[accident]lost control and skidded along a highway concrete

[kwak88]

WALL

HOW DO I FIX THIS?! (without buying a completely new paint job of the entire car)





these are my options thus far...

1. buy touch up paint and apply it in the area...(will this work well?)
2. buy a leather cover for the front part of my car...

[Leedeth]

What?! How did this happen?

Don't buy a car bra to cover it up, it'll just look more ugly, and you're wasting your money.

[AHTOXA]

The only way to make it look decent is a repaint. Touch-up paint will not do well as it's called "touch-up" for a reason. If you apply touch-up pain to that much surface it will look wavy and probably off-color. It may be possible but I doubt it.

Leather bra can be used to cover it up but grit, dust and other debris will get under it and has potential to essentially sand and dull the paint under it.

Around here something like this would probably cost around $200 to repaint and does not require to paint the whole car. It seems to me that only the bumper cover is affected. Good body shops will be able to blend the color to yours so that it doesn't look off.

[kwak88]

nope, its not plastic..feels like wood??


if i leave it like that...there is a risk of it getting worse/cracking?


the problem with repainting it is, 1. expensive, 2. the color has been discontinued...

[potownrob]

[accident]lost control and skidded along a highway concrete

are you sure that's all that got scratched up?

[Rope-Pusher]

buy some cheap ricer body parts? Now you know why NASCAR has all those stickers on their cars!

[kwak88]

yea, its the only area that got affected

[theholycow]

It's not wood. It's almost certainly some sort of plastic, but if it's not then it's metal.

Discontinued colors don't matter. If it wasn't discontinued and you bought a can of the same color, it wouldn't match; brand new paint is fresh, paint that's been on the car for 20+ years is faded. Bodyshops match the paint manually for each job (which is why it costs $200 instead of $50).

[wannabe]

glad ur all right...a bit shaken up tho, i bet

[AHTOXA]

nope, its not plastic..feels like wood??


if i leave it like that...there is a risk of it getting worse/cracking?


the problem with repainting it is, 1. expensive, 2. the color has been discontinued...

Expensive - perhaps. I'm broke as well and I don't have $200 laying around either.

Discontinued doesn't matter because the color can still be matched.

The front clip is definitely not wood but plastic. That particular piece is called the bumper cover in body shop terms.

[Tinton]

What a noob

I drove an expensive ass show-car around as my daily driver when I was your age. I never even nicked the paint, not even once. I had a couple close calls with my Camaro, including one time where I was on I-75 and it was wet, I saw a Saleen and wanted to race from about a 70 mph roll. The rear tires just wouldn't get traction (even with 275's lol) and I nearly spun it. But I didn't, . My point is, if you're driving correctly, its never too slippery, and you just f*cked up your mint looking Z .

There really isn't an inexpensive way to fix it without making it look like crap. It had perfect, mint paint before, and unless you get a $3000 paintjob it'll never look the same. Good luck fixing it, an auto collision shop might be able to match the paint and re-paint your nose and fender. That's your best bet, it'll probably be $500-$1000 to fix, and you'll have a good paintjob if they match the paint perfectly and blend it in right.

[ColJessip]

[asshole]
Please go trade that car in while you can, for a beater.
[/asshole]

[kamesama980]

Don't drive stupid LOL
I did a 180 entering the tollway a few weeks ago. hit the change in pavement bump at the bottom of the ramp at 60+ and the ass wagged a couple times came around front. Then did a J-turn and kept going. luckily without hitting anyone/thing. michelin energy mxc4 tires in the rain FTL. Now I'm a hell of a lot more careful in the rain in that car till I get different tires in back.

seriously tho, just get the paint matched and have them paint only the bumper cover.

[theholycow]

michelin energy mxc4 tires in the rain FTL. Now I'm a hell of a lot more careful in the rain in that car till I get different tires in back.

It's not the tires, it's the driver. Driving on the road isn't like driving on a track; you can't drive at the limit of your car's ability because there are always new unexpected things to deal with, even on roads you know well. There's pavement joints that you can learn, but there's road debris / animals / idiot drivers that you can't, and they're all hiding just around the blind portion of that next curve.

I've always known that logically, and I suspect that you do too, but it never really hit home for me until one day when I was cruising along slowly on a suburban street. Visibility was great, it was a perfect day for driving and there were no fences or tall grass or any obstructions as I approached a slight bend in the road. Then a toddler riding a small toy came blasting out across the road from behind a curb and a trash can or whatever. If I hadn't been afraid of traffic enforcement and obeying the 15mph speed limit there, that kid could have been road pizza (and I'd probably be Bubba's cellmate/girlfriend). I was lucky but I saw what could have happened.

There were other times before that when the meaning of not driving at the limit was demonstrated much more severely, when I had spun out from a pavement joint or run over a curb because my crappy tires didn't give me the wet grip I thought they did...but it never really meant much until that time. I don't want anyone else to have to learn it the same way.

[AHTOXA]

Any kind of accident is usually caused by multiple things rather than one single item. While I agree that in this case it sounds to be a driver mistake more than anything, but I do have to say that there are some tires that are downright scary in the rain and do not inspire any confidence.