ajaxahi

The reason I think it might have to do with the clearcoat is because the match looks almost perfect on a cloudy day or when the sun is in front of you. Only when the sun is behind, like in these photos, does it look this bad. The body shop owner says if I am unhappy, they will do a repaint. I'm nervous that something else can go wrong with a repaint and maybe it's just a clearcoat issue. Can't they just re-do the clearcoat?

ajaxahi

Bondo was from the first shop's botched job. That was on the rear door only (where the original dent was) and was removed when the second shop replaced it with a new door skin.

Big Mack

iTrader: (1)

So if there is any filler it's bad work? Hmmm...can't imagine that a professional bodyman would agree. There are times when adding a bit of filler cannot be avoided. Period. Should it be caked on? Of course not. I highly doubt the 1st shop did that, but I don't know. If it was simply a dent, I can't imagine they covered the whole door in it anyway.

Big Mack

tkman00

i'm not familiar w/ painting, but i don't think so. let them look at it again, or bring it to a detailer and see if they can help. it could just be that all it needs is a wetsand and polish, but like i said you should let a professional determine that.

MEP7557

I believe your problem is the door was painted off the car. Paint is to be layed down all at the same time with the same angle and direction. That's why in cloudy conditions it shows up more, it's the way the paint is reflecting the light. I would have them repaint the whole side with the doors on. Just my thoughts.

Good Luck

billy44bo

Make them fix . You are going to take a hit when you sell this car might as well make them fix it right this time. They would not want to repaint it if they did not see it also.

exvelocity

In this case,it doesn't matter what lies underneath the paint, it's very simple to explain the mismatched paint, the reason is that they had the door off and shot it separate laying or hanging on a stand.When parts get painted separate ,there is a good chance the color might be slightly off, especially if it involves metallic pearl paint. It's not hard to mess up,going a little faster or slower on one panel than the other can result in mismatch,there are also few other factors that can play a role in this,air pressure,paint in the gun has settled and one panel could have alot more metallics than other. And I can say that in this case one or more parts just didn't get the same amount of basecoat. OP, you'd have to talk to your ins. company and tell them you don't want 20+ mills (3 times the thickness of normal paint job)of paint on right side from painting and repainting, and you want all that paint stripped and the whole side reshot properly.

Pearlpower

iTrader: (2)

The obvious answer right there.

ajaxahi

Thanks exvelocity. In fact they stripped down to the metal for this job, because this job was to correct another shop's horrible first effort, which resulted in way too thick layers of paint. So as far as I know, there's only one coat of primer and one color coat on there now. Also, this job is out of pocket, though the first shop paid for everything done by the second shop. Do you still think I should demand stripping again? It sounds like they are just proposing just sanding and repainting. FYI, here's the response from the shop when I asked for details about what they will do...

We will be painting all the panels again. The panels will be sanded and painted. I looked at the photos and they only prove my point that there is no difference. You can see the consistent hue from one side to the other. I don't see any inconsistencies. It all depends on the angle that you are in, but you can see that as you move your eyes on the photo the color become a hue that is consistant from one side to the other. I looked, and looked again at the photos and they prove exactly that there is no difference. No matter, let me know when you would like to bring the car in, and we'll repaint the panels. Thank you.

ajaxahi

By the way, here's another photo of the front fender. I know that we can't expect a perfect match with plastic parts, but isn't this difference extreme? What's strange is that they said they only BLENDED the front door into the front fender. So why is the entire fender lighter than it was before? Do they clearcoat the whole panel even when they just blend color coat onto part of it? This would again suggest clear coat could be the issue here, making everything appear lighter?

ajaxahi

How much do you think this will affect resale value? Basically repainting the complete passenger side (assuming they can do a good job)? We usually hold onto our cars for about 5 years. Probably depends on trade-in vs. private sale, right?

MEP7557

I know from experience as I had my driver's door backed into, they did repaint the whole side. The dealer told me it would drop the value between $4-5k. That is the amount when the car is new it's called, diminished value. That amount goes down as the car ages. We can thank carfax for this.

billy44bo

got a little hit 5 years ago the had to repair the rear end replaces a light and a few more things less than $2000 total and dear old car fax report is costing me almost $2500 on my trade. Had one place went around the car and check how thick the paint was looking for repairs to the car.

ajaxahi

Ouch! Kind of what I expected, though, and at least it goes down over time. The one nice thing in all this is though this is a $3000 job (includes new door skin and many chrome window trim pieces ruined by the first shop), I'm zero out of pocket because the first shop is paying. Will I avoid carfax since this was a hit and run, not reported to insurance, paid out of pocket?

billy44bo

Did you call the police? If you did Car fax will get it from their report and you will be in the same boat as the rest of us that got hit by some DA and we have to take it in the shorts.