Body Work

[jdmsilvia240sx]

Got an S13 with factory wing and the paint is starting to bubble underneath. I was looking into getting something like a bomex wangan style (unless someone could recommend something different). My question is this: how much do you think the paint and rust repair should cost. I don't know too much about body work so I'm trying not to get ripped off. Also, do you think a body shop will be able to match the paint without having to repaint most of the rear end or worse yet, the entire car? Thanks in advance.

[FTRS14.5]

What parts are you actually talking about?? Hard to give an estimate without knowing what's damaged, but you should probably expect to spend more than a few hundred dollars depending on the extent of the damage. More than likely, they will have to sand parts of the car back down to metal to get rid of it all. Don't worry, you won't have to repaint the complete car as they can just burn (blend) it in. That's not too hard at all. But expect to spend $300-$600 DEPENDING on the damage and how much they actually have to do. If you can send a pic, I can give you a better estimate on how much it should cost.

[jdmsilvia240sx]

Thanks for the info. I was planning to spend about 500-700 on the job so that sounds about right. I'll see if I could get some pics posted. The rust isn't as bad as most of the s13's you see though, but if I don't deal with the problem now, it will get out of hand. Thanks for the help.

[dareo]

If you pull the stock spoiler off you will have several holes and usually some rust to deal with. I had rust bad enough to cause some pitting, no biggie. The holes caused me pain. I cut round slugs to fit in the holes, welded it, grinded it, sometimes rewelded it again. it ended up warping a bit so i had to tap it down with a body hammer. Then i had to lay body putty across the hatch and sand that down. Then putty it again when i sanded too much off. Its still not quite finished how i like it. I have a 180sx replica wing i'l be mounting when i get the hatch perfect. I'd say i've got 15-20 hours into the hatch at least, but i'm no professional and much of the work i did in my auto body class with help from friends and instructor.

[mattlord42]

You know for that kind of money and effort you might be better off checking out http://www.car-part.com and looking for a spoilerless hatch. That's what I did and it only cost me $150 plus about 20 minutes of install time.

Matt