So my wife's Tl was backed into...estimate says new front BC, rein. and hood...blend fenders. It's white diamond pearl or whtever.. btw.. 08 tl-s
I dread every visit to a body shop cuz every time it's a goatscrew.
I hate the thought of them sanding the oem finish on the fenders to recoat with theirs. Is this blending absolutely necessary and what's the quality of the new paint compared to factory?
How much is removed? I always hear it'll never be the same.
Not a virgin to the scene as I used to sell parts at the Honda Dealer and worked the crash jobs with the shops here...but they lie, so I'm trying to prepare. Parts I know...paint methods, not much.

Thanks fellas

 

First of all, you need to be comfortable with the shop you're going to be leaving your car with. It is your right, as either a cash customer (obviously) or as an 'insured' to take your car wherever you want. You say you dread every visit to a body shop and that you always get 'goatscrewed', so I don't know if maybe someone is telling you to take your car somewhere you're not comfortable with, but you can shop around if you want until you find a shop that you like. No one can tell you (your insurance company or otherwise) that you have to go to a particular shop or that you have to get multiple estimates.

If you just have a general bad taste in your mouth about all body shops, please don't. if you find a quality shop, especially one who is a member of a variety of direct repair programs for large insurance companies, you'll get a quality repair, there should be no reason to worry unless it's a hole in the wall place. A little piece of advice - look for a shop that has State Farm's DRP. Their direct repair program is the absolute best in the industry. They DO NOT, for any reason, take and bullshit from any shop. Your repairs will be spot on, guaranteed. If the shop is capable with meeting SF's harsh program guidelines, they're definitely a quality shop.


Blending - There are probably only a handful of painters left in the country who can accurately hand-tint a color to the point where it matches perfectly. I sure as hell can't. Butt matching panels (a.k.a. panel painting - painting all the way to the edge of one body panel, without blending the adjacent panels) very rarely works. In fact, if a butt match works and you can't tell a difference between the newly painted panel and the old original color, it's probably pure luck. Very simply, if a shop tells you they can panel paint a car (other than black), especially a pearl color, RUN! Seriously, those are the shops that you want to avoid. Solid black is the one and only exception. Solid black cars only get blended if there's a huge problem with the color match or if the insurance company demands it (State Farm sometimes does on new cars).

With modern digital mixing systems, colors can be mixed almost dead on, so hand-tinting is kind of a lost art, except in the custom world. Even with custom colors, modern "just enter a code into the computer" mixing options, like the color from House of Kolor, Vibrance, etc. have all but eliminated hand tinting from custom work.

Even with computerized mixing systems, you can't always take into account factors like yellowing of the clear, age of the original paint (fading), and sometimes there's simply not an alternate color chip given that perfectly matches your paint. A lot of times, cars are damaged at the dealership and repaired before they're even sold, and they let the customers believe that it's a perfect, untouched new car. I've done lots of work to lots of cars with under 10 miles on them. If your car has been repaired before, there's a good chance that the color could even be slightly different enough to not be able to get a good color match.

With all of that said, your TL is a special exception. Tri-Coat pearls must always be blended. Your color has not only one, but two colors that must be mixed and sprayed dead on in order for it to look right, the base, or ground coat (solid white) and the mid-coat pearl (a cloudy clear solution with only pearl floating in it). Those two colors on top of each other underneath the clear are what make your pearl white look the way it does.

Pearls are sometimes very hard to spray. Even a slight variance in gun air pressure or gun angle when spraying can alter the way the pearl lays out, which will change the color altogether.

All of these reasons I listed are the reasons your fenders must be blended. Your bumper and hood are going to be brand new (black primer) with no color at all. You know this from from the dealership. When those panels go on the car, they'll be sealed with white sealer, basecoated, midcoated, and cleared and be brand new. The tops and fronts of your fenders will get a slight, dusting of new color in order to even out the look, so that you can't see a difference in color between the hood and fenders and the bumper and fenders.. The way paint gets applied, the color is 'atomized' so finely, that you can easily pull off a blend to give the illusion that the panels on the entire car are a dead on perfect match to each other panel.


You shouldn't hate the thought of sanding the OEM finish. Blends (your fenders) get sanded with 800 grit or finer on a DA sander, and only a slight amount of clear actually gets sanded off. When prepping blend panels, you never go through the clear, because if you get into the basecoat where you weren't planning on putting color, you'll then have to dust in some color there and depending on the location of the sanded through spot, it will throw off the match to other panels.As far as quality and durability go, as long as the shop if using a high quality brand name urethane clear coat, you'll be fine. You'll get the same quality as the factory. When you go to a shop, ask about their warranty and get it in writing. We give a written limited lifetime guarantee to every customer who leaves our shop. The guarantee completely covers ALL defects in the paint materials and workmanship for as long as you own your car. If you get a similar warranty, you're good to go.

 

couldnt have said it better myself. good explain dc2.pearl white is one of the worst colors to match, that and yellow.. Not all pearl whites have a starkwhite base coat, alot of them are more yellow than others and being one little drip shy of a certain tint can make your panel lighter/darker than the original and throw everything off. Even the digital scanners cant get it exactly right. You kinda have to trust your painters eye to tint it spot on and get it right. blending is pretty much needed on every color except black, depending on the location of the damage. like dc2 said. Blending is industry standard to ensure that optical illusion that the colors are perfectly matched to the normal consumer eye.its a good thing to do cause panel matching is quite difficult and if they didnt blend and the color was off, youd be pretty pissed. Just make sure you have a good painter,make sure he doesnt seal the blend panels. when someone does a crappy blend job you can tell where the blend stopped and it looks like doo doo, check out some previous work theyve done. Definitely do not be mad about your oem finish being sanded, as long as your using a good shop with quality material, youll be happy, high quality stuff takes a big dump on oem stuff and if the shop finishes the car correctly, will look a hell of alot better as well.

 

Thank's guys..I always thought the oem finish on our cars was applied by God and could never be approached in cure, smoothness, etc. by mere mortals..so not as pissed now, thanks.

Goatscrew being another term for cluster**** (which gets censored,) meaning when dealing with the best of the shops in our small city
(there's only a few with nice facilities..which gives the layman some hope of a quality job) I honestly can only think of one time when I wasn't lied to or some kinda shady actions taking place. That being at our local Toyota dealership which was on my other Pearl white car then, an Altima SE.
But alas..a year later a crack appeared in the filler where they repaired the little corner by the tail lamp assy where the Bcover mates, after another rear accident. The very tip of the quarter was kinda ground away there and I guess they just applied thick filler instead of a tiny weld to give a metal base the first time. I think the impact of the next accident cracked it. They repainted the rear bumper cover but didn't fix the crack. They say it was from previous repair-but it was their repair. Guess those lifetime warranties aren't really so good? I know, shoulda gone to the mat with them , but I just needed my fuggin wife's car and didn't have the time and willpower/(*****?) to fight the guys.
These stories get really long but let me condense it to say that the estimate went down after my car got there and I don't think it was coincidence that it was one of their salesmen who rearended the wife, and after the car is finished the repair didn't cost as much as the estimate said. Maybe he paid them outta pocket? They don't call you to say that it's changing, and when you finally get to pick up your car, I guess they know your prolly not going to go to leave ur car there and start a proceeding. The bumper cover they either repaired or replaced...had a bad spot right at the little tip where it mates to the quarter, you know? so what do they do? They fuggin tried to trim it and paint it, then did it to the other side to make it look consistent, thinking we're that stupid. So instead of a smooth radius in the wheel well, there's a fuggin NOTCH. Don't forget the lost trunk trim fasteners either left out or replaced with some Lowe's-looking generic rivets, lol
That **** works with 70 yr. old widows but not me.
This was the most recent visit to the best shop around after my experiences and testimonies from others in town. I do vehicle safety inspections all day and view minimum 30 cars a day/converse with owners, examine their recent body work, etc. so I get a wide sampling. Anyway, when I seek referrals, they'll name the shops that I/others have had bad dealings with, we have little choice.
Different shops, different problems, but it's the usual stalling, and "parts aren't here yet", then when I pick it up, they've re-used a molding that actually was prolly never ordered and glue is poking out, scratches from sanding/poor feathering painted over, bad orange peel...it just goes on and on, honestly.
Maybe it's the small city, hence my appeal for good shops in DFW area in my other thread, which failed with 0 replies
I'd drive it the 1.5 hrs to Ft.Worth if need be. I'm still researching. Woudn't it be fun to go there and get the same service as here, or worse? Can't wait.
Wife spends alot of time shuttling kids, etc, and the prevalence of careless redneck lowlifes has led to way too many trips to the shops for one man.

I think I'm going back to the Toyota shop, and if there's a screw outta place, there's gonna be a gotdam bloodbath.

btw..estimator at Toyota says Progressive will want him to get my hood and bcover from a junkyard! Wtf, a 2008? Can I fight this and demand new parts? This is high on my list of priorities.

 

unfortunately unless your policy says "only use of oem parts" than your kinda screwed. Most policy holders dont think to ask about that cause they just assume new oem parts will be used, but that is not the case. Insurance companies want to save money anyway they can so if they can find a used hood and bumpercover at 1/3 the cost, they will pay for it from a salvage yard. The good part is 99 % of the time they are the original oem parts(meaning the junkyard car didnt have aftermarket stuff on it that they are selling) and have either no, or little damage that can be fixed easily. They arent gonna buy a crushed hood from a junkyard and try to fix it cause than theyll have to pay labor time to the bodyshop which doesnt work in there favor either. If anything itll have a dent or two thatll need fixing and since they are refinishing it anyway, itll be new. Thats how insurance looks at it and it saves them money so thats what you get. Insurance will do anything to save a buck, just like everyone else in the world. The good thing is since your car is so new that they might not be able to find any salvaged parts in the area, and/or limited aftermarket parts for it so theyll have to spring for new stuff. If your not a total dick to your insurance adjuster, you can talk to him about it and believe it or not you can bargain with these people, we do it all the time to get customers oem parts. Some adjusters will approve it no problem and some are just not going to. Some adjusters make money by saving money on the quote so they gotta look out for themselves too. Basically its a shitstorm and unless you want to fight and drag **** out you take whats given to ya or butter up your adjuster and hope for the best.

 

You can fight them on the used parts.... Tell them you want to be put back whole like you were before the wreck.. Your car didnt have used parts on it before and isnt going to afterwards... The only way you cant fight this is if your insurance company is the one footing the bill.. They have a leg to stand on because of your policy but they dont if its the others guys insurance footing the bill...