[s-cars] LAC -bad body shop experience

[Mike Claire]

I've had the whole day to cool down a little.  This morning, when I got a
look at the car, my second reaction that all this is my fault anyway.
(First reaction was to do bodily harm and property damage).  I'd sure like
to know what you guys think.

My third car is an '84 Mercedes 300TD (diesel wagon).  You just don't see
cars like this often. It was all original, no body work of any kind, ever.
The interior was about 98%, and the exterior was at least 90%.  It happened
to be at a Mercedes mechanic's, I dropped my friend off there and I saw it.
It belonged to one of his customers and it was for sale, and I bought it for
cheap.

Fast forward about a year and a half.  This thing has become the number 1
car in the family.  The UrS stays in the garage, covered most of the time.
I work from home and just don't get to drive that much.  The Suburban is a
gas hog, so that only gets used to take stuff to the dump.  The Mercedes has
racked over 25K miles since we got it.  It's the best car I've ever had,
economics wise.  Plus, it's cool in a goofy sort of way.

So.  Like I said, the body was about 90%.  I'm about to take it thru it's
2nd New England winter (it's a North Carolina car).  There were 4 spots that
got chipped somehow, years ago and had developed into Dime sized surface
defects (water got under there and crept.)  Plus, the valence under the
front bumper showed some surface rust.  I wanted to get this stuff fixed.

I brought the car to several shops and asked them just to do a touch up.
Every one of them refused - they all said I had to do a panel blend for each
one..  I said that's overkill, and I don't care if the paint doesn't match
on those spots.  I didn't want overspray, a bad paint match, etc. etc.  I
just wanted to keep the car original and keep it from rusting up.  I didn't
care if it wasn't perfect, it isn't a museum piece - my wife is using it for
a bus every day of the year.  Plus, I just don't like body shops, I've never
had a good experience at one.

Finally, I went into an old-school autobody wholesale supplier, asked them
to mix me a 1/2 pint of paint, I was going to do it myself.  But while he
was mixing the paint I gave the guy my story and asked him what he'd do.  He
gave me the name of a friend of his that he goes back to high school with -
he'd do it my way.  Great.

So I go talk to "Mike".  He takes me right back to the panel blend.  Says no
way I want him to just fix the spot, for a small amount of money he can do
it right.  I gave up and let him do it.  He called me this morning and said
the paint's on, come on down and check it out.

I damn near fainted.  I bet my father-in-law would have thought it was fine,
but nobody on this list would think so.  The match was poor, and the excuse
given was that the paint faded since it was new so the paint code didn't
work.  They did "the best they could" manually matching it - and they
thought it was pretty good.  Well it isn't.  I'm still trying to figure out
why guys have been repainting cars since about 1903, but these guys couldn't
anticipate that my car was going to turn out this way.

Far as I'm concerned it's like they raped my car.  I'll deal with them,
they're going to have to respray it and they'll get it right.   But the car
is never going to be what it was, and like I said - I blame myself for it.
I took the word of these guys and I knew better.  I should have just touched
up the car myself.  Man I had body shops.



Mike