Well, I've had my stook less than a month and I've already screwed it up . I was driving down a windy mountain road, and was coming into a pretty tight turn. As I got into the turn, I see that there is a limb on the road blocking most of my lane. I swerve to the left lane, and then a car comes around the corner. I had to swerve back early, and I think I caught the limb. There are some pretty good scratches and chips out of the paint just in front of the rear wheel, and a few on the passenger side door and doorsill.

I guess it could have been worse, as I yanked the steering wheel back (probably too hard), the back end came out and I thought I was going to wack the other car with it. I almost caught the slide, but then the back end came out the other side and I ended up in the ditch, missing a guardrail by a few feet. I had to be pulled out as I was caught on a small bank.

Anyway, so should I take it to the dealer or to a body shop? I didn't have very good luck with my S-10 when I took it in to the dealer to have the rear quarter panel re-done. The paint didn't match all that good.

Thanks,

 

Well the problem here is it doesn't matter which, they can both screw up a car. Being an independent shop owner, I'm biased towards them because they make their living doing one thing, fixing cars. The dealer however makes their money selling cars. Whoever you choose make sure of a couple of things. 1.Guarantee on workmanship and paint matching. 2. Professional looking and acting people usually translates into professional work. 3. Look for cerfificate such as Certified First, if they have gone through that type of process they must be a good shop. 4. High end paint line, PPG, Dupont, Spies Hecker, or Sikkens. 5. Ask to see something they've done and see if you like their work. Another word on Certified First is if you search bodywork on any major search engine you will find their banner go there and type in your zip code to locate closest shop near you. Good huntin

 

My experience so far (since my 6-week old S2K just got rear-ended on Thursday) is that the majority of Honda Dealers don't do their own bodywork on-site. They usually give the cars to an independent shop whose work they warrantee. Also, I've heard from both bodyshops and dealers that Honda does not sell their paints (which, by the way, are Du Pont), so any paint used will be color-matched by computer, which I've heard is hard to do with Silverstone and Spa Yellow because there is flake in the paint. My advice is to find out if a dealer does do on-site work or hand the cars over to a bodyshop . . . I doubt they'd tell you otherwise.

 

I'd probably check with the dealer to see if they recommend a specific body shop.

 

Thanks for the tips guys. I took it by an independent shop this morning for an estimate. The estimator was very professional and very easy to work with. I asked him about matching the paint, and he said it shouldn't be a problem (and he said they use DuPont paint). He said they had recently done a yellow S2K and had good luck with the color match and they also have a color match guarantee.

There was a red Corvette being done (which actually belonged to the estimator) that looked good.

 

I would actualyl strongly recommend AGAINST going with the deal for body-work.... They usually are getting a discounted rate ..actually making profit by having someone drive it to another body-shop. Look around your area (And surrounding citys)... There is nothing worse than having a shitty non-matching painjob on a nice new car.

If you live in Texas, let me know or check out the central-texas forum here.

-- Aaron