Repainting the nose

[5150neo]

I am by no means a body work guru, so I don't have a clue when it comes to the cost of refinishing. A couple weeks ago I put the nose of the car into a tall concrete curb.
Right front corner of the spoiler is cracked or separated
about four inches long. The spoiler needs to be reglassed and painted. Because of the obvious chips I decided to remove the bumper and have it repainted along with the spoiler. I called several companies that do carbon fibre and two of them suggested a company. I took the parts to this company and the owner quoted me a price of 500 dollars to repair the 4 inch break and repaint the two parts.
Does this price sound correct?

John

[dr.hess]

John,
Unfortunately, five bills does not sound out of line for the work. My wife got rear-ended in the Camry and the estimate from the dealer repair shop was double that for probably less work.

Dr.Hess

[saguilar]

I paid $400 for the repainting of both the bumper and spoiler (while off the car). No extra glass work was required. So, I would consider your $500 to be correct.

[feffman]

I did the glass repairs (previous owner damage) to the lower front valence a couple of years ago on my former SE. It needed no prep work to primer and paint. The cost was about $250 with the primer, several coats of black paint, clear coat and finishing.

May I suggest you check into a book titled "Fiberglass and Composite Materials" by author Forbes Aird. It helped me substantially to address the repairs. Cost of the book about $15-$20.

Mark Pfeffer

[karmavore]

Body work is expensive. Good body work is very expensive. And sometimes expensive body work insn't good. Butr I've never seen great body work done cheaply.

Luke.

[dknighto]

Assuming that you're not missing any material, you should be able to fix the crack with some epoxy and some sanding. Two part expoxy is quite a bit stronger than the two part polyester used by Lotus when originally casting the parts, so the repair would probably be stronger than the surrounding material. If you want to put some re-inforcement on the back of the part, the bondo fiberglass repair kits are cheap and have everything you need.

Either way, $500 for prep and paint on two parts is a pretty good price assuming they do a good job with it.

[jk1]

$500 is not a cheap price but it's not exorbitant either assuming they do a good job.

What color is your car? Color match is going to be the issue. Some are easy (black) some are not (Pearl white, Red). Make sure they use quality paint/clear. Do they feel they can match the color perfectly without blending into adjacent panels?

Jim

[bojangles]

how big a job is that to remove the bumper and spoiler? id like to get mine done over the winter.
Any tricks to removing the parts? any special tools/or glue needed?

[saguilar]

bojangles said:

how big a job is that to remove the bumper and spoiler? id like to get mine done over the winter. Any tricks to removing the parts? any special tools/or glue needed?

I went through this little ordeal last winter. The first thing you will need is small hands and arms. The next thing you should have is the parts diagram showing where all the bolts are. And when you think you know where they all are...you may (as I did) find extra connections not detailed on the parts diagram. As a hint, the diagram showed 11(?) bolts holding the bumper to the body. There were two extra bolts at the corners.

Tools needed: metric sockets, socket extensions, a universal-joint socket connector, s-handled metric wrenches, micro-click metric wrenches, an extension magnet and finally Crazy Glue (I'll explain later in post).

Continued...

[saguilar]

The process is quite straight forward. You will remove the pans on the front. You will remove the fog lights. Disconnect the horn but you will not be able to remove it yet. This is necessary to reach the fasteners. You will then need the extension and the universal socket connector. The spoiler is held on by 8 bolts (I think) to the bumper. Removing the nuts wil allow the spoiler to drop off. Now the fun begins!

There are 5 nuts in the front of the boot that need to come off (have fun diving head first and then trying to get back out!) That part is simple. Now you need to address the 2 fasteners that exist on each quarter panel. They are only accessible by removing existing equipment in the boot. First, remove the washer bottle. It just pops up and out of the way. There is a hole in the side behind were the washer bottle was. Here is where the small arms/hands come in. Believe me, there are 2 nuts in there. One fairly close, the other almost 8-10 inches farther in. Use the micro-click wrenches for this exercise. The magnet will help you retrieve nuts and washers.

Continued...

[saguilar]

The other side requires you to move the brake reservoir up and out of the way. Follow the factory instructions for decompressing the brake system before attempting. I was able to remove the 2 nuts that held the reservior to the side panel. I then propped the reservior up and out of the way with some strapping (used the wiper pivot as an anchor). There was enough flex in the lines that allowed me some room (but not much). The same exercise of reaching in and getting the 2 nuts on this side becomes obvious. Now you get to do it with a different hand!

There are other nuts that are accessible from the bottom at the corners. This is where my 2 mystery nuts appeared! I think in all, there were 13 (5 inside the boot, 4 on the sides and 4 at the corners).

Putting this all together is just doing the above in reverse. The only recommendation I have is to put a spot of crazy glue on each washer and then apply to its matching nut. This allows you to only worry about 1 thing while trying to affix it on the bolt. Believe me, it also helps to position the nut in the socket for the upside down bolts, too. The glue releases when pressure is applied so its pureley temporary.

Hope this helps!

Scott
'94 S4
ex-'91 M100

[5150neo]

Thanks everyone for your input. I normally stay out of trouble in this area and everyones input helps ease my complete lack of trust for anyone else doing work on my car even if its individual parts.
I took a good look around this fellows shop and the work I saw was flawless. I have worked with carbon fibre and glass quite a bit but never on body parts. The break in the spoiler is overlaping and some material is missing but not extensive. The owner of the shop doing the work was not at all concerned about the repair work so I decided to leave the work to him.
Bojangles- as for removing the front body work, its fairly strait foward accept for the two nuts on either side securing the bumper in front of the wheel arches. In this area it helps to have a broken arm bent slightly inward at a 45 degree angle.
Cheers
John

[MikeyRide]

dknighto said:

Assuming that you're not missing any material, you should be able to fix the crack with some epoxy and some sanding. Two part expoxy is quite a bit stronger than the two part polyester used by Lotus when originally casting the parts, so the repair would probably be stronger than the surrounding material.

You have to be careful with this kind of thing. If the epoxy left exposed in the repair has a different rate of expansion/contraction with changes in temperature, eventually the repair will be visible through the paint. The body guys call this "picturing".