aba29

Hi All,
I'm new to Club Lexus so I apologize if this thread has been mentioned before. I was in a small fender bender and as a result I have damage to the right rear bumper. I took my car to the Lexus body shop and they claimed that I will obviously need a new bumper and marker light. However, what I was not anticipating was all the other work that would need to be done. According to the body shop, Silver is the most difficult color to match so they would need to paint the quarter panels as well, to ensure a true match. In order to paint the quarter panels, they would have to remove the luggage rack, raise the roof of the car and remove the quarter glass (which would require a glass specialist). All of this totaling $2,200.

I did get another estimate and they never mentioned painting the quarter panels--just replacing the bumper.

I've only had this vehicle for a month, so I would like the work to be done correctly. I'm not sure if all the work that the Lexus body shop mentioned is necessary though.

Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

vlad_a

Get the insurance to pay out on this estimate and go to another bodyshop.

All we got for the front bumper crack was a repair estimate, not even a bumper replacement.
Needless to say, no blending-in. I wouldn't want metal panels to be painted anyway.
If anything, I'd say silver is on the easier color-scale to match. It hides imperfections really well.

BertL

OP, first, welcome to CL. Very sorry to hear about the fender bender -- hopefully you are A-OK other than your RX.

I agree with vlad_a. My former BMW 335i was a dark blue metallic. I'm super picky how things look, and can see tone variation on most vehicles (not all my Lexi!) between "plastic" vs metal components. Anyway. I had the front nose/bumper fixed 3 times:

1. Long-story short: My BMW dealer drilled holes in the front bumper even though I had it noted on my order and two other sets of paperwork not to. They supposedly fixed it when I brought that to their attention on the day of pick-up. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the dealer's body shop did a cheap "blend-in" approach to fix the bumper holes. My car looked fine upon-pickup in all sort of lighting conditions, but when I had a clear bra applied several months later, and the installer had to remove it because of a flaw in the material -- whammo -- off came all the blended-in paint on the bumper -- the rest of the bumper and vehicle was fine as one would expect. Issue was, the paint wasn't "baked-on".
2. I took it to a professional body shop that specialized in only high-end Ferrari, Lambo, Porsche, BMW. It was sad to see all those cars in the lot waiting for repair. Cost to remove the bumper/front nose with all the lights, radar system, etc, patch, sand, paint match, spray, bake, reinstall, and buff came in around $1K approx 4-5 years ago. That body shop went so far as to tell me if I didn't like the job they could do matching the finish on the bumper (or nearly any color I would bring them), they would redo it at their expense to my satisfaction. Well, the tone, finish, etc was flawless when I went to pick it up at the end of the week, and no other body parts like the hood or front side panels needed to be resprayed. (FWIW, the body shop owner told me that sometimes the blended-in paint approaches begin to show a difference over time depending on conditions it's exposed to. I don't know if thats a fact or not, but it sort of makes sense to me given the way it peeled off...)
3. The same exact thing happened resulting in a flawless finish when I took it back in to the same shop to have the BMW redone to fix scrapes on the underside of its too-low nose that was damaged by a parking lot bumper that got too close.

Net here, just as vlad_a says, matching paint is very possible without respraying other panels around the area, but you need to do a little legwork to find a shop that works on the right types of cars that give you the confidence the job they'll do will meet your expectation. You, or someone, will have to pay for that sort of labor and workmanship though -- IMHO, the cheap way out isn't what I'd ever allow to be done on one of my rides that I planned to keep for any amount of time - regardless of what my insurance would or would not pay for.

Good luck.

Clutchless

Keep in mind that if you do not use insurance the fender bender will not show up on the Carfax report when you sell or trade the car in. That clean record will increase its value. That alone may make it worthwhile to pay cash.
I also agree that there is no reason to paint the brand new metal if only the bumper needs replacement. The Lexus dealer is just running up the bill. Plus I think the undamaged metal will look worse than if they leave it alone and it sounds like complete bulls&it that they have to raise the roof and remove the windows.. Bumpers never exactly match the metal in color because they are plastic. Find a good body shop that will just replace the bumper.