New chip new paint?

[SourceLee]

Last season the roadster decided to acquire a sizable chip on the front hood. Ok, no biggie. I’ll get quotes to fix the chip and spray the entire hood. Sounds simple enough right? So why do a half dozen paint shops want to paint the entire car? Most of the shops said it’s impossible to match the color. They claim the proper way to repair the chip is to repaint the entire car. The entire car?!?! Here’s the rub. Their explanation actually sounds logical. They said the hood would be brand new paint however the remainder the car would be “not so new paint”. There will always be a difference between new and not new. A slightly noticeable difference. Here’s my counter argument. Every fender bender, every side swipe. Auto body shops would make millions repainting entire vehicles for every little accident. So what gives?

[michael everson]

I have seen plenty of body shops paint a panel on an older car with a perfect match. I think you need to find another body shop. My Cobra painter did one that was 20 years old and it matched perfectly.
Mike

[edwardb]

Blending paint repairs into existing paint is a long time practice of body and paint shops. A buddy in our local club had a similar situation though. Some damage to the DS door and a couple shops wanted to repaint the entire car. At an exceptional cost too of course. Sorry to sound cynical, but seems some shops sees these cars, decide we must have unlimited funds, so think we'll pony up for a complete repaint. Find a different shop. Having said that, it does make a difference what paint you have and how successful it will be. Tri-coats or heavy metallic are more difficult to match. But still should be doable without the whole car.

[Jeff Kleiner]

Unless it’s a 3 stage (and to a significant extent even if it is) or a custom color without a known formula they’re just blowing smoke up your a$$.

Jeff

[cfriedman67]

I painted my own car. It’s not perfect but recently, this weekend, I had to repair paint around the exhaust cut out. I purchased matching paint in spray paint can. It’s not perfect put pretty good. Hard to imagine a pro can match a whole hood.

[john42]

My left rear was bumped hard (race track) and cracked the fiberglass and made a mess of the paint. Local shop fixed it right up. Absolutely spot on color match and they only painted the rear 1/4 of the left panel. I'm even cheap and told them "because race car" it doesn't need to be perfect. So ya.. find a better shop!

[mikeinatlanta]

So my five year old F150 recently got hit and needed a new fender and door. I told the body shop that I wanted the panels painted off the truck and absolutely no blending on the truck and no buffing of any of my old clearcoat. Told him any mismatch would be handled with a diminished value claim. He said: "If I can't match the paint I don't belong in this business". Work is done, looks perfect. Me thinks you need a new body shop.

[Alan_C]

Simple, the shops don't want to do smaller jobs with the possibility of a poor paint match and unhappy customer. Doing the whole car brings in more money and without the possibility of a poor match.
They want to do it the easy way with greater monetary income.

[GFX2043mtu]

I don’t think it’s the easy part that they are after. Being in body shops and friends with shop owners a good part of my life it’s pretty simple. Why blend and clear a hood for $500-$600 or $1k on the high end, when they can paint a whole car for $10k. The margins are the same percentage on a hood as they are on a whole car. Thing is it’s fast to paint a whole car in good shape this means little labor time high cost. So in turn they make more money. Also if they show you a book rate for work that is garbage also. Any good body guy can do a high quality job in under book rate times. They use book rates for insurance jobs as they usually have negotiated rates and times that are agreed upon and do not always reflect reality. My advice go to a better shop. Find one that does classic cars give them the paint code and perhaps a little more money and it will look perfect. A good shop can do it in a couple days at most. A lot of the good shops won’t want a cobra just sitting in the shop as it’s a liability if it gets damaged. A good shop will have your car in and out fast and can just do the one panel.

[ggunter]

It boils down to the painter being able to mix the paint to whatever shade the " so called old paint" is. A good painter has the talent of being able to spray the paint correctly by paint gun tip, air pressure, laying down the paint and.... being able to mix it to the correct color. Being in the heavy truck maintenance end of trucking all my life, I had a painter that could mix any color, and I don't care how old or faded it was and make it look great. So, telling me I would need to repaint the whole car tells me they can't mix paint.

[Jeff Kleiner]

…telling me I would need to repaint the whole car tells me they can't mix paint.

Or simply aren’t interested.

Jeff

[Presto51]

Last season the roadster decided to acquire a sizable chip on the front hood. Ok, no biggie. I’ll get quotes to fix the chip and spray the entire hood. Sounds simple enough right? So why do a half dozen paint shops want to paint the entire car? Most of the shops said it’s impossible to match the color. They claim the proper way to repair the chip is to repaint the entire car. The entire car?!?! Here’s the rub. Their explanation actually sounds logical. They said the hood would be brand new paint however the remainder the car would be “not so new paint”. There will always be a difference between new and not new. A slightly noticeable difference. Here’s my counter argument. Every fender bender, every side swipe. Auto body shops would make millions repainting entire vehicles for every little accident. So what gives?

Why not go back to the original painter and see what that person says?

Thanks

Ron

[SourceLee]

Why not go back to the original painter and see what that person says?

Thanks

Ron

The car was painted over 16 years ago but you wouldn't know it. The paint is in really good shape. I'm the second owner however I'll try to reach out to the original paint shop.

[mburger]

My Mk1 was painted in 2002. A body shop perfectly matched my paint, to repair an accidental drill through on the trunk lid. The color was originally a Ford Vermilion Red, but is now after 21 years, a Nissan color. It’s impossible to see where the hole was as the color is perfectly matched and blended in. The skilled body man gave me the remaining pint of paint with the mix codes on the applied sticker.
Just another real world example to support what the experts have said. Find a body shop that has the interest in doing it.

[CraigS]

Matching can be done for sure but it does take experience and extra time. To some extent the shop is basically telling you they don't want the job. I can imagine they have been burned in the past trying to do small repairs to what is a high end paint job on a car that may be owned by a guy w/ high end expectations. I wouldn't knock them too hard. Not every body shop can have the expertise to match every paint no matter what. Heck the type of paint on your car probably isn't even used any more so the problem starts there. I used the rattle can specially mixed paint to match a spot in a Honda plastic bumper. Came out perfect. The next time I tried similar it took 3 cans, each mixed slightly differently, to get pretty close but still noticeable if one looked carefully.

[SourceLee]

Update. The Mustang car club in my area recommended a local body shop. The body shop repaired the paint ships to the point where they're completely undetectable. Color match was perfect. The shop owner said he used touch-up paint and then finished it off with wet sanding. Moreover, he did so without breaking the bank. Thanks for the input everyone. It saved me quite a bit amount of money.