Any recent experience with RDU area body shops?

Keith Vail · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:25 am

jeremy gast wrote:

Which one Keith? Capital Blvd or Ice drive(brier creek). Both have just revamped there entire staff and Ice drive won some kind of award for customer satisfaction for body shops in Wake County.

It was the one near Brier Creek. I had the work done back in October so it is possible there has been a complete overhaul since then but their office manager was the biggest prick I have ever dealt with and blamed me for messing up the body panel alignment when I brought the car back a couple days later because I wasn't happy with some body gaps.

jeremy gast · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:59 am

ya he is no longer with them!!

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 11:22 am

Keith Vail wrote:

It was the one near Brier Creek.

I remember seeing your FB post about that. Man, that really stinks and I usually work with Arnie at the Capital location and he's been awesome.

Like they say, it's all about the people I guess.

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:37 pm

Try Johnson's body shop in durham too. They were super nice when I took the mazda there. The adjuster(?) told me not to get it painted and took the car back to the shop. He had one of his paint guys buff out all the scratches(free) and gave me the card to the dent dominator. He showed me some of their paint work while I was there and I was impressed. Go to the Fay st location.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:40 pm

I got estimates from Triangle and from Johnson today. $1258 and $1186, respectively. There aren't any used or reconditioned bumpers to be had anywhere, so a new OEM one has to be procured. They're expensive, roughly $700.

I have an appointment with Performance tomorrow, but need to reschedule it already due to a work conflict. The woman who answered the phone was pretty impolite, so that's not off to a great start.

The Triangle guy was way more thorough, but he confused me. The bumper has a strip like a rub strip on its outside, painted the same color but replaceable. That piece is physically reusable. So the Triangle guy said what they would be doing is painting the large bumper, which would be new, and putting the old trim piece over top of it. That's going to look awful, because the paint's not in great shape on the existing bumper. It's dull and kind of peeling, and would look absurd on a brand new, freshly painted bumper. I tried to explain that this was no good, because while the existing stuff looks dull, it's at least uniformly dull, but the estimator didn't seem to understand.

Neither shop seemed to be able to make sense of the computer diagram of how the bumper went together. The Triangle guy at least called the MB dealer for help - the Johnson guy sort of picked whatever he thought "must be it."

I'm a little unsure what I'll do at this point.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:55 pm

The insurance company said "get estimate, we'll cut check", right? If so, find highest estimate. Get check for that.

Then procure the parts you want replaced yourself. Go to whichever body shop you felt best about at least being able to match the paint, and have them shoot the parts you need shot. Re-install yourself.

That's what I'm doing (well, one of MY employees is doing the "yourself" part) with the front bumper cover on our newish Pilot that got bustificated by a suicidal deer. Well, except the part about dealing with insurance. With the deductible we have, it's not worth filing a claim for. It literally ONLY busted the bumper cover. No other damage. Very lucky.

--Donnie

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:25 pm

Donnie, that's what I think I'll do. It doesn't look like it's all that difficult to pull a bumper off a W124.

Question for the group: is something like this tear fixable? Found a guy with an E420 he's parting out on Craigslist. It's blue, and it has this tear in it, but he only wants $50 for it.

BluMB Bumper2 by krshultz, on Flickr

Les Davis · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 2:04 pm **Posts:** 2059

Karl Shultz wrote:

Donnie, that's what I think I'll do. It doesn't look like it's all that difficult to pull a bumper off a W124.

Question for the group: is something like this tear fixable? Found a guy with an E420 he's parting out on Craigslist. It's blue, and it has this tear in it, but he only wants $50 for it.

BluMB Bumper2 by krshultz, on Flickr

I'd think you could make that look decent with a little duct tape on the inside, of course I'm not Karl Shultz. :-)

jeremy gast · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:48 pm

you can check with the bumper place in wendell/zebulon to see what they would charge. Tell them your calling from Wagners. They will melt and fill bumpers like that for weird stuff. i had them do a older discovery bumper for me once for work

919-365-6061

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2012 6:04 pm

jeremy gast wrote:

you can check with the bumper place in wendell/zebulon to see what they would charge. Tell them your calling from Wagners. They will melt and fill bumpers like that for weird stuff. i had them do a older discovery bumper for me once for work

919-365-6061

I just called them. The woman on the phone told me that they don't do that kind of thing, that they sell reconditioned bumpers, but don't repair individual ones. Then she said that they'd do it, but it would cost me $480.00. I can get a brand new one from an online MB dealer for $510.

At $50.00 for the blue one, though, it's worth a shot, so I told the guy I'd buy it. If nothing else it'll give me practice taking one on and off.

BretLuter · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:12 pm

Saw a place in Clayton today that had "We Repair Bumpers" painted on the front windows of their shop. Can't remember the name, but it's right off Hwy 70, just before the Hwy 42 east turn off. I don't think you can get there directly from Hwy 70, I think you have to turn right onto Hwy 42, then turn right again onto a service road.

The shop is a motorcycle repair shop, I guess they have experience repairing plastic bodywork on bikes, so they're branching out to fixing car bumpers. I think they do paint too, but not sure.

A friend of mine once repaired a plastic Fiero bumper that looked torn like the one you posted- he bought an epoxy plastic bumper repair kit, mixed the 2 parts of the epoxy together and bonded the backside of the bumper. It turned out great I thought.

EDIT: Found the motorcycle place-
http://www.sportbikeplasticsrepairs.com/home

Based on their website and the sign in their window, I feel sure they could fix that tear, the question is: How much it will cost.....

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2013 1:27 pm

I'm resurrecting my own thread here.

Now I'm looking for something different. I'm looking for a shop to do a full body respray on the Mercedes. The things I want addressed:

1. There is a small spot of rust forming, which I want gone. So I expect some bodywork will be involved.
2. Dent removal
3. Repaint bumpers and lower cladding
4. Repaint main body

I'd say I'm after "middle of the road" level work. I don't want my tires and headlights painted because they couldn't be bothered to mask stuff properly. :lol:

I also don't need a show car quality job. I love this car, but TBH, it's not worth a great deal of money. So it's crazy to spend several grand on a respray. This is out of pocket.

Anyone know of a place like that? Preferably someplace willing to let me bring them a car where I've already taken off the trim (rain rails, grille, lights, etc) to save some money?

Thanks!

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2013 1:52 pm

Karl Shultz wrote:

I'm resurrecting my own thread here.

Now I'm looking for something different. I'm looking for a shop to do a full body respray on the Mercedes. The things I want addressed:

1. There is a small spot of rust forming, which I want gone. So I expect some bodywork will be involved.
2. Dent removal
3. Repaint bumpers and lower cladding
4. Repaint main body

I'd say I'm after "middle of the road" level work. I don't want my tires and headlights painted because they couldn't be bothered to mask stuff properly. :lol:

I also don't need a show car quality job. I love this car, but TBH, it's not worth a great deal of money. So it's crazy to spend several grand on a respray. This is out of pocket.

Anyone know of a place like that? Preferably someplace willing to let me bring them a car where I've already taken off the trim (rain rails, grille, lights, etc) to save some money?

Thanks!

2 grand is the only way you're going to get a middle of the road respray. Anything less you're not going to like it. I spend ~1000 on the 328 several years ago at Maaco. Wasn't overly impressed w/ their work and had to take it back twice for over spray and runs, but it has held up well.

If you like the car, spend the money, but I think 2 grand will be realistic for a paint job you'll be happy with.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:06 pm

I agree with Rodney $2K sounds like decent number. My Shelby stripes were $1200 on the Mustang, and my painter used "middle of the road" materials" cost wise. That was with NO body work at all.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:08 pm

When I was thinking about getting my integra painted, I saw a $800 job out of one shop and it was terrible. The only ones that seemed worth while that I saw were in the $1500-2000 range with no body work. That's when I gave up on the idea.

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