SpecialED
12-12-2004, 10:42 AM
After many months of considering where to have my MR2 worked on, getting estimates, and waiting for replacement parts, I've finally gotten my car to someone who is committed to doing the bodywork and paint on the backend of my MR2. This of course was supposed to done last winter, and the car should have been done by late summer, but this is my life, not how things are supposed to go. :rolleyes:
Since there's a fairly good chance I will sell the car soon after it's fixed, I couldn't swallow the $5,500 to $7,000 estimates I was getting to get the car fixed and completely repainted by a professional body shop. This was with me supplying the Tom's style rear bumper cover and new '94 taillights - those estimates were mostly just for labor and paint (and a new rear quarterpanel - about $650 by itself).
Flyboy's father-in-law is a bodyman who works at a shop in Denver. He's agreed to do the work on it for me at his house, and he thinks he can salvage the existing quarterpanel with labor rather than replace it, which should save some money.
Rather than a full repaint, he buffed and polished the existing paint and showed me that the color was pretty close to the prepainted new '94-up taillight center trimpiece, so he feels he can make it look pretty good without repainting the whole car.
It should be under $3,000 total, if there aren't any unforseen issues/parts cost.
The car won't be ready until around Feb. of 2005, but that's not that long I guess since the car's been wrecked for over a year now. I'm already excited though!
The changes from stock I'm making are:
*Replace '91 style taillights with '94-up
*remove all badging from car (both front and rear Toyota emblems, fill license plate holes in front bumper cover. No "Toyota" or "turbo" emblem on the trunklid either)
*paint existing side trim pieces white to match car instead of OEM silver
*Tom's rear bumper cover instead of OEM cover
I was originally going to take the rear wing off completely to save weight and also to have a different looking MR2, but I decided that might hurt its chance for resale based on the idea that most people like the wing on the SW20 MR2. Plus, I'd have to figure out some way to make the power antenna look decent since it sticks up about 2" from the sheetmetal without the side trim for the wing.
I got some replacement '91 wing parts from a guy on the big board and will have those reinstalled and painted (they're from a red MR2). It's only about 15 lbs. anyway. I can just turn up the AVC-R another .1 kg/cm2 I guess. :p
For those of you who haven't seen my car, this is what it used to look like before the "incident" at 2nd Creek -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MyMR2byRandyShibata.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MR2atDynopro.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MR2atBandimereKingStreet2003.jpg
And this is what it looked like afterwards -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/more%20random%20pics%20but%20not%20of%20dogs/MR2_tire_rack2.jpg
Since there's a fairly good chance I will sell the car soon after it's fixed, I couldn't swallow the $5,500 to $7,000 estimates I was getting to get the car fixed and completely repainted by a professional body shop. This was with me supplying the Tom's style rear bumper cover and new '94 taillights - those estimates were mostly just for labor and paint (and a new rear quarterpanel - about $650 by itself).
Flyboy's father-in-law is a bodyman who works at a shop in Denver. He's agreed to do the work on it for me at his house, and he thinks he can salvage the existing quarterpanel with labor rather than replace it, which should save some money.
Rather than a full repaint, he buffed and polished the existing paint and showed me that the color was pretty close to the prepainted new '94-up taillight center trimpiece, so he feels he can make it look pretty good without repainting the whole car.
It should be under $3,000 total, if there aren't any unforseen issues/parts cost.
The car won't be ready until around Feb. of 2005, but that's not that long I guess since the car's been wrecked for over a year now. I'm already excited though!
The changes from stock I'm making are:
*Replace '91 style taillights with '94-up
*remove all badging from car (both front and rear Toyota emblems, fill license plate holes in front bumper cover. No "Toyota" or "turbo" emblem on the trunklid either)
*paint existing side trim pieces white to match car instead of OEM silver
*Tom's rear bumper cover instead of OEM cover
I was originally going to take the rear wing off completely to save weight and also to have a different looking MR2, but I decided that might hurt its chance for resale based on the idea that most people like the wing on the SW20 MR2. Plus, I'd have to figure out some way to make the power antenna look decent since it sticks up about 2" from the sheetmetal without the side trim for the wing.
I got some replacement '91 wing parts from a guy on the big board and will have those reinstalled and painted (they're from a red MR2). It's only about 15 lbs. anyway. I can just turn up the AVC-R another .1 kg/cm2 I guess. :p
For those of you who haven't seen my car, this is what it used to look like before the "incident" at 2nd Creek -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MyMR2byRandyShibata.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MR2atDynopro.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/MR2/MR2atBandimereKingStreet2003.jpg
And this is what it looked like afterwards -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/hsunchen/more%20random%20pics%20but%20not%20of%20dogs/MR2_tire_rack2.jpg