Buying pre-painted body parts?

[rtcpenguin]

I ran into a sign post like a dumbass and caused some damage to the front left fender/bumper of my 09 Black coupe.

Unfortunately, since it affected two panels, the body shops near me either want to charge me for labor to fix the panels, or just buy new ones. The ranges from $900-1300 for this.

I had a guy on ebay pre-paint a fender for me for an older Civic and it turned out okay. The quality was very good, but the color was very slightly off. You could really only notice when looking for it, or under certain lighting conditions.

Anyway, my question is, since this car is pretty new, garage kept (so no fading), and non-metallic black (I've read metallic is harder to do), whats your opinion on trying this again?

ATM I think I should be able to grab the bumper and fender painted black with clearcoat for around $600, which is substantially less than what I was quoted above. Replacing the bumper seems pretty easy and I doubt the fender can be too hard.

Do you guys think the body shop would do a much better color matching job? I've read conflicting reports of whether they just use the factory color code or actually use computers/cameras to get a perfect match.

Edit: I was also toying with the idea for buying replacement OEM bumper and fender and having the shop paint it. I can grab the two parts for like $440 or so. Anyone know how much a shop would charge to paint those two parts?

(Hopefully I can get a pic up tomorrow of the damage).

[Ricko]

Spend the extra and get it done right. I learned the hard way.

[Rob.Vegan]

I would go to a shop because I dropped a fender off at a shop to have them paint it. They had nothing but factory code to go off of and it came out beautifully. At first it looked really off but then after like 5 minutes it sort of grew on the car and it looked OEM.

The fender is a pretty big part to install actually. You have to take off the bumper, light, side skirt, and rear tire. When I took mine off to switch it I accidently broke a couple clips on my sideskirt so now it's loose. But the screws and clips for the fender are a hassle to remove and put back on.

Unless you have the time and tools to mess around with it I would take it to a shop

[rtcpenguin]

So is the sideskirt colored wrong?

@Rob -- So you're saying the factory color code was a perfect/near perfect match, but the install was a pain in the a**? Why did the rear tire half to come off for the sideskirt/fender? Sounds bizarre.

[Ricko]

Both rear bumper and side skirts are no matched correctly. I went the cheap way and now its going to cost me 1300 to do it the right way.

[Rob.Vegan]

The factory color was a very close match to my car. The garage at my house has been taken over by my moms two dogs so no parking in the garage for anybody. My car is always outside and the paint has faded a tad. Either the shop was really good and they took that into account or they got lucky. I don't know but it looks near perfect to me.

The fender screws onto the sideskirt, to get those you need to get behind the skirt pretty much taking it off. In order to take off the rear of the skirt you need to undo the two screws in the rear wheel well. Unless you have a real small screwdriver the wheel needs to come off. I couldn't find a small enough screwdriver so I just took the wheel off. Needed to anyway to repaint it

[rtcpenguin]

Here are some pics (click link). Does $1000-1300 sounds about right? I'm super pissed because I increased my insurance deductible from $500 to $1000 less than a month ago.

http://img188.imageshack.us/ga...c.jpg

[2008AltiCoupeDan]

oh snap- thts not even that bad bro- as fer the front bumper- just reheat/mold - go to a shop and just be like- yo- fix this for me- heres 40 bucks lol

the fender.... tricky, they are sorta flimsy at that end, but the thing is the crumple zone, so even if u tap it out it'll still be spidery so ud have to get a new one... u could also bondo it :P sand it down- it'll work a lot easier than u think and u'll save the money plus on the parts. then just paint

my 0.02