alexb76

I've had a faily small scratch right on the corner of rear bumer for about a year now, caused by some a**hole in a parking lot!

I've touched it up and from a distance, you can't see it... but upclose it's an eye sore and been getting on my nerves, specially since its summer time now.

I've had conflicting diagnosis on how to fix... a couple of higher end body shops have said the whole bumber MUST BE PAINTED to make it look right... while a couple of other body shops (still reputable) have said they can just fix and paint the corner, blend-in, and clear coat the whole bumper and no one would be able to tell! The 2nd option costs less than half of whole bumper paint.

Any ideas? Is it a no-no to blend in? Is it hard to blend-in Meteor Gray?

Thanks

Spiffyjiff

FWIW, i have seal grey and quite a few paint chips up front from the track. when inquiring about getting a touch up to make it look new again, TWO reputable shops told me not only would they paint the bumper/hood, but also the fenders and blend in the doors! sheesh.

just sayin...maybe it's a more involved and highly precise process to make it look perfect than we think.

Mike in CA

The bumper on my 996 was scratched by the dealer in their lot during service. They tried to blend to fix it (admittedly the work was done by their dent removal guy??) and it looked like cr@p. A complete repaint was done and it came out great. OTOH, my wife's Highlander was in a fender bender and among other things suffered minor damage to the edge of the hood. A top notch shop in our area did a blend job and even on the flat hood surface the blend was absolutely invisible in any light and the hood looked like new. I was amazed.

I guess the point is that a skilled shop can make a blend look great but a complete quality repaint, properly color matched, is the only guarantee of a perfect job. If you can get a promise from the shop that does a blend that it must meet your critical requirements or no charge, then it might pay to go that way. Personally, I'd be inclined to pay the money for the complete repaint.

Minok

If it bugs you that much, a touch up will also be noticeable and irritating to you.
So I'd say repaint the whole component (bumper). Nothing further should be needed, a good paint shop should be able to match the car color properly using the paint code and existing paint. It may still be ever so slightly different than the other body parts, but do you want to repaint the whole car to ensure its all 'identical'? And then do that every time you get a ding?

TerpsRED

blending with metallic paints almost never comes out invisible. The distribution of the flakes makes a visible line, no matter how good the paint guy is. I'm sure the difference is negligible in price over the long run. My vote would be do the entire bumper.

Eric - Plug Guy

Find the highest end shop you can, meet the owner, and the paint guy - and have them show you the sprayout samples of Meteor (there are several formulations). A top notch experienced painter can make that right without touching the rest of the vehicle.

Kuhan

Exactly the same thing happened to me a few months ago. They did the blend fix and I can't tell where the scratch was. I didn't actually see the scratch - they called me and told me it happened - so I don't know how deep or bad it was but since I can't notice it, it doesn't bother me.

Now last week some %$^&#^@ hit my passenger side door with their car door in the office car park. I'm sure it's a blue car since I can't get the blue mark off the side. At some point, I'm going back to the dealer to get this sorted as well since they did such a good job previously. Fortunately it's the passenger side so I hardly ever see it.