Fender Damage: Replace or Fix?

[squid267]

Parked my car at my best friend's house during a snow storm. His dad dropped a shovel on the fender, while shoveling around the car. I'm not a body shop expert but I would think a replacement fender is best option? I went to a local Nissan and he wanted to pop it out. I feel like the placement of the dent/scratch is going make it very difficult to fix it, but like I said I'm no expert. My friend's dad is not too worried about cost. However CF fender replacement is probably out of his budget.

Pictures

[jmayz]

I think it's repairable. A good body shop could make that look like new.

BTW, that's a cool pic with the horse shadow in the background. I don't know why, I like it.

[OldFart]

Fix, hell that's nothin'....

[kenchan]

is that a white pearl? will be hard to color match but yah, they will probably bondo it and paint.

cant push out the dent on that line very well.

[jmayz]

They're pretty good at color matching paint these days. My gf's honda accord needed a new bumper after someone backed into her and I was worried about the paint match, but you can't even tell it was ever replaced the color is perfect. Her car is the silver color.

[TreeSemdyZee]

I had my rear bumper all dented up and the body shop fixed it perfectly.
It was worse than your fender.

[BuckeyeZ]

Originally Posted by jmayz

They're pretty good at color matching paint these days. My gf's honda accord needed a new bumper after someone backed into her and I was worried about the paint match, but you can't even tell it was ever replaced the color is perfect. Her car is the silver color.

It's a tri-coat metallic. The metal flake that is added is very difficult to match when the car is not all painted at once. The metal flake will lay differently, especially when the car is painted at the factory with electrostatics. The pearl white is the only Z color like that. They will be able to get close, but it will never match exactly.

[Tadpole]

Buy you one of those bullet hole stickers and put it on your dent.

[MacCool]

Originally Posted by BuckeyeZ

It's a tri-coat metallic. The metal flake that is added is very difficult to match when the car is not all painted at once. The metal flake will lay differently, especially when the car is painted at the factory with electrostatics. The pearl white is the only Z color like that. They will be able to get close, but it will never match exactly.

Sapphire black is the same process. My wife hit a deer in her Murano Platinum. Local body shop matched it up beautifully. The only part that prevents if from being a perfect match is that their paint job has no orange peel effect like the rest of the car.

[Zipper 104]

They'll nail it no problem. As I understand it the pearl is in the clearcoat. They match the existing paint on the car with one of a number of panels on a template. Each panel on the template correlates to a certain number of pearl coats on top of the base coat. They stop laying clear/pearl when they figure they've matched the panel they picked out.
That's how it was explained to me. My Z is PW.

104

[mikey1600]

it's very hard to get it exactly perfect, especially in the sunlight/bright lights, most people won't notice but you will because you know it's there and where to look. Unfortunately this sucks lol had it happen on an old car of mine, it's hard to get the same amount of metallic in the paint to make it match exactly. Either way unless you got a factory panel with the same paint it won't be perfect

[squid267]

Thanks for the input guys! I will bring it to another dealership since the one I asked has a 3 week wait right now. Sounds like repair is what people are saying. I haven't heard much input on the placement of the dent. Since it is on a curve should that be concerning?

[Merv]

Originally Posted by MacCool

Sapphire black is the same process. My wife hit a deer in her Murano Platinum. Local body shop matched it up beautifully. The only part that prevents if from being a perfect match is that their paint job has no orange peel effect like the rest of the car.

This. When they did my rear quarter panel on my gun metal grey,when you look closely,you can see the panel and door is smoother than the rest of the car!