simsy

Hi

I've got an arctic silver 993.

At 65k miles it could use a refresh on the front and on the mirrors.

My questions are:

1. How good can paint restoration (not a real respray but touch ups/ wet sanding) get on rock chips on the hood and fenders? Can a detailer do magic or realistically should I pay 2k for a front hood and fenders respray? I do plan to paint the bumper and mirrors. Then film whatever can be filmed and still look good.

2. Rockers and lower rear bumper: a mistake to color match given likely rock damage post-painting (pacific northwest roads)...film protect reasonably well...how happy are people who have done this with the long-term result?

thanks in advance for any help!

CorrdoBrit

It'll never be perfect as you're trying to duplicate 15 year old paint. But a good shop who knows what they're doing should make it very close. Metallic finishes will generally be harder to match as the fleck can vary batch to batch. The way the paint is laid down will be different too. Do the minimum you think is necessary to get things to where you'd like them, otherwise you may be looking at a total respray if the bodyshop botches the job.

Linnm

After some front end damage, fenders, bumper, hood, the body shop painted all and blended the doors to match. Car is polar silver and to a critical eye the repaint is not apparent (other than looking very good on a 100,000 mile car)

Magdaddy

if it's a driver...I wouldn't do it.

I regret having a VERY HIGHLY reccomended Pcar shop do the front euro turbo bumper, and infill the headlight washers. To even an untrained eye it's off-even after a do-over. On the second attempt, the paint color didn't even match what he did the week before. I also asked him to touch up some rock chips on the lower hood, and fenders...I could have done the same quality of work myself.

He'll never touch the car again. This guy gets 356's from all over the country shipped to him for christ sake...my "driver" didn't warrant his attention, so he had his asst. do the work on my car. I could make a list of what's wrong that would curl your hair.

I currently have the front bumpercover off, and will be installing new bumper beading. After his two attempts to install-and having cut short the new set I gave him, I know I can do a better job.

My next step is to have a different shop respray the entire front clip...but where then do you stop? My cars had previous paint work-pass rear quarter, and the pass side door does have a good scratch very low. So, where do you stop really?

Think long and hard about living with that 65K mile road rash. That look may in hind sight be much better than the touch up.

Just my $.02. From one higher mile(83K) driver to another.

CorrdoBrit

^^^^ exactly, think of it as petina. How bad can it look on an arctic silver car anyway? Different story on a black or dark blue car.

H.H.Chinn

This a couple photographs of my 82SC that I had painted several years ago. The previous owner lived off of a gravel road where the front of the car looked like the night sky with all of the rock chips. This is a local shop with an excellent reputation for excellent paint, metal fabrication and does many frame up restorations of vintage Porsche race cars to 356s.

The shop owner allowed me to come in to dismantle, pressure wash/clean, bag and catalog the disassembly of it to save costs. All of the glass was removed. We managed to get it all prepped painted with 3 coats of color, 4 coats of clear and reassembled for $7.5k. We removed all traces of the "European Roll" aka Orange peel.

I had the 3M paint protection clear film applied allowing a month for the paint to properly cure and off gas.

This wasn't cheap but the rest of the car was bone stock and deserved to continue on the road with a perfect paint finish.

Realize that the entire process to do it right is not cheap so make sure that you will be keeping this car for a very long time.

PNogC2S

When I got my car it had a scrape in the bumper cover immediately behind the rear wheel that the PO had somehow acqired. The thing wasn't very deep, but it had taken the paint off (wasn't going to polish out) and was about 6 inches long (way too big for touch up).
I contacted a guy, who came highly recommended, that does mobile repair work. It was only going to cost me a few hundred dollars and I figured it would be "good enough" until I got around to doing a full bumper respray. He did the job in my garage and it turned out FANTASTIC... a perfect repair and a perfect paint match. He did such a good job of matching the paint that about a year later I was waxing the car and noticed a tiny bit of overspray tucked under the left tail light. I was baffled until I remembered that this is the side he repaired. That was nearly 5 years ago and the repair has held up great! Needless to say, I've recommended him to a couple of very picky friends to clean up their daily drivers and all have been very pleased.
I guess you don't always get what you pay for ... some times you luck out and get much more.
So to paraphrase Dirty Harry -- "Do ya feel lucky?"

Knight

That looks impressive Harlan, I would love to see this car one day!

btw - we met at Mike J's last BBQ, at that time I had the black boxster S and was transitioning into the 993.

keithgreer

In my experience, the mobile guys can do great work on plastic parts. It is cheap and easy. But metal parts are a whole different story.

ble2011

I had some work done on my 993. They resprayed the rear bumper and the drivers quarter (metal and plastic). My body shop guy said he had to buy a second gallon of glaursit paint (at his cost of $200) because he felt it wasn't a perfect match. He then repainted it again. What I'm trying to say is, if you get the right guy, they can do wonders. I cannot tell where mine has been painted.

aircooledpurist

Pay more than you think you need to. Shame to ruin something so special to save a thousand bucks.

Stealth 993

The detail shop will most likely just put in color, not fill the chips. But it will look good & even. Plus be cheap. You can then get the car covered in clear bra, & you will never see the chip through the film.

A quality body shop can match the paint 100%, & your car will look awesome after. Again, get a clear bra put on to protect your new shinny paint.

My shop did an incredible job with patin match & filling in my bumperetts on my Arctic Silver C4. I would do it all again in a hart beat! However, with the clear bra, it was well over $5000, luckily my insurance picked up most of it.

hoggel

Me too!

I had a guy paint my car who is an artist with bodywork and paint. He was highly recommended by another Porsche owner who had him paint his car. I saw other cars/motorcycles he had done, including two Porsches. I had to wait while he finished repainting a special color CGT owned by a famous racecar driver. He said that he and his son-in-law like to have one car in the shop that they enjoy working on while the insurance jobs pay the bills.

It took me four months to get my car back from him and he dicked it up. I think he took it apart and lost the hardware used whatever to put the car back together. Crazy stuff like every tab on the front grill brocken, three mismatched screws holding the door panels on. I suspect that he took the car all apart, it sat for four months, then he prepped and painted it in about three days. I started a punch list of things he needed to correct but when I got to about three pages I decided he would have my car even longer and it would have more things damaged when I got it back. Terrible experience! It has been three years and I'm still pissed.

And the CGT was back in the shop dissassembled when I picked my car up.

CorrdoBrit

Bodyshops. Don't get me started. Worse experiences of my life both here in Dallas and in Milan Italy. Both VW recommended shops strangely enough.

The one in Dallas was especially heart breaking. My peachy, 50K mile, 10 year old black Corrado SLC blew its heater core. Common problem and covered by VW recall warranty. I knew this so had the car transported to Park Place VW on Lemmon. They did the work. Excellent. Went to pick the car up and the ABS warning light is on. Take it back and I'm not kidding you it took them from April to November to figure out that there was an error in the factory service manual, something to do with the wiring diagrams. By the time I was told all was good I get the 'oh, by the way, we're so sorry but we put a scrap in the quarter panel behind the passenger door'. They said don't worry, we'll take care of the damage, and this was my biggest mistake. I trusted a Main Dealer to get this sorted.

The car went back for 3 resprays. First time for burn marks, 2nd for excessive buffing in the black paint resulting in inconsistencies in the finish against the original paint, and a 3rd time because the markers they used to pinpoint problems had left an indelible mark. At the end of the 3 trips to the bodyshop I ended up with a broken window regulator, a $500 door latch replacement and an imperfect paint job, for which the Dealer took no responsibility. When I complained to the service manager at Park Place he threatened to call the cops if I didn't pay the $500 and take the car off the property. After this experience I wrote to the BBB, VWoA and the Park Place GM. Nothing came of my complaints and after having lived the nightmare for almost a year I decided to move on. Life is too short but I still recount this experience whenever the opportunity arises. So NEVER, EVER buy a VW from Park Place in Dallas. And ALWAYS think twice about going to a bodyshop.

TravisB

Sadly, entirely too true. I've had 3 body shop experiences, and all 3 of them left a sour taste in my mouth. I now avoid them like the plague.

The first was when I was new to the city and just picked a place with my insurance company that seemed to have nice cars in their holding lot. It went back 3 times, was never really happy with the outcome but I wanted it to be over with.

The second was at a shop where I knew one of the techs through a friend of a friend..same car as the first, just repairing the now cracking/crazing paint from the first shop. It had to go back to this shop 3 times as well, again...still not totally happy, but again I wanted my car back and figured I was probably selling it soon anyway.

The third was just after I got my car a few months ago at a fairly well known PCA owned/managed shop with a great reputation..and I wasn't even coming in for visible paint work, this was a windshield/channel rust job. Of the quotes I got, they were one of the highest, but I wanted quality work done on my new prized toy. I won't even get in to the insurance aspect (long story short, thanks to a lie, I was out of pocket at least $500 more than I should have been), but their shop monkey gouged the hell out of my cowl putting the wipers on. Twice! The back of the hood also got chipped I think. So I've now got overspray on my side windows, paint lines on the fender to cowl gaskets, and a cleared over chip on the hood. Small things, and my car is a driver, but you'd think they'd do good repair work on their own screw ups (then again, if you can't put wiper arms on properly, what am I to expect for anything else?). I'm so disgusted I'm not even going to bother trying to have them correct it..