Alright... have about 101k miles on the car, was going to sell it but now I've decided to keep it and freshen things up a bit. There are some misc chips all over the place, typical for the mileage, but the fenders/hood/front bumper are where I'm noticing it the most. If I pull off those four body pieces and take them to a body shop, is that going to save my a significant amount vs. just driving it in and letting them deal with it? If I did drive it somewhere I'd prefer that they pull panels and paint instead of just masking it off and going to town on it. I'm looking for something that will hold up (not a $200 Maaco job), but if I can put in some labor on my side and save a bit, I'll do that...

It's NBM so I'm a little worried about color matching with it being metallic. Is a body shop going to need to have the rest of the car there to match things up, or just match the panels against each other? Am I really going to save enough money pulling the panels myself to make it worthwhile? How about if I go a step further and sand them down before I take them in?

 

i think they will need the panels on to get the color matched perfect...I bet with a mettalic like NBM they will have to blend the doors to to the fenders because NBM is not a easy color to panel match...my advice would be to leave them on and go to the body shop and have them give you a quote and what they think.