Koastie57

Recently my car was backed into in a parking lot and he scratched the paint of the corner of my rear bumper.

I took it to a collision repair shop and they quoted me way higher than expected considering all it had was a few scratches and paint missing.

The bumper had no cracks and was not damaged.

I asked them if they could make the paint match the rest of the car because i've seen cars have a real bad difference in paint tone when they repaint.

My question is would I be better off bringing it to a custom paint shop?

Can they do anything to make the new paint blend in better?

Also would a custom paint shop be cheaper? $680 for paint repair on a bumper seems insane.

My car is a 2001 Trans Am.

As a side note I might plan on doing the CETA mod at the same time.

cvalliere

iTrader: (1)

$680 sounds about right for removal, repair and refinish of the bumper. As for making the color match, Depends on the paint system but I know for a fact that there is like 11 different variances for that color alone just in PPG's DBC paint system. There is no way you will ever get a 100% perfect match. Hell with that color you'd be lucky to get a 75% match. Most of the time the painter is stuck trying to decide between a variance of either the color itself looks good but the metallic is too coarse/fine or vice versa. The only way is for them to spray some test panels and see what one matches best and if they have to blend the adjacent 1/4 panel.

That color is a bitch. Alot of times it all depended on the vehicle. On most cars I'd use the prime formula, on Chevy trucks I'd use the finer formula and on GMC trucks I'd use the coarser formula. **** GM used that color for well over 10yrs. Just look at the vehicles driving around, not one of them looks like the other. One time we had a customer bitching about their color match on their ride and we tried to explain to them about the variances and everything but he did quite get it. It just so happened at that time we had 3 GM trucks in the shop.... Chevy s10, GMC truck, and a Chevy truck. We brought him out into the shop and parked the trucks right next to each other and he noticed mojor color differances between the. **** he didn't believe us that they were even the same color but when we showed him the paint code in all 3 trucks he was absolutely shocked!! Needless to say he ended up calming down and we took care of him truck and made him very happy.

The Alchemist

iTrader: (19)

See, my front bumper has some damage to the underside that caused some spider cracks. I'd be worried about this exact issue with the bumper not matching, that I want to do a custom ghost flame starting with the bumper and wrapping over the hood and fenders to hid the paint variation. At least then it looks intentional.

How hard is it to do a ghost paint scheme with light pewter metallic?

Any pics?

tpain

basf/diamont have a prety good standard varaint on it, its not perfect but i would say its about 7 out of 10.

LS1CMR

iTrader: (12)

if the shop and painter know what they are doing it should match fine, but you have to remember 90% of all cars bumpers dont match bodys, even new cars, reason being is different base materials. most people cant even tell.

tpain

+1......

BlackScreaminMachine

iTrader: (17)

Thats the truth, My buddies dad has a 04 GTO that is Yellow Jacket Yellow and that bumper is the color of a banana..... its rather funny.

turbojosh

iTrader: (2)

also remember when blending panels, the clearcoat buildup can change the color slightly.

ws6in

iTrader: (1)

my guy took off my gas door and put it in the machine that gets the exact color and matched it perfectly

cvalliere

iTrader: (1)

HAHA, that **** is a joke. no such thing as a "perfect match". Most of the time the color looks worse then the actual formulas that the paint manf. already has.

tpain

+1... good call, most ppl dont know that either.

Ricer

iTrader: (1)

i get that comment EVERY DAY at work.. "dont you have one of those eye machines that matches the paint exactly?"

so i get to explain just how crappy those things are... every day..

Koastie57

see the thing is right now you can't tell the difference in paint color from my bumper versus the rest of the car... so is there anyway to patch that one part of the bumper up without stripping the whole thing or is that an even worse idea?

Koastie57

I just need some advise on how to go about fixing this... I don't want to fix a small **** up if its going to make the car look crappy... When you guys say different color is it like easily noticable? Or do you really really got to look at it?

cvalliere

iTrader: (1)

Depends on how small the damage is, they wuld be able to blend it out within the bumper. It all depends the variance of the formula they spray on it, there are sooooo many way the color can be different. But if it don't match make them blend the 1/4 and all will be fine.