OUCH! It was bound to happen ...
 

OK, no "curse of the silver" or some horrific story of getting rear ended by a gravel truck. Sucks though ..

I was at a bank drive through today, and pulled in, did my transaction went to leave and the moronic woman who pulled into the drivethrough in front of me had pulled just a car length clear of the lane, and was doing something - counting her fat rolls or something. Well, being the impatient cuss that I am, I decided to steer around her right side - I cut it too close and ....

CARRRRUNNNNCH!

I bashed my right rear wheel and the appearance package "aero spat" on the right side of the car against the lane curb - putting a 4 inch long scrape in the wheel, and a 1/2' wide paint scrape down the entire length the aero piece, and cracked the back end of it.

double crap!

Anyone have any experience in removing those appearance pack items and reinstalling them? I'm going to need to remove this one, get it sprayed and the reinstall it.

Ouch - sorry to hear about that. Grievous injury. Any chance you can buff the scrape out of the wheel or is it jagged?

Do you mean the aero piece in front of the rear wheel, under the doors or the piece behind the rear wheel?

I need to get experience removing the aero pieces in front of the rear wheels as the leading points have become pitted and quite free of paint. Perhaps I should add steel-toes to the front of them.

it's the one in front of the right rear wheel - the big one that's like 18" long. As far as I can tell, there's just five or six screws that hold them on there - one behind in the wheel well, and then the rest underneath. The question is that after 2 years of salt, what do you suppose the chances are that I can actually remove the screws?

By the way, not a chance in hell of buffing it - paint removed to the bare black plastic - I couldn't have done a better job with a belt sander.

On the wheel, the paint and the metal are scraped. I'll just over that up with silver touchup, and just remember what a dumb impatient fuck I am every time I look at it.

the wheel is repairable from what it seems, you'd be suprised how good of a job wheel repairmen can do now. if there's no damage to the urethane on the aero piece just send it to a bodyshop to get it repainted or just buy a new one if theres scrapes in the plastic.

sorry, stew...

sorry to hear it, but if all you got was wheel and aero damage, then you're off light!

Buy a used rim from someone for under $200, and the aero part should run about the same. Having seen some of the oem rims after accidents (cracked up and broken into little bits), I would rather replace it than try to get someone to fix it. Unless it's just cosmetic damage...

Wheel: It's mostly cosmetic and psychological damage! Just a "lip grind" ... No cracks or anything, at least as far as I can tell - I haven't had the car up to highway speed to see if there's a vibration or anything. If there is, then I'll buy another wheel used from someone here.

The "spat" is pretty well chewed - I was going to put up a "want to buy" notice on the buying/selling forum tonight.

That said, as sure as I'm sitting here, if I crunched one of those damn things in 2 years of driving, I'll crunch another ... I'm tempted to just buy DupliColor paint, mask it well, spray it, wet sand it, clear coat it, and call it done. It doesn't have to be pristine ... just yellow!

Anyone ever use these guys? www.automotivetouchup.com

i dont know man, spray-painting exterior body panels is pretty ricey to me, i was thinking along the lines of having a body shop use a real automotive spray gun to spray real automotive paint onto it after sanding/stripping it down. but then again that will probably be around 75 bucks

for a part that has road grime on it 75% of the time I'm hoping it won't be all that noticable, but yup, I hear ya. I am planning to drop by my friend who owns the bodyshop and see how much it is for him to do it ... if it's $100 or less, I'll have him have at it ... I'm thinking if I take it off the car, bring it to him, let him refinish it, and then I reinstall it, that will save money too. I just hate spending money on something I'm certain to screw up again.

I understand that. I have a scuff mark the size of a quarter on one corner of my rear bumper. I asked the dealership (which has a full collision center) in Rochester what they'd charge to fix it.

"Well," the service manager says, "looks like we'd need to use the plastic repair kit to smooth that out a bit, then sand it and paint it. $265.00."

I resisted several rude comments while giving him the narrow eyes, then finally managed to say, "never mind." Geez - it's the bumper on my daily driver. I'll get some touch-up paint.

there ya go ...

yeah unless you're maintaing a show car, who gives a shit, cars are for driving. (proceeds to go put on the 87th coat of zaino meticulously looking for any rock chips on his car)