A door and wheel arch repair on a white Ford KA. As white is an easy colour to work with (black being the opposite), this damaged wheel arch and door could be sprayed. Usually large panels are outside the scope of the SMART system, however lacquer can easily be blended out with no visible feather lines.
After a bit of polish the repair is complete and looks as good as new.
Seem to be doing lots of wheels at the moment! Had to refurbish this set of alloys, usually I don’t like doing ones with too many spokes. However these where only scuffed on the top of the spokes so didn’t need to do too much repair work.
After a little sanding and a tad bit of filler here and there they where ready to spray. What takes the longest is the prep work before being able to spray such as masking off etc.
After all four where done and looking shiny it was time to go home for a well deserved drink. It was a hot day!
This car had a small bumper split, but was quite deep. After being given some very high quotes nearly in the four figure mark the job came to Smarter Cars. The repair was completed at the customers home in only a few hours. The cost was only in the two figure mark, one happy car and one happy customer. Often quotes will be to have the bumper replaced as many places will not fix a split, but we can, why pay for what is totally unnecessary.
This 4×4 Toyota in a lovely green (well I think it is) had a nasty bump on its wing. After some panel beating, a little filler and a few good rub downs with primer the wing was ready to be sprayed with a base coat (colour) and a nice thick top coat (lacquer).
A little scuff repair on a wheel arch, it may be minor but for the customer sometimes these can be the most annoying. Having a body repair shop do the job can be pricey and often not justifiable for something so small. However this is where a SMART repair makes the most sense. We come to you so its convenient and we can repair the scuff for a fraction of the cost. The paint is blended in perfectly and lacquered to give it a nice new look again.
This was an interesting job to do as the van had damage on both the wheel arch and the door. Usually a door repair is outside the scope of SMART repair, but the damage was very much on the far right and not breaching into the middle of the door.
The first thing to do was to remove the sign-writing as spraying over or around this is not an option. Luckily the writing was due to be updated anyway, so it was not a problem for the customer to have it removed, if anything it was beneficial.
Once the stickers had been removed the panel is wiped down using solvents to remove the sticky residue left over from the sign-writing. As the van colour is a solid it was also important to machine polish the panels before being sprayed, this is to ensure the fading is brought back to the original colour as much as possible so fresh paint will match. The SMART system allows colour to be tweaked anyway, but its good to have as best a match as possible to begin with.
Repairing the damage to the wing with a variety of panel beating tools and flat edges was used to get the bent metal back into shape as much as possible. As for the door, this required the door card inside to be temporarily taken off so tools can be used to push dents back out from behind.
Filler is then used to fill in any dips and and regain some shape. This is rubbed down and filler reapplied a number of times until the shape is correct and the overall surface is smooth.
I used masking tape to contain the work area, this prevented any reduction paper from scratching areas further away from the actual damage causing the repair to creep into a larger area.
The door and wheel arch is then sprayed with undercoat and rubbed down with Wet & Dry paper. Again, this process may be repeated a number of times until the area is smooth, scratch and blemish free.
The final coat of primer I add blue, this helps the colour coat to cover better and require less paint.
Unfortunately on this particular van I had some problems matching the colour. All the non-metallic blue’s Ford produced did not come close to the colour of this van! I finally concluded that the van was not a standard Ford colour and so must be an ex-fleet van. This can be a problem as there are so many fleet colours to choose from. However, it looked suspiciously like a British Gas blue colour and after mixing a little paint up and trying it, the match was perfect – ta da!
After spraying on a thin coat of British Gas blue, all that was left to do was spray on some lacquer, and blend out using special materials so no feather line is left.
The final result was a perfect repair on a blue van that has been re-purposed for life outside British Gas. Its always good to see vans have a long busy life.
Dents in wing on this blue rover. Even though the dents where fairly minor the actual wing had been pulled out by a large margin. Putting a straight edge along side it showed how far it needed to be banged back into place. If only the dents where repaired then it would look ok looking at it straight on, but from the side it would have looked odd.
A common problem with a Ford Focus are rusty lower wheels arches. However, they are easy to repair and blend.
This is a typical example of a scuffed bumper that Smarter Cars repair all the time.
Once its finished, its as good as new. Took less then 3 hours and it can already be polished up.
All four wheels on this Honda were fully refurbished. The damage was minimal but rust patches and paint flake was consistent over the surface.
The effected areas are sanded and rubbed down ready for priming with undercoat.
The wheel is then sprayed with silver and lacquered. We use high quality 2K lacquer that is durable, ideal for the abuse roads give to wheels.
