Body shop messed up this 2010 Camaro.. and I fixed it!

[Big Turkey]

I had detailed this camaro back in Febuary, and recently he had a SUV back into his front bumper, so he took it to a Chevy Dealership to get it fixed. Well they fixed it.. and he told them specifically not to touch the rest of the car since he had it detailed. Well.. of course they had to cut and buff the front bumper, but I think what happened was they accidentally hit part of the hood with their rotary buffer, tried to fix it and failed miserably and made it much worse!

He brought it to the dealer's attention that there were so many swirls and holograms on the hood and bumper and it was unacceptable. They told him they would fix it, so he left it with them for an additional week. After a week, he came back and it was worse than the week before! Haha. So he called me and I told him I would fix it, and see if they would reimburse him. They gladly handed over the keys and I went to work.

The pictures look BETTER than it did in person.. it was absolutely JACKED up. Holograms everywhere, swirls were even worse. They went halfway up the hood.

When he brought it to me, the camera mainly picked up the holograms... but the entire hood and bumper were covered in COBWEBS of swirls.. I cringed when I saw it:












So I went to work. It took about 7 hours of correction on the hood and bumper alone. I had to break out the big guns to correct what they did... they hit it hard! I used 2 machines, 4 different pads (yellow, orange, white and grey) and 4 different compounds.

I used Meg's 105, followed again with 105, followed with Menzerna's SIP, then Meg's 205, finally jeweled with Menzerna's PO85RD.

I tried using just Meg's 105 and it didn't get all of it out. Then I tried it again with Meg's 105 on a stronger machine and pad and it would mar the paint. 205 would not clear out the harder marring, so I had to follow with a ligher swirl remover and then 205 and then polish it up with PO85RD.

After it was all said and done.. here's what I got:







And here are some random correction shots:

Before:



After:




Swirls all around the edge of the bumper.. you know the previous "detailer" didn't pay attention to avoid corners. So I had to be careful not to rip through this fresh clear and paint.



After careful buffing with a compound:



And finally hitting it with a finishing polish:




Unfortunately, this is an everyday issue with body shops.. they don't put the time and care needed to get your care pristine. As long as it looks good in "most" light it looks good to them.

Enjoy!

[Matt]

Nice job

Unfortunately, this is an everyday issue with body shops.. they don't put the time and care needed to get your care pristine. As long as it looks good in "most" light it looks good to them.

Sad but true! It really annoys me that some people don't give a crap, and think that because they are using a buffer, it's better than nothing.

[A4 1.8tqm]

Nice work! Too bad some guy probably thought that he did a good job.

The other day I waited in my car outside the bank for the owner of a newer black truck (not sure what it was, only really looked at the paint LOL) parked next to me that had terrible Rotary holograms. He said he polished it himself, we chatted and I offered to show him "the way's of an Autogeek". We are all just servants doing the Geeks work.

[Mike Phillips]

First... nice save.

Unfortunately, this is an everyday issue with body shops.. they don't put the time and care needed to get your care pristine. As long as it looks good in "most" light it looks good to them.

Enjoy!

This is called a "Horror Story", it's the horror of finding out the people that are supposed to know what they're doing don't and it shows in their work and on someone's car.

The really sad part is most people don't know when they're the victim of hack work by a body shop, dealership or even detailer, if they do inspect their finish and they do realize their paint has been swirled-out, in most cases they don't know how to fix it and are at the mercy of taking their car back to the same people that caused the problem or rolling the dice and trying to find a detailer that actually knows what they're doing.

Nice save, you're friend is lucky he knows you.

[dnoraker]

I'm amazed at how many hacks there are out there. I was just talking to my wife's uncle last night who always buys the $500 for 5 years of detail jobs at the dealership. After he bought a new dark blue Solstice and had his first detail, he noticed they actually were putting MORE swirls in the paint. When he confronted them about it, they said that the buffing is actually showing what the paint really looked like in the first place. Huh???

[AV8R]

Just because someone works at a body shop doesn't mean they have skills with a buffer. If I were you, I'd take these photos to the body shop manager/owner and offer your services. Sounds like it could be a lucrative deal for everyone.

[Truitt]

I actually got rid of a black SLK because of the hack job done by a local body shop. They swirled the !#@# out of my paint and called it "blending". So they swirled the origiginal paint on adjacent panels so it would match the new swirls. They didn't mask anything, so the headlight covers wound up seriously hazed over and scratched up. I had them redo the work twice and they still couldn't get it right. On top of that, the car wound up with new damage every time they got hold of it.

Sorry for the rant. I miss that car.

[DARK HORSE]

Excellent job Big T, nice recovery and great pictures! Have you tried the hydrotech pads? They work great, cut quickly and finish down very nice. I use them on all dark colors in need of serious correction.

[02CAMSS]

Nice save!

[Pie]

Great work!

I wonder what the Dealership said about it