Must learn how to exit the garage...

[Alex.]

Enough time has now passed that I can talk rationally about what I have done and what to do next.

A couple of weeks ago, I turned too soon when exiting the garage and scraped the passenger side rear wheel arch and wheel along the side of the door frame. Only cosmetic damage, which is the silver lining...

20180704_070724 by Alex Taylor, on Flickr

20180704_070728 by Alex Taylor, on Flickr

20180704_070737 by Alex Taylor, on Flickr

20180704_070733 by Alex Taylor, on Flickr

20180704_070749 by Alex Taylor, on Flickr

So the question is what to do now?

1. Leave it, drive it, ignore it until the time comes to sell.
2. Have a go with T-Cut to possibly remove some of the scratching, not sure how well that will go with gel coat.
3. Have a go myself at making good the fibreglass (better than now, rather than perfect....) and touch up with paint. I'm not good with cosmetics...
4. Pay someone to repair the chunks of fibreglass and touch up the colour with paint.
5. Pay someone to fully repair and paint large swathes of the bodywork, so that it does not look like a patch of paint on gel coat.
6. Go all out and claim on my insurance for complete repair, hopefully deferring until the weather changes for winter.

I am conflicted and seek opinions...

Alex.

[locost220]

Not sure how you are going to match the two shades of blue
Rich.

[Alex.]

Not sure how you are going to match the two shades of blue
Rich.

Tester pots from B&Q, lots of tester pots....

Alex.

[greenwoo]

what about repairing to the point where its 'flat' and then getting someone to do a wrap on both arches?

[SteveRST]

Not sure how you are going to match the two shades of blue

haha good one


Sorry - nothing constructive to add. I feel your pain though

[Fury1630]

You have a Marley garage - like mine.

You could have a word with David T - he seems to be a dab hand with wheelarches.

If only there was a plasticy kind of paint that was available cheaply in a lot of colours & in small pots - maybe with a brush already attached ....

Oh - wait

IMGP8107.JPG (251.37 KiB) Viewed 2305 times

On a more helpful note, I repaired something similar on the bonnet, see my blog for June '13 here
http://blatterbeast.blogspot.com/2013/06/
Scroll down to the first two entries.

[DJ.]

It's pain when this sort of thing happens

I would leave the wheel, my newly refurbished wheel has worse damage from a stone hitting it!

I think I would carefully remove the loose fibres from the edge of the wheel arch, try and cover them over with a little resin and once smooth just touch it up with the nearest match paint you can find. You will see it, but I suspect most people won't.

As far as the marks on the surface go, I'd try something like coloured T cut and see how it goes. If you aren't happy you can move onto paint or wrapping.

Good luck

[scotty]

ohhh thats catching it....getting the himp and flooring it init!!
done it me self.lucky in my case it was the front wing and i found some nice edging strip to sorta cover it mostly.

[steve m]

That is a very easy repair, and David T will look at that and think "5 min job"
seriously, its an easy repair,

flat off all the bumps and scrapes with 80 grit wet and dry
small batch of p40 filler to fill the missing bit, and bigger scrapes, and let dry
Flat off with 80 wet and dry to get the shape back,
fill small scrapes etc with p38 filler and let dry
flat off with 40 grit to ensure the shape is correct
wet and dry with 400 then 600 grit paper
Spray grey primer over the whole area, and wet and dry until your happy with the shape
spray more primer to cover
spray the nearest match on the Ral chart of yellow you can get, and walk away

it really is a very easy repair,

and no one has ever mentioned my LHS rear wing, that's been repaired at least twice, doing the same thing with the garage door, and isn't the right colour !

[Alex.]

So no one advocating going the insurance route?
Shouldn't surprise me really!

OK, I'll have a go at a repair, when I get a chance.

Alex.