Some of you may or may not know that i had an incident with a car park security gate a few months back. Ended up catching the peg that secures the gate, which ripped into my passenger side rear door, rear arch and rear bumper. I took it to a local body shop on recommendation from a good friend who had his car repaired there a few years back.

The guy said he would repair the damage and also re-spray and fit a second hand bumper i had sourced to replace my damaged one within 4 days and for £420 which i thought was a pretty good deal. The 4 days flew by and off i went to pick it up. On first arrival the repair looked good but the colour match seemed off..i of course ask him why this is and he said its due to the rest of my car being a 'milky/faded white' and a good valet/tcut/polish would sort it out..

over the course of the last few weeks, the more i looked at it and spent the time washing/polishing etc etc, the more i doubted it would ever look right like the guy had said..so i took it to another body shop that mainly deal with insurance jobs, and they said straight away that the colour he had used was wrong..they suggested i take it back to him for him to sort. After a week of trying to get in touch with the guy, i finally did and he agreed to sort it..

Dropped the car off monday, and went to pick it up today..the car looks exactly the same mish mash of whites..this time my dad came with me for a second opinion..he said exactly the same as i did when he saw it..what a joke. we quizzed the guy as to what he exactly did, and all he said he done was buff the non damaged area around the repair he did to try and get it to blend in...so again i tell him im not happy and this is joke, he has now agreed to get a paint guy in next Wednesday to colour match the paint and he will re-spray the bits he did originally.

..so the whole fiasco starts again next week, if it doesnt match this time i have no idea what im going to do other than to pay someone else to fix the mess as clearly this guy has no clue or is just too lazy to do a proper job..

Sorry for the essay, just needed to get it off my chest...

 

name and shame them my friend!

 

A pain and way too often do I see cars repaired with different shades of paint, my sisters ST mondeo has just had the side painted and its way off the standard colour, it was a free repair though so I could not say anything.

I'd be tempted to put a few light marks in the paint so you can ensure its been repainted and he's not just fobbing you off and tells you he re-did it and it came out the same!

 

dont really see the problem for them all they have to do is blend it down the front door lol

 

If they fail to correct it next week i will definitely name and shame them..i know white is a pain to match but the difference in whites on my car is just plain stupid.

 

Hopefully the guy will get the paint colour correct this time. If not I'd be asking for a refund or at the very least a part refund.

 

That's what I was going to say. My understanding is if they shop are not confident of matching the paint for any reason then they should just blend it. Problem solved.

 

I do bodywork for a living and this is an intresting read........
A couple of things i would like to add, white isnt that much of a nightmare to match, but the first issue i have is the painter should have advised before taking on the repair that he needed to buff the car to bring the colour to its best before doing anything. This way you match the paint you are using to the paint on the car at its cleanest best condition. Buffing after the work is done is pointless as you match to the paint on the car so if you buff it after you will end up with 2 totally different colours.

Secondly do you have a picture to upload of how bad the match is, im intrested to see how bad the difference is. And somtimes no matter what you do you cant match perfectly as different companies use different paint formulations to get to the same colour and it doesnt always work, Standox etc are what dealers use which to be honest are way more expensive than what most small bodyshops use and i have used standox, mipa, octoral, HB body, house of colour and many more and you can do a excellent job with the midrange alterantives without using silly expesive materials. Silver is the worst for colour matching and i know a friend that started with a pug 406 doing the rear 1/4 and door and after doing the job ended up painting the full side which still didnt look right and ended up blowing the whole car over to make it match and the customer luckily understood why it had to be done and a cheap deal was done on the price due to the circumstances. But with white it shouldnt be that hard, the painter should have at worst case senario called you explained the issue he was having and agreed to paint the whole side so it matched where it is seen together. but again if he buffed it to start with then colour matched correctly he wouldnt need to do that,

 

what you say JAutos makes alot of sense.

Here is a pic..bare in mind that it is alot worse in person but you get the idea.

 

I went to a local bodyshop when I got my splitter fitted and bumper resprayed, because they offered a cheap quote. When i picked it up the splitter was hanging off with loads of gaps, they had painted over areas where the paint was peeling/bubbling under the headlights so it still looked the same, and it was a slight different shade of silver. I was not happy and went mad at them, they took it back for another week and a half and managed to get it sorted to a semi decent state.

When I got my side skirts fitted, I also had a dent in the front wing and the rear bumper resprayed I took the long trip to devon, went to a bodyshop staffed by people who you could hold a normal conversation with rather than 'monkeys dragging their knuckles' and was happy to pay a little extra for a top professional job.

I will never go to a cheap bodyshop again, and dont blame you for being annoyed, its your pride and joy afterall!

 

i only really went to this bodyshop because of a good friends suggestion, seems as though the guys standards have slipped over the last few years..Cant get over the fact he thought it was 'ok'

 

Im so offended, I guess I need to increase my prices then as I currently reside in the reasonable priced bodyshop catagory although i do a good job lol.

 

colour isnt even close lol, and if its the colour i think it is (i did a white legacy a few months ago) the colour is very easy to match, i painted a few things on the legacy and none stood out and that was without blending going edge to edge (cheap job for a mate)

 

hmmm lol fancy doing mine if the guy messes up again Jautos lol?

 

Sorry mate, 'cheap' should read 'dodgy back street garage' !!

It was my first ever experience of a bodyshop, and it was reccomended to me as well. When I look for bodyshops now I look for what the place looks like, tidy office etc and people that can speak english .. lol

I'm coming to you next time!

 

The cleanliness of the office,the look of the staff etc all means nothing from my experience. English speaking is a must though lol.

Reason i say this is a know a guy that when i went to him 10 years ago just before i started painting. i wanted a door painting or sumthing like that and his workshop had gearboxes etc all over which he climbed over during painting lol. Put me right off and i left and never used him. Now im in trade i know him and believe me workshop is still the same but the work he turns out is top notch. You dont need a booth to turn out a good job, Ive done many jobs some full resprays etc and i have had use of booths in places ive worked and some of my best have been in my home workshop. On my website my orange work van was done in a small garage with little more space than the car needed. Same as Ive seen painters with devilbis GTI guns £500 each best you can get but they cant paint for toffee lol, First impressions are important but not the be all and end all. I SUGGEST ALLWAYS SEEING A PAINTERS WORK. ASK TO SEE SUMTHING THEY HAVE PAINTED ETC. THATS THE BEST WAY TO JUDGE THEM

 

just to add many things can cause paint which is the correct colour to look the wrong colour too. pressure is one , mixing ratio another. flash of times , going too heavy with colour

 

Whats your web address?

 

www.j-autos.com

 

SATA rule when it comes to spray guns as they easily out rank devilbess on atomisation and paint transfer,oh and price
On the op's car the main problem here is that you've got a plastic bumper[freshly painted] laying next to a metal quarter panel which has had many years of u.v exposure/contaminants that effect the colour,although the painted items are further out on colour than it should be.
It is a well known fact that paint just doesn't lay the same on metal as it does on plastic just look at any modern car on the right angle and you will see a 'slight' difference especially on metallic colours.
As mentioned though when in doubt blend out but on this occasion i can see why that option wasn't chosen as it would incur another quarter to be painted at alot more expense,also it would not work mopping/polishing the old paint to bring the colour back as all your polishing is the top coat which is clear,the colour is underneth and as such will not make it any whiter or the colour match any closer.
In my experience it is also crucial to have the right colour of undercoat[primer] beneath the paint because as with most manufacturers theses days they use the undercoat as part of the final colour because of how translucent modern paint is,which brings me onto the over loading of colour as mentioned by Jauto's,this usually happens when the wrong primer is used and the operator has to over load the colour to get coverage thus leading to colour mis match,or it could just be that the operator doesn't know or have adequate knowledge of the current spraying technique's either way i think this bodyshop will struggle to give you a finish colour that you will be happy with.
hope this helps Ryan.

 

some interesting comments..cheers guys...im now in two minds whether to even take back to him for a third time and just try somewhere else. Im aware that the paint sits different on plastic and also that there will be a slight difference in colour compared to old/new painted items. If you saw my car in person you'd see just how different the colour is. The colour the body shop laid looks like a white similar to whats on the new Focus RS.

 

Sata guns are a excellent gun but as for which is best well its all down to painters preference really both are top qaulity guns. The paint sitting different on metal and plastic doesnt matter on a solid colour only on metalics in my opinion but again different painters have different views and neither can be said wrong really Silver Audi's are the worst for that lol. The buffing of the old paint before doing the job i mentioned would only help if the old paint was topcoat which means white with no clearcoat. Which is what i beleive this colour was from factory so buffing would have helped on this car, although you do get more of a shine with clearcoat as well and you can buy the colour in both types. Ryan is also hit the nail on the head with undercoats and primers also, with white its usually just white or light grey primer so shouldnt be the issue here either, although for instance focus RS orange is a multi stage colour, and heres the intresting bit different manufactures arrive at the colour in different ways. i believe iirc that dealer paint is 7 stage which is 7 different colours layered up to get the final colour I beleive to be standox, where as my supplier has 3 different schemes which one is 5 stage one is 6 stage and one is 7 stage but all arrive at the same colour. miss a stage from any scheme and your looking at what may aswell be black and white for the difference you'll see. You have to follow strict rules with painting or you end up redoing the job 99% of the time. Also dont discount things a painter says if another painter disagrees, one thing ive learnt is no painter will do the same job from start to finish exactly the same. many routes to the same end product when it comes to prep work etc, as long as you follow coating instructions that is.

 

i agree with you there we all paint differently using different products the bottom line is pride of work, i work on the fact if i wouldnt be happy with the job the customer wouldnt be and good reputation is hard work to get and easy to lose

 

Yes thats the only basis to work on in my opinion, im a perfectionist and i know if i would be happy with the work then the customer should be lol. Totally agree with reputation also, years to build one bad job to lose it, we all make mistakes as painters and the important thing is be honest tell the cust it needs re doing and make sure is right before its handed back.

 

Thats what really annoyed me about the first place I went to, they never rung me, ever!! Not even to say the work was done and the car was ready, not to say there was a problem with this, or they couldn't get this right etc

The best bit was they never rang me to try and get another £150 out of me after I refused to pay when I collected the car for a second time

A bit of courtesy/customer service goes a long way!!

 

Agreed.

 

It's nice to find a business posting on here that's actually local to me!

Fancy quoting me on tidying up a silver hawk? I've just picked it up and i'd like a few of the chips sorting. I could pop by later on in the week or early next week?

 

just about to drop it off to the body shop again..third time lucky? i hope so...wish me luck

 

just dropped it of.. he has agreed to get a guy in to colour match the paint properly..respray all the work he has done, re-spray my right rear quarter and also my passenger door..all in 2 days??? Bit ambitious but lets see what job he does..i will be posting pics when i get it back on friday.

 

2 days is ample for that mate dont worry he might suprise you and it come back perfect or as near as dam it. when there is no damage and its just painting the panels it doesnt take that long. He will paint it today and buff it all up tomorrow.