My 2008 4/4 is well cared for, but showes a 7 inch string of bubbled paintwork along the lower rear aluminium mudguard trailing edge. I want to nip this very minor sign of corrosion in the bud. Berrybrook was giving me a valuation for insurance purposes recently, and quite rightly pointed it out, reckoning a sum of £250 per wing is what they would expect it to cost. A month or so later I duly trotted off to a local body shop near to my home town !
I was surprised to be told that they would need to take all four wings off, detach all electrics from the wings, match paint (of course).
£5,000 !!! Yes Sir ! !! For no lesser figure would we wish to consider the undertaking !
Five thousand pounds..!
It seems we now have Rip-Off-Devon.
Exit stage door left from that premises.
What sort of similar "rip-off-quotes" have disgusted you ?

Wow! I enquired locally at a reputable paint shop, only really wanting some blemishig and stone chipping attended to; they weren't too interested in that work, so I asked about a full respray if I wanted to go that route, with ceramic coating for protection where you would put ppf.
I was told they would only do this to removed panels, and if I did all the prep removal and refitting myself, it would be about 4k.
Since my mog lives on the street and is a daily drive, I have deferred this option, but locally, Cotswolds, I am advised that is about ball park.

That sounds about right for a quality job, you can always find cheaper but that will come at it's own price in the future.
You get what you pay for.

Wrong Answer !

It's sometimes difficult to figure out whether a quote is reasonable or not, and it often depends on what your expectations are as to the quality of the result.

If you expect to get a perfect, invisible match that is going to get rid of the bubbling completely and permanently then the wings are going to have to come off, and the wings are going to have to be properly cleaned and stripped back. Better to have all 4 wings done to avoid a visual mismatch between front and rear, so it's bound to cost a bit

On the other hand, you could probably find someone would would rub the visible corrosion back in situ, prime and paint it with a rattle can from a supplier that will provide the original colour code. This would take a day or two, so you could probably get this done for a few hundred pounds. Paint fades, so it won't be a perfect match, and local repairs like this are never permanent so you could expect the corrosion to return in a few years, but it may meet your needs. Given the increasing enthusiasm for people to publicly criticise or even litigate if they're unhappy with the result of work, it would be a risky job for any tradesperson to take on, but you might be able to find a Chipsaway or similar operative to give it a go. When I tried this route to deal with paint chips on my front wings, I was met with flat refusals to take the work on, on the basis they couldn't guarantee a perfect result.

Alternatively you could accept that this "very minor sign of corrosion" is a nice bit of patina that shows your car is ageing nicely, do what you can with protective waxes to slow the advance as much as you can, and just live with it happily by standing a bit further back from the car when you admire it. That's what I do with my car.

I read the title and initially thought it was people using other peoples quotes lol, its early :-)

+1 for Harwich



Stefan

Hamwich in place of Harwich.....of course

Stefan

That's the way I try to go, even if it doesn't always work emotionally, but most of the time it does. There are quite ugly rust bubbles between the running board and the bottom edge of the door. You can't just remove it and experts told me it would keep coming back. I don't know if it's true or not. And you would have to remove all four wings in my case too.

I would take Tim's "live with it" route on the principle that as soon as I had had the work done, the car would inevitably be involved in a road traffic collision necessitating the removal and repair/replacement of all the affected panels anyway.