I am having my car repainted this winter, and the shop is a bit stuck on what to do with the whale tail, particularly the painted band that lays flat and interfaces with the screening and intercooler intake (see pictures).It looks like the black part is painted, and with all of the detail to it, it will be tough to paint and match this. I am sure that others here must have dealt with this, so I am looking for some advice.

Thanks,

Jim

 

I did get some info from a friend I thought I would post here to perhaps help others:

Its one piece. Check out the link below to pelican. Talks about spraying the louvers black after the tail is painted body color. They guy even has his email address where he made a taping template to paint them black. Image is from PET which shows it as one piece too. One other thing you may want to do while the rubber is off the tail and front spoiler is to restore the rubber parts. Its really easy. Take the rubber parts and slather them with Vaseline and let them sit in a sunny window in your house for a couple of days. The sun heats the rubber and allows the Vaseline to penetrate into it. Then just wipe the Vaseline off and the parts will look new. I did this to a friends 944 tail down here and it works wonders. Pulls off any overspray and it restores the rubber back to a true black color. Three years later and they still look new on his car.



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...-question.html




http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...-question.html

 

PM "Cobalt". He's an expert at this stuff

 

You can do it either way. Paint the grill black, mask it off and refinish the body color or do the body color, mask off and refinish the grill area.
If the shop is having an issue with this you may want to check out the rest of their work closely before you get into a full disassembly and respray. This is standard issue work, nothing special.

 

They ended up doing it in two steps like you said, spraying the color first (I think) and then masking and spraying the black. It looks great, just like from the factory. Thanks for the advice.