Hi!

Got in to a small crash that did more damage that I thought it did. I got insurance so no worries there but now I'm not happy with the finished result of the repair. And the paint job in particular.

Parts replaced: hood, left front fender, bumber, mask, left headlight.

First of all there was a chipped paint on the hood and quite a lot of air/dust in the clear coat when I picked up the car. I took the car back and they just put a new clear coat over the chipped part. So now the surface is smooth but there's color missing. Also the color shade seems to be off at places and hasn't been faded out properly. The paint shop told that it's impossible to get the color exactly right which I understand but this is in my opinion quite a big difference. Also they polished the new parts to get rid off the air/dust and surely most of it is gone but now I'm left with small scratches all over the new surfaces. Also after a month of driving the new fender has to paint chips in it. Paint shouldn't chip that easily? Especially on a fender. I know my hood is gonna look like crap after summer anyway since it's gonna be bombarded by rocks flying from trucks on my way to work. But I've never had a chipped fender because of a rock.

Is there any hope to get the color to match better or do I have to just live with the fact that I have different color parts.

Pictures:

New bumber, new hood, old fender.


New fender, new hood, old door and A-beam.


Chipped new fender.

Mods please move to right place if this is the wrong area.

Did you bring it to Mercedes to get it repaired?

I live in Finland. Yes I took it to an official Mercedes dealer.

You should've spoken to the shop manager regarding respraying the entire part to eliminate rock chips. However, extra charges will incur and you most like will pay the difference out of pocket. Insurance company will only pay for the repair needed and will not pay extra. Now, only way to get rid of those rock chips is to bring it back to the shop and reshoot it. Any reputable shop can color match and since the vehicle is in their possession they could easily lay down the base coat to a perfect match. My painter in the US could color match with no problem. Perhaps you need to bring your vehicle elsewhere?

Sorry for your troubles.

About the only thing easy about having the black (040) is that a monkey can color match it.

Good luck getting it resolved!

I spoke with the dealer's collision damage department head the very moment I picked it up. He was being kind of an dick about it and saying there's nothing wrong. Luckily the sales person agreed with me with the troubles. They don't have their own paint shop so they buy the service from a company they partially own.

I was under the impression they would respray the hood because of the chip. But they only added a new layer of clear coat. I of course complained about this. I only noticed the right side fender/bumber color difference today when I washed it. It's winter here so the car is constantly dirty and it's dark so I only noticed the difference now. I can live with the left side difference but the right side fender/bumper to me looks horrible.

The true test of any of the crap paint they use is a good freeze. If it blisters then their water paint didn't work good. And a few years of weather will prove it out as well. Too much junk paint products being used these days.

I'm Sorry but that colour difference looks awful. No reputable paint shop should tolerate such a big colour difference. I'm not sure what colour that is but the only colour that should have a noticeable paint difference after a repaint is diamond white as it is near impossible to rematch the pearl coat. If thats palladium silver that's unacceptable I have a palladium silver ml and I've had a repainted hood on one occasion, a repainted right fender, a right door, and a repainted drivers door. None of which have a noticeable colour difference.

Yeah, not to add verbal salt to the situation but it does looks like *****, and for such a beautiful car it deserves better..

typically even with a color match paint code the pressure which the color comes out of the gun will make a huge difference on what color gets always down. It is apparent they didn't do a test swatch first then placed it next to the good panel to check the color matching.
Well, I guess none of that really matters now I just hope you get her fixed up soon.