to paint the whole fender? I can swing the cost of a full paint job, but it's a bit of a stretch at the moment, especially with the back-to-school expenses.



Just so you can see the color I'm dealing with, here's a shot of my car.

LHS4.jpg
 
If they are painting that much of the car and it's something you can afford (although you say it's tight) then I would get a complete repaint. Blending can be very successful, but it takes a talented painter to do it properly and with so many panels having new paint on it, it's hard to imagine not being able to notice the difference. Blending one panel to another isn't to bad, but you'll have several areas that will be blended. Good luck in whatever you decide.
 
Actually the only places they'd have to blend are from the front bumper and hood onto the front fender, and the rear sail (C-pillar), trunk and rear bumper onto the rear fender.
 
velobard said:
Actually the only places they'd have to blend are from the front bumper and hood onto the front fender, and the rear sail (C-pillar), trunk and rear bumper onto the rear fender.
Click to expand...

Amen! If they match the paint correctly, there should be no problem. Make sure the shop manager knows you wont accept a poorly matched/blended paint job.
 
I had a 91 Z-34 silver in color which had 1 fender repainted. At certain angles you couldn't tell but others it reflected the light different and really stood out.
 
Part of the problem is I found out that the entire car was repainted before I bought it and apparently the color is a touch off from stock, meaning they'd have to be pretty good at tweaking it to match if I chose to not have it all done this time.
 
Trust me, that isn't a problem for a good tech. When I get a car that isn't factory finished, I pull out my 'que' card samplers and match it up. One color can have up to nine variations. If I am seeing your picture right, it looks like your color code might be PEL in which case there are 8 variations.
 
Well, at any rate it's been at the shop since the beginning of the week and I told them to just go ahead and paint the whole thing. The damage from this incident was going to require painting the roof and RR door, and I wanted the hood, trunk, and bumpers painted to deal with problems from the repairs done in March and with bug etching on the front bumper. That just left the left side and they gave me a fair price on that. I might be able to cut down what I'm paying for that if I can still get an appearance allowance from insurance for the scrape across the molding on my rear window. The molding is encapsulated with the glass and a whole rear window was quoted at $700+.



Here's the scrape I'm talking about. Any suggestions how to make this scuff on the rubber look better?

ScrapesOnRoof.jpg
 
I'll do what I can to clean it up, I agreed to settle for an appearance allowance of $350. Seemed like a good deal to me. :2thumbs:



Thanks for the tip. I've also thought about taping the paint next to it and trying some #000 or #0000 steel wool.
 
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