Starrate

Hi All,
I just got my car back today after having the hood and bumper resprayed. I took the car to an approved Mercedes bodyshop. I noticed a number of scratches which the car has to go back to have removed but also, when I got home, under different lighting conditions, the newly painted hood and bumper look brown!!!! Has anyone else experienced this?

I'm assuming that the shop didn't use OEM 040 paint for the job. Can OEM Black 040 look brown under certain lights or am I right in assuming they have used some other paint? Probably a cheaper imitation. It looks fine in daylight but horrendous under strong halogen lights.

krisv420

Wow.... I got new fenders new hood and bumper with brand new paint it matches perfectly in the cali sun.. can't even tell anything happened..

The body shop that i went to isn't an approved merc shop

moonrkr23

i d get that checked

daiso'

maybe your car is a little faded ??

nickgailloux

I had my front bumper redone with 040 black at a Mercedes body shop and I have never been able to tell a difference in color.

Ryanr317

There should not be any hint of brown. I believe 040 is the just plain black.

alpinweiss

I would say this is very likely, since black can fade in strong sunlight.

But, don't most good body shops have an optical color meter to match colors? The repaint should match, regardless of what is the original color.

paypaboi

yup

BlackLiquorish8

they prolly didnt use oem paint i'm sure the new paint looked better than pre paint stage

Mu9enx

Not good at color matching

Glyn M Ruck

Tell them to redo the job properly. This is BS

krisv420

Take pictures with the flash on.. Take pictures of the car in the sun.. And take pictures under the lighting you think it looks brown.. Maybe your eyes are going bad LOL

ChrisBrown

Get it rechecked. Also, make sure they used the proper Mercedes paint and that it was the proper paint code.

Nokiemon

Yes you should have them re-check the paint with an optical meter to make sure the pigment matches. This technology is now so advanced a good meter can detect a variance right away even in particles as small as 10K to 1 . Sometimes a body shop will use cheaper thinners or reducers to cut overall costs, and this can mess with paint match pigments, especially on dark colors like black. If they used an odd brand or non-MB type of paint, this might also explain the variance.

It could also be an optical illusion, so the above suggestion of comparing in sun and covered environment might help you decide it they did not get it right.

Having painted cars for almost 30 years it is hard to screw up black, and the 040 Black MB is about as basic of a black as you can get. If it was bad prep work you would notice other problems within the paint, but color matching black should be a no-brainer for most body shops.

Shake

Mine was done at the Mercedes dealer and it was a perfect match.

Buellwinkle

No matter what I tell bodyshops, they still do their own thing because their sprayers are used to working with a certain brand of products and the risk to them is too great to use the right stuff. For example, I specifically told the body shop that it had to be PPG Ceramiclear like Mercedes uses, yet they used some very soft clearcoat that within a month looked like crap with swirls and embedded water drops.

Doesn't say what state you are in or if this was an insurance job, you should really update your profiile but in California, insurance law requires that they replace like for like. In otherwords, if Mercedes used a certain brand of paint, like PPG Ceramiclear and PPG colors, if they used something else, then it's not like for like, especially if the color doesn't match. I'm very picky about body work and paint and I would not accepted that job. Sometimes they want you to come late in the day so you can't see it. That's not acceptable either, I come early in the AM, and see the job in the sun.

paypaboi

Yeah they had me do that and I didn't notice until like 3months later that the paint was runny by where the sport badge is on my front fender if you look really closely but i figured it was too late then to complain and its been about 6months now...

LILBENZ230

I don't know about the various states or insurance company but I live in Georgia and have State Farm. If I used a State Farm selected body shop, the repairs have a lifetime warranty - parts, paints, and labors. I just had $1800 worth of work done in replacing the front bumper after a dog accident. The paint matches perfectly, but I was given the usual warranty booklet that said if the paint ever has an issue it will be repaired free of charge.

You guys don't have such stuff in CA?

Starrate

Hi, I attached some pics. The car was also scratched to hell. It is as if the guy doing the polishing was blindfolded and used steel wool. Some nice swirls all the way across the hood!! I'm in Johannesburg South Africa - I will update my profile so that there is a little more info. The work done was disgustingly bad - I think it requires a letter and pics sent to Merc head office as these guys are one of the few Merc certified body-shops in the country. My car went back to the dealer and back to the body-shop to have the work redone. I should get the car back tomorrow.... holding thumbs that they got it right this time. The bodyshop blamed it on the tint they used in the paint??? Come on... Anyway it was really bad. Will see how it turns out tomorrow.

Starrate

I'm supposed to have a lifetime warranty on the paint and 5 years on the work done. The worst part about this is that it was purely a paint job as there was no damage. The car went in because it had multiple stone chips and pretty bad road rash on the bumper. The body-shop has now had my car for 3 weeks in total. grrrrr..... The shop is called Renew-It Randburg, stay away!

LILBENZ230

Yeah he's had that done, read two or three threads up.

Nokiemon

If they blame the use of the wrong tint for your color variance, be very afraid!

Tinting paint is determined by a precise predetermined parts per ratio formula that is standardized based on the paint color. To use the wrong tint or tint-to-paint ratio (which will alter the patina), means someone is not very knowledgeable about how to mix paint, and that would be a concern to me, given the fact that almost all mixing systems are now computerized, with zero-variance formulas.

Maybe someone was not paying attention when the product was mixed, but it is not rocket science with the computers help, and sounds more like human error .

bdgdl08

WOW! That is undeniably brown-er. Good luck on this next outcome! Fingers crossed!

Starrate

I think the tint blaming was purely an excuse because someone messed up and they just didn't really want to take responsibility for it. My worry is that they didn't even use the correct paint. I'm giving them another chance, but I will definitely be notifying MB South Africa as the quality of the finished product that was delivered to me was abysmal. They have a very professional looking setup and do a lot of work for MB but someone got lazy and cheep so lets hope they get their act together...

chutoyy

040 is just jet black...

I had euro impact strips painted a jet black that a body shop had and they turned out fine...