Ladies and Gents,

A couple of weeks ago I was re-ended by a friend of mine. The damage was somewhat minimal but I needed a bumper replacement. It went through his insurance since it was a read-ender and they had us take our cars to a body shop about an hour north of where we were.

I should mention that the two gents who ran the place were perfectly nice and seemed like they were good people. One of them did warn me that the color on the bumper may not exactly match the current color of my car (which is a light blue). I was away from work for about a week and just got back and saw my car in the sunlight and the shade of blue they used is a bit darker. It is a noticable diffrence if you know anything about paint.

I am wondering what I can do in this situation as I am pretty new and have never had something like this happen.

Thanks in advance.

 

Did the body shop mention anything about a clear coat on the paint? That can change the color. Maybe a detail shop could answer your question too. I've talked to them in our area and they seem knowledgable on issues like this if your body shop can't help you out.

 

Most insurance companies have a satisfaction guarantee. Your car should be leaving the shopI in the same condition it was in prior to the collision.

 

Also, a lot of big name shops and suppliers have adopted a "color eye" system which lets them scan a panel on the vehicle, from there the computer can change the formula enough to match the current shade of the paint. From what it sounds like, they didn't do a very good job of blending panels or matching shades.

 

Depending on the year of your car the paint fades. It happens but they needed to "blend" the paint to patch which is what didn't happen. Blending cost A LOT and they cut that corner to save money.

 

Actually, blending doesn't cost too much more than a straight paint job but it does take a lot of time and care to feather the paint onto the opposing panel(s) to match. It also requires careful backmasking, as well.

 

u should have told them to make sure to blend the paint. Any good painter should know to do this! Ive have my car sprayed mutliple times in different areas and they always blend it and its very very hard to tell!

 

Paint on plastic bumpers frequently looks different than the same paint on metal. Look at the new Camaros. The paint on the rear quarter panel looks significantly different than the paint on the doors. Not sure if that is the result of the body shape or a metal door and a plastic quarter panel.

Every, yes every, Camaro looks like the quarter panel or the door has a different shade.

Do a search on the Cadillac forum. You will see owners of the DTS cars complain that the truck and the rear bumper do not match--painted at the factory.

Hell, what do you want for $50,000 to $60,000??? Next thing we know, you will want everything on vehicle to work perfectly. lol

 

There's actually another reason for that, too. Cobalts had the same issue and I came to find out that the paint was manufactured by two different manufacturers and the one pipelined the paintto the Chevy plant, which affected the shade.

 

If you paint most of a car today, then you paint the remainder of the car tomorrow, the paint pigment in the sprayer will settle. There will be a slight difference in hue.

Optical Illusions: Did you notice that you always see the difference in hue when there is a straight (or curved) line between two body panels. If there were no lines separating the panels, you would never notice the difference in hue. We studied that phenomenon in grad school.