[Nucman]

I was out for a movie this week and I am petty sure the people in the Honda Odyssey that was parked next to me when we got out of the CT must have hit my car when they were backing out and scraped the paint along the front edge of the right rear wheel well/right rear door area. I was really upset when my friend pointed it out to me and I don't even have 1300 miles on the CT yet!

I knew some of the scrapes were just on the clear coat and probably would buff out but at least 3 or 4 definitely looked to have dug into the paint and/or down to the metal with the worse one about 4 inches long. Good news is there wasn't any real metal damage...just paint/clear coat work..but I wasn't happy at all...ughhhhh!!!

I debated if to take it into a good body shop but wasn't looking forward to them surely wanting to repaint/finish the whole area or if to try a paint/dent repair service. Figured either way I was probably going to end up paying $400-$1K to get this fixed and wanted to avoid disturbing the original paint/clear coat as much as possible so decided to go with the paint/dent repair service.

Called SameDay Scatch & Dent Repair and I have to say I couldn't be happier with the results. They were amazing! They took about 2 hours total, had the EXACT match on Honda Polished Metal Metallic paint, filled the 4-5 scrapes that had dug down into the paint, and built back up the clear coat. It ran me $547 but was worth every penny of it. I had used this company before for a rock ding on my previous CR-V and was very happy with their work there but had never sen their paint repair work before.

I have to say now I am a definite believer in their process and work. Considering that a body shop would have wanted to repaint almost the whole rear door/wheel well area and probably would have wanted the car for 3-4 days I am absolutely thrilled with the work these guys did. Unless you actaully knew where the other car scraped my CT, and I showed you that area, you would be extremely hard pressed to tell where the work had been done.

The only down side to the whole experience was that after seing how good the damaged area looke after the repair, I had to wash the rest of the car yesterday...and of course it has been raining here ever since

 

[combscoach]

Thanks for the great tip!

It seems like that would be a challenging color to match and conceal a scratch, so if they fixed that to perfection, they could probably repair any minor blemish.

 

[Crashmaster]

Having worked in the dealerships for more years than I would like to admit, we utilized the scratch and dent repair guy mainly for the Used Car department, but on occasion for the New Car Department. Their proprietary and normally secret methods for dent repair earned them thousands of dollars monthly from our dealership. The guy we used had such a great eye for color and could match paint and interior colors like an artist. Quite often they are half or even a third of what a body shop would charge. We tried them on a larger job (multiple creased fender) and sometimes, you just gotta replace the fender; not all wrinkles can be ironed out. Use them for their intended purpose: Leather/vinyl tears, punctures, headliner rips, small body dents/dints, scratches, and even a keyed car and they will save you money over a body shop.

 

[Nucman]

It seems like that would be a challenging color to match and conceal a scratch, so if they fixed that to perfection, they could probably repair any minor blemish.

Hi combscoach,

Well another lesson learned out of this experience from talking to and watching the SameDay tech was to ask for the guy that works the local Honda dealers. Although the SameDay guys are suppose to be able to blend a matching paint if needed, because the tech that came out for my repair works the local Honda dealers, he actually had the pre-mixed Honda Polished Metal Metallic in his truck (literally along with hundreds of other colors). He also said that metallic flake paints are actually easier to fix than a flat paint because of how the metal flakes catch and reflect the light actually makes the repair look to blend better. When he got done because he had a little of the paint left, he even made a walk around the car and offered to touch up any other little paint chips I would have had (good news was there weren't any ). They even infra-red bake the paint on-site so it should be good to go once the repair is done although he recommended not waxing the area for a month.

The other thing I learned from watching this tech work the repair is when it comes to touch up paint less is better. It seems to me it is all about the brush you use. I had always bought a container of Honda Touch Up Paint for every Honda I have ever owned, but no matter how carefully I tried, the touch-up never came out as well as I would have liked using the provided brush. Now I understand why...the installed brush in the Honda Touch-Up Paint is way to big. I will defiinitely use a much thinner brush and build up the paint if needed in the future.

 

[Nucman]

Having worked in the dealerships for more years than I would like to admit, we utilized the scratch and dent repair guy mainly for the Used Car department, but on occasion for the New Car Department. Their proprietary and normally secret methods for dent repair earned them thousands of dollars monthly from our dealership. The guy we used had such a great eye for color and could match paint and interior colors like an artist. Quite often they are half or even a third of what a body shop would charge. We tried them on a larger job (multiple creased fender) and sometimes, you just gotta replace the fender; not all wrinkles can be ironed out. Use them for their intended purpose: Leather/vinyl tears, punctures, headliner rips, small body dents/dints, scratches, and even a keyed car and they will save you money over a body shop.

Hi Crashmaster,

Funny you would mention using them at the dealership as that is exactly where I came across the work these guys can do for dings and dents. The dealer I normally take my Honda into for repairs offers their services as part of the work they can do. I had a pretty good ding from a flying rock that hit the right front pillar for the windshield on a previous CR-V. It put a really good ding into the pillar but didn't break the paint. I guess the good news is that it did hit the pillar because if it had been an inch further in and hit the windshield, judging from the depth of the ding and how big the rock looked when it hit the pillar, I think I would have been replacing the windshield.

Anyway, even the Service Rep. cautioned me that he wasn't sure they would be able to get the ding out given the location...but they did and you could barely tell the surface had been hit. I think you know they did good when the Service Reps. are coming out to check out the repair and see if they can spot where the ding was when I picked up my car.

But you also are right on target when you say that sometimes you just gotta know when to throw in the towel and replace the damaged area.