My front end (nose and lower ground effect) is pretty battle scarred. I would like to have it prepped and repainted. Any thoughts on how much this should cost? Trying to get an idea before I go to body shops. Thanks.

 

Do you mean the entire clip as in fenders and all or just bumper and ground effects or what? I would do all the sanding prep yourself to save money.. its not hard. If its the whole thing with prep its probably somewhere around 5-600 at a good shop and around 2-300 if your just talking the bumper and stuff with no prep involved. That $60 an hour for labor adds up really quick..

 

Thanks. I'm gonna edit the original post. I just meant the nose and ground effect. It has a deep scratch (looks like someone with a tow hitched back into me at a lot) and a bunch of little nicks from the 1 winter the car was used as a DD when I was in college ). I'm hoping $300 tops with prep work...

 

Well, whatever you do, make sure you use the right formulation of paint for the plastic GFX. It has to use a primer that sticks to plastic, and a more flexible formulation of paint.

When my car was painted, somebody used metal primer and the wrong kind of paint. It looks horrible now and keeps flaking off.

 

The first issue is the fact that there should be no difference in the primer, just the flex agent that is an additive.
Your situation is kind of typical, and is what gives us bodyshops a bad name.
Unless you tried to save some cash and got a MAACO job...
How long ago was it painted? Did you ask the shop to stand behind it?
There is no excuse for a shop skipping the flex agent... these days most of the quality paint companies use a quality flex, and is the shops responsibility to use the product.
Especially on a cover that is as large a part of the car as a third gen is.

 

I didn't get the car painted, I got the car that way. All I know is that it has a custom paint job which was done somewhere, and done badly.

I'm just going to re-do the bumpers since the rest of the paint is still in decent shape. There's a guy at a local independent auto parts store who's seen this problem before and has the proper flex agent (I couldn't remember what it was called, sorry).

The only trick in my case is trying to match the gradient job they did, which was basically spraying solid black on the bottom and letting it go thinner as they went up.

 

Thanks guys. I'll do a search on flex additive and see what varoius body shops say. Can anything be added to the paint to make it less prone to chipping,getting spyders, etc. The nose and lower ground efffect were replaced years ago, but it did not hold up as well as the factory stuff. Thanks.

 

That Is your flex agent, chipability is a factor you'll have to deal with, though, usually a sign of too thick of material. But with all the stuff you gotta put on to make 'em look nice...