tomstep2

First off, Happy New Years to everyone on CL!

I have a 93 ES that I love. It runs nearly perfectly (need to replace both valve cover gaskets, happening in a couple of weeks) and after putting well over 50,000 miles on it in 2009, there are a considerable amount of stone chips on the hood. I have used touch up paint and clear coat from Lexus to fill in and protect the large ones. The problem is now there are too many tiny ones and polishing isn't helping anymore. I think it is time to have it repainted. The paint is still very deep and glossy, just too many stone chips.

Luckily for me, my parents own a paint & body shop and live just a few hours away. Now to my point...my paint color is the Dark Emerald with the grey/silver on the lower panel. There is one spot on the rear bumper where the grey/silver has flaked off right where the bumper cover meets the green. It is only about the size of a pea, but it very obvious to me and I cannot find any touch up paint for it.

I am going to have the entire car repainted, should I have the lower portion repainted the silver/grey again, or go for a full mono look and have it all the Dark Emerald? I was thinking of going mono and that way I have touch up for the entire car. Just not sure with the Dark Emerald how that would look. If it was white or black, it would be a no-brainer.

What are your opinions?

cyco

I have personally seen a Dark Emerald Pearl monotone in person, It looked really off to me. It might be because I see my car every day or it might have been a bad paint job, but it looked really bad.

I really like the look of the green on the gray, I can never forget the look the one with "the lip" has in the hot windom pics.

Ariyanna

Yeah the Gen 2 was designed for two tone and I had two Gen 2 in the past and I cant see it as a monotone, it just doesnt look good

llcoolpass

oh my god, DO NOT GO TO MONO. keep the stock , and make sure everything is glossy and pretty.

once you get this work done, take high quality pics, load em to photobucket or equivalent, and share with us!

50K miles on the 16.5th yr of that car's life ........ on a old car like that ...... wow/sheesh/wha?!?!
also, how many miles she got on her now?

tomstep2

Thanks for the opinions. Like I stated above, if it was white or black, I would go mono without hesitation.

She has 117,000 on her right now. I bought it from my mother in law about 18 months back with only 60K on it for $3000. She bought it new and the longest drive it was ever on when she owned it was for 300 miles. She only used it for 20 miles or less every few days. I used to detail it for her every 3 months and it really showed when I took it off of her hands. I really got a steal for the car as it looks showroom new inside and almost showroom new outside (Except for the hood and bumper cover). I am in outside sales and really rack up the miles and being on the interstate so much means a lot of crap hitting the hood at around 80MPH. If it wasn't for the hood, I would not even be looking at having the car resprayed. When my parents looked at it, they advised against just getting the hood resprayed as the color will be a little off from the rest. They are only going to charge me for the cost of the paint, they are doing the labor for free. I will only be paying a few hundred dollars for an entire respray.

Lexucan

Lucky to have parents in the auto body business! I agree with everyone else about keeping it two-tone. I have the same color combo as you - dark emerald pearl with grey cladding. I couldn't imagine it looking good all one color. After all, Lexus designed the 2gen and 3gen ES to look their best as two-tone cars, and I think they did a great job of it.

Limen

The only color I like the mono on is black. A black mono ES300 looks so damn good...