Used Hood or Repaint?

[BrightEs]

My M coupe hood was repainted by the previous owner after an accident by the owner before him. The painter who did it did a less than perfect job and the resulting hood has a lot of orange peel and is slightly blue tinge.

My Coupe's Titanium Silver - meaning there shouldn't be any problem finding a used one. But the question is, am I better off finding a used one or repainting the one I've got? Biggest worry is a poor color match with either option.

[Muzz258]

I would repaint the one you have. You have the choice on painter quality.

The hood is a very big item. Not sure how much damage would be done to the paint work of a second hand one in the whole remove, transport, refit process. You may end up wanting to repaint the new hood too.

[BimmerBreaker]

For a proper match you should do the bumper, hood and blend into the surrounding panels (usually A-pillar, then doors/sideskirt)

[BrightEs]

Sounds like I'll be shopping around for paint shops this summer, thanks guys.

[z3forlife]

It took two shipments/hoods to get one to the body shop from BMW after a guy backed into my old Z. If it’s straight use it for sure.

[zellamay]

It took two shipments/hoods to get one to the body shop from BMW after a guy backed into my old Z. If it’s straight use it for sure.

Let them know you expect the paint to match the rest of the car. Some will paint, then when it doesn't match, explain to you that the other paint has faded due to age, and that they bought the right paint per the car's paint code. Nonsense. Let them know part of what you expect is that they compensate for the condition of the rest of the paint when choosing paint color.

[Mr Bingley]

You say the car was previously involved in an accident and the hood was repainted. Was it damaged in the accident? If so it may not be a simple matter of repainting alone. Also, BMW was experimenting with water based paints on our cars, and the water based primer was not a successful experiment as it turned out. This is why the paint chips so readily. If you'r going to repaint the hood, have it stripped to bare metal and re-primed with a urethane epoxy primer. A good painter should be able to color match and blend the surrounding panels so that you can't tell that it's not a perfect match (there's no such thing as a perfect match--just the illusion of match).

[jbourne99]

Check with previous owner where it was repainted at in case they offer lifetime guarantee. Also check if it was done via insurance company as sometimes insurance companies insure their repairs for life of car if work was done "in network."

[BrightEs]

Check with previous owner where it was repainted at in case they offer lifetime guarantee. Also check if it was done via insurance company as sometimes insurance companies insure their repairs for life of car if work was done "in network."

It was kind of one of those unfortunate and really sad situations which are hard to resolve. The owner of the paint shop passed away shortly after delivering the car back to the previous owner so there was nothing that could be done regarding returning it for touch up. That is a good idea about the insurance part though, I'll have to look into that one.