Headlight scratch repair and hood repaint/wrap
 

So I'm back to fixing my 86 that I fucked up, and I'm trying to do it with as little money as possible. I'm thinking in the next month or two I'll have access to a shop and I found some headlights and an OEM white hood for a really good price on the local classifieds.

The headlights look a bit scratched up though, is it tough to get scratches out? I mean at least the mounts aren't broken... Also I've heard getting a hood wrapped costs around 200-400, but is it worth it to go back to OEM look? Does anyone know what it would cost to get it repainted back to the OEM colour?

It's almost too good a price to pass up, but I'm not sure if it's worth just spending the extra few hundred to get a pair of new Winjet headlights and sell my not damaged passenger side OEM headlight... They're like $1400 from Toyota!

IDK how deep the scratches are; so can't judge how hard it is to polish the headlights. It is totally possible to buff out scratches though. It is mostly time consuming. Wet sand, polish, repeat. By hand is best, unless you know what you are doing. (you can melt or burn the headlight with a high speed buffer) Starting with finer sand paper is better - I would say minimum of 1000 grit. You can go coarser, but it can be a bitch to get out the sand paper marks if what you used (600 was the coarsest I have gone) was too course. Work your way up the grits 1000, 1500, 2000 etc. Then polish. I use PlasticX.


IMO, it would be best to repaint the hood OEM color. A wrap will only last so long, and paint shouldn't be that much more.


Or, If I was on a super budget, I might plastidip the hood, roof, and trunk black. At least till I got enough money to get he hood painted. (don't know your cars color - black may be the wrong "accent" color)

Ablaze is the colour, I think it would be ok with black accents. But either way I'm going to try and go back to OEM with the hood. Thanks for the tips with the headlights, I haven't seen them in person so I'm not sure how deep the scratches are either, but they don't look too bad so I think even if I could get some of the minor ones out they would be alright. Better then broken at least...

its going to be costly to repaint because I bet that color is a 3 step paint. additionally, if you want to do it well, you'll have to do some blending on the fenders so that its hard to tell that the hood was repainted

Ah, ok ok. Well I'm thinking of going with Seibon Carbon fiber fenders, in that case the bumper cover and hood would be the only parts that would need to be repainted. I'm hoping I'll be able to find someone who can paint match to an extent that it's not noticeable unless you know exactly what you're looking for. We'll see how it goes, it might have to be a vinyl wrap with the majority of the car, but that's so expensive. Hmmm.

if you want the paint to be done well then take it to an autobody shop that insurance companies trust. the shop that I go to (G&C in Ukiah) does an outstanding job with paint matching my crystal white pearl. the thing is its going to cost a lot of money. it seems like you have money if you're going to get carbon fiber fenders though

Well, it's not so much that I have money... It's that my fenders need to be fixed but I don't want to buy 2 new fenders and have them paint matched because at that point it'll be around the same. Carbon fiber fender set from Seibon is $880 USD and I'm right beside New York right now so free shipping and no tax. Compare that to getting OEM fenders and having them paint matched, I think it's cheaper. Plus this is the push I need to start modifying I guess, it's kind of a shitty situation (the accident) but luckily I'm 18 and don't have anyone who depends on me, so the car being a money pit is MY problem and MY problem alone. Silver lining I guess... :cry:

So you gonna run raw carbon fenders?
:barf:

insurance isn't going to pay? unless it was at the track or something. I too was recently in an accident. I have aftermarket headlights that got busted up that made me extra sad. but because they are cheaper than getting oem subaru headlights geico may be amenable to replacing my headlights, so it isn't so bad. I'm just driving around with a pinched hood and a nice tow hitch sized hole in my bumper

I don't think it looks that bad

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLcfCIm0MUY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLcfCIm0MUY[/ame]

Huh, I've got a pretty similar look going lol, not a hole on the bumper just some rubber/scratches. Honestly man I don't want to go through insurance. Ontario has some INSANELY high insurance rates and it's bad enough right now with a clean record. I'm getting posted out to Nova Scotia pretty soon so we'll see then, but this is going to be mostly out of pocket.