Re: Body Repair & Painting, Glass Repair, Detailing etc. - Trend Automobiles (Bangalore) I had the misfortune of a having a paint scratch on a 45day old Verna, thanks to an irresponsible cabbie and Hyundai's not so great paint quality. So what happened
Bangalore traffic happened. Despite being uber careful and maintaining safe distance between cars an idiot cab driver who did not care to keep his foot on the brake decided it was an wise idea to not bother about the car behind him which was honking to warn him of his innova rolling back. There was no way for me to get out or back up myself. Eventually the Innova rolled back enough to rest its butt on my poor cars front bumper. Given that it was a super slow roll, I expected most likely a fine line or minor scratches, but what I saw was painful paint chip. Thank you hyundai, your paint quality sucks ! I have been in so many such situations and the worst the Vento suffered was a minute scratch, nothing a rubbing compound cannot fix ! What next
The dealers wanted to charge me upwards of 6K to repaint the whole bumper. So I searched TeamBHP for recommendations on FNG that would do a quality job and Trend seemed to have the best feedback. So depsite being on the opposite side of town, I decided to drive the 45Kms to ensure the car got the best treatment My interaction with Trend
I got to interact with Satish, who speaks all the major south-indian languages and hindi. He quoted 1800 for the job & asked me to leave the car behind and I politely declined to leave it behind. So he asked me to come back at 10AM the next day and mentioned he should be able to deliver it by evening. Come next day, I went back to trend at 11 (thanks to traffic again) and stuck around the garage the whole day. They started the preparation immediately but the car was rolled into the paint booth only at 2:30PM and it took him 30 mins to get it sprayed. By 5:30 it was evident that they wont be able to complete the final polish & finish. Being a new car I was very reluctant to leave it behind at the garage overnight. So I waited for 1 more hour and at 6:30 PM I drove the car to my cousins place which was 15 minutes and put it in the basement parking so that there is no impact due to rain. Sateesh warned me he wont be responsible if it rained on the way and it ruined the paint job. I was willing to take that risk
I took it back at 10:30 AM next morning and the detailer was already there finishing up another car. He got down to my car immediately and was annoyed with the finish. He actually yelled at the painter for doing a poor job with respect to over-spray. He ended up spending a while wet sanding it down and then polished it. The overall finish was OK. So what is the final verdict
I will let the pictures do the talking, but personally I would rate them 7/10. Why 7, because they are not as perfect as claimed in previous posts, but to be fair to them, they definitely did an above average job for fraction of the cost that HASS would have charged me. However there are a few shortcomings.
- First there are minute pits in a few locations (I had actually pointed it to the painter once he was done and the car was still in the booth, his response was it will be taken care of during the finish).
- Second, there is a paint run in two locations but not easily visible. This typically happens due to over spray
- Third, is a small small spot where the paint hasn't stuck well resulting in minute fisheye. This typically happens due to improper base preparation or poor paint.
But none of these imperfections are visible easily. One really needs to be as obsessed as I to figure it out. Additionally the final wet sanding was not 100% perfect resulting in one small spot where the paint is still rough. The whole process had also left a lot of swirl marks on the paint. Since an detailing was on the cards, I decided not to press it any further, worried they would make things worse.
Finally I left with the car without being disappointed but definitely not happy either. The 3M detailers near my home got to working on my car yesterday and the final result is good. An average joe would never know a paint job was done. If I can split up scoring, this is how it would look like
Paint match : 9/10
Finish : 7/10
Interaction : 8/10
VFM : 7/10
Overall : 7/10 Will I recommend it to others
Personally since this was a bumper job, I was OK with them. But I will personally will not go back to them for a body paint until my car has atleast completed 3+ years. I would definitely be OK with them doing touch up jobs specially in not so visible locations and on cars that have rakes up 15K+ on the ODO. The interaction was straight forward and the final result was no worse than an authorized dealer job. But its just not perfect. I wish I knew of painters that do a factory finish like job.
The last but one picture was before the 3M job and the last one is after the 3M job
Last edited by SR-71 : 18th May 2019 at 11:36.
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