Is there body work too small for body shop (vehicle, motorcycle, driver)

[HappyRider]

I have two rusted spots around the edge of rear fender. They are about 2 inches long and perhaps half an inch or less wide. If you don' look you almost won't see them. But I do. I am sometimes tempted to sand them down, prime and paint. But I KNOW they will come out far worse than they are now. Body work should be left to the body shop. What I am afraid of is that they are going to want to paint the entire rear panel. I think that is an overkill. I don't know a body shop that can do something in between DIY touch up and full paint. Can they just sand, prime and paint those two spots?

[Nayabone]

No, paint has to be blended in, so they will need topaint a large section to feather it in. Even if they could paint two small spots, it would still cost the same because the prep work and cost of material would be the same. You can't call the supplier and order enough paint to paint a spot 2 inches long. You might also find out once you start working on the two small rusted out areas, that the rust goes much farther than it looks like with the paint still on it and the job grows.
Any shop willing to cut corners is not going to turn out work that will please you.

[MJ7]

Nope, look for reviews on yelp and get a few quotes, walk around the lot to see what type of work they do and then pick one from there.

[eddiehaskell]

What kind of car and how much is it worth? How does the rest of the paint look? On a car worth less than $5k, I'd probably try to repair it myself. A family member just bought a clean Civic with 99k miles for $2500...the back bumper had some large areas of peeling paint so I sanded it down, primed it, rattle canned it with the factory color and sprayed on 4 coats of clear. Total cost was about $40. If it last a few years...great.

It doesn't look bad for a daily driver IMO.

[wankel7]

If it is rusting right now there really isn't anything you can do to make it worse! Every day it rusts the rust is slipping under the good paint allowing the damage to increase. Especially with winter coming.

Doing nothing is really a bad idea. If you don't want to spend the bucks sand it down to bare metal, mask it off, and lay down a few coats of primer/ gloss.

[43north87west]

You have to paint the panel and blend it to look decent. Exactly right about the prep time too. Spot painting will look like hell and won't save you money either. It's a "lose-lose".

[HappyRider]

Thanks for the suggestions. That's what I thought. It's a 98 Explorer so it isn't worth much marketwise. The rest of the body and paint looks great. I really don't want to touch it myself because I know it will look worse. Who knows where things go once I start sanding it. I am sure it'll get a lot bigger. Just for curiosity I will get a quote but the tiniest body work costs $500 and up.

[Nayabone]

You can always find a smaller shop without the huge overhead to save money, but it will be expensive even then. I bought a new vehicle a few years ago and it got a small dent the size of a quarter from a shopping cart collision. I took it to several shops and the estimates were in the 11-12 hundred dollar area. Yes, over a grand for a quarter size dent.
I found a small shop that did it for $700.00 and now a few years later is still looks great, you cant tell anything was done to it.
A dent that size takes minutes to repair, all the cost was in prep time, paint and material, so expect to get a large estimate for your small area.. Good luck..

[burdell]

Originally Posted by Nayabone

No, paint has to be blended in, so they will need topaint a large section to feather it in. Even if they could paint two small spots, it would still cost the same because the prep work and cost of material would be the same. You can't call the supplier and order enough paint to paint a spot 2 inches long. You might also find out once you start working on the two small rusted out areas, that the rust goes much farther than it looks like with the paint still on it and the job grows.
Any shop willing to cut corners is not going to turn out work that will please you.

I don't know how common it is but a friend of mine worked in a busy shop having a system that apparently allowed them to mix any color in any quantity. I saw some work he did on a special edition Suzuki Gamma motorcycle from Canada and the color match was dead nuts on the money with a metallic color he had no paint code for, the system allows you to scan the color of what you're trying to match and mixes paint accordingly.

[HappyRider]

I am sure they can match the color but blending it is the challenge. Even at home, painters want to paint entire walls. On occasions that they painted just a portion, the match came out poor.