Thought I would start a new thread since I just dropped the car off at the bodyshop. As some will remember, the lady that owned my car was not very careful with the doors, scraped a garage wall on the front bumper, scratched the rear bumper pulling out luggage and it had it's fair share of chips. She also cracked the drivers side mirror housing. There were fine scratches from the neighbors cats as well. I took some before pictures and will take some after when I get it back this afternoon. I went over that car with a fine tooth comb, printed out pictures of the front/back and both sides, then marked on the picture everywhere I found a chip/scrape/mark or where someone had used touch up to hide same. I'm sure he will find even more than I marked!! I am as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rockers right now!!

TOXIC

 

Is the car going to have a new paint job? What's the body shop doing to it?

 

It will have some paint work but not a new paint job. For example, they have to re-paint about 1/2 of the bumper after the skin repair and all of the "touch up" spots on the car. chips, scratches, nicks will all be filled, sanded and painted so there is a lot of spot painting and small body work. Door edges are trashed from opening them into solid objects and both will be sanded, filled, primed and painted. A lot of the rock chips, fine scratches and so forth are hard to take pics of so I will just have to give you my opinion of how well they were done. The artist that is doing my car only works on Lexus, Mercedes, Jaguar and Land Rover. He goes from dealership to dealership and can work a few "extra" jobs in as his schedule allows. My Lexus is currently at the Land Rover dealership!!LOL!!

TOXIC

 

Haha, all the Land Rovers give it the dirty eye in jealousy. How did you find him? My car definitely needs some touchups on the hood (lots of pits from rocks) and scratches on the corners of all four bumpers. The guy that owned it before me also didn't take too good care of it...and couldn't drive too well. I was going to do an entire paint job on it but costs +$6,000, your way is probably a better option if they can take care of all the blemishes.

 

Most all of the dealerships have "guys" that do touch up work, dent work and leather/interior work. It makes sense, sure they have a bodyshop for the collision repair but for the "small" stuff, it is much cheaper for them to contract out that work. You just have to find out who that person(s) is. I had a guy take the door dings out of the car first and he gave me the name of the local "top end" dealership paint man. Then a lady here at my office was having a mobile chip repair guy do her Lexus SUV and he agreed to look at mine. As soon as I drove it up he said "No-way". Come to find out Silver Metal Metallic is the hardest Lexus color to match (6 colors in the mix) and he gave me the name of the same guy that the door ding guy did.....2 separate referrals is good enough for me!! And the door ding guy did unbelievable things on the car but he doesn't do paint. They go from dealership to dealership and work on the inventory. When you find the person who does the top-of-the-line cars, you've found your guy. They also don't have the overhead of a shop and can usually price jobs a lot cheaper. They are concerned about their reputation as well. So here I am waiting until 4pm to go see if I made a good decision. And BTW....all of the Land Rover salesmen walked out to look at the car when I dropped it off!!HA!

 

Keep us updated buddy! Would love to see what kind of work he does. I have a few rock chips in the hood and the same issue with both my door edges. You'll have to let us know the total price for all this too!

Good luck and I'll cross my fingers for you as well!

 

Just got a call that since it is cloudy he can't see the paint the way he likes.....
no shop lights allowed...Soooooooo, he won't touch it. I am going to take it back to him Thursday, this time at a Mercedes dealership!!

TOXIC

 

And now a nasty coldfront hits Florida I am going to call it off until I get back from DC in a week. I know heat is important in getting paint and clearcoat to flow, adhere and seal properly and I do not want to take the chance that I will not be 110% satisfied. He might try to talk me into doing it tomorrow as planned but I am going to resist.

TOXIC

 

Just purchased a 1oz bottle of touch up paint and a 1oz bottle of clearcoat from this website...http://www.touchuppaint.org/ Received yesterday only the paint, clearcoat was missing, and to top it off the cap on the paint bottle was cracked! Two questions...has anyone else purchased from them and secondly any advice on how to go about using these products? Go easy on me as this is my first post but have been following the forum for about a month now ever since I purchased my wife her 2003 back in August. I took Zgone's instructions and was able to fix the speaker on the passenger side. All I can say is this forum rocks!

 

Let us know how the paint matches. I have a 2002 Millenium Silver and the Lexus touch-up paint is horrible. Way to dark and the chip looks better than the touch-up job.

 

Will do. It might be hard tell since it is the black onyx and I only have three small areas but I'll let you know.

 

IMHO the color match is one problem but the bigger issue is when you put paint in a hole (chip) it looks like paint in a hole. You have to fill the chip before you paint it and that involves sanding and then your paint won't naturally be an exact match and you have to clear coat it. I too bought a tube of touch up from Sewell but after some thought, I opted to take it to a pro. I am very picky. I've seen some touch ups that look like piles of bird doo.

TOXIC

 

darnot-I'd strongly recommend aborting that mission unless you are very good at doing that and have extensive experience. You can really mess things up with that stuff!

Counter it with calling these guys up. I have an entire post and several pics with the job they did, they are local in Dallas (I think you are in DFW) and did a GREAT job on my 2005 Pebble Beach. Looks like new!!!! Amazing job....

http://www.detailwerkz.com/

 

Ok sounds good. What kind of price am I looking at? Like I said I have three small areas I would like to have touched up.

 

Depends on how much "time" Brian thinks it will take...how large the area, etc. You will have to do "paint correction" which is $60/per hour. They get a lot done in that time...they did my whole upper half of my car (hood, trunk upper half on all panels and roof) in that time, plus really buffed the hell out of my key scratch area and this other touch up area and practically eliminated any sign of it.

My total guess is a couple of hours...just my guess though. I have no idea how large your areas are, and what's involved. If you have touch up paint for your car, I'd bring it too. They may be able to do yours at your house like they did mine. Just call Brian he will work it all out. Tell him Derek with the 05 Pebble Beach referred you and you heard about him from Club Lexus. I'm talking to him about potentially being a vendor/sponsor in the future and he is very interested---especially for the product sales, which he sells GLOSS-IT! Which I will admit might be a notch about our beloved Zaino, which I thought was the best thing since sliced bread! LOL

brianhare@detailwerkz.com