Hey Guys -

About 6 months ago, a piece of plywood flew off of a truck in front of me on the freeway, and smashed into my bumper

See, in my haste to maneuver and avoid having my head taken off, I missed the guy's license plate number. Turns out it happened right in front of an off-ramp; the same off-ramp that he cleverly used to his advantage to avoid any liability.

Move forward 2 weeks, and I get a $600 quote to have it repaired - I nearly bit that bullet, but the cost seemed high. At the same time, the thought of putting on an AP2 front was somewhat appealing, so I figured I'd look into getting a used berlina AP2 front off of CL or eBay.

Come to 2 weeks ago, and one appears on eBay. The guy said that it was freshly painted, and that he had the receipt. Cool! I won the auction. So I get the thing today, and, of course - the paint was absolutely attrocious. No apparent prep work had been done; rock pits along the bottom of the bumper had just been painted over with no attempt to fill.

Well, since the bad news was primarily on the bottom, I figured an OEM lip would hide that so no big deal. Then I noticed something else - the back of the faux duct openings were painted GLOSS black. Is that the way the AP2 front is supposed to be painted? The AP1 ducts are matte. I assume the same is true for the AP2... yes?

My hunch is that my trying to get around a $600 paint job will cost me around, oh, $600... <sigh>

 

Yup. AP2 ducts are matte black. Bummer about your mishap.

 

you might ask on the forum about how to sandpaper the gloss and paint it yourself. i've done a poor job before and it was easy, so maybe a good job is difficult but a reasonable saturday chore.