Hi guys, I backed into a pole in a shopping centre carpark in my girlfriends car and need to get it fixed. It suffered very minor panel damage and scratches in the paint. A touch-up to the paint would probably suffice as the labour involved to remove the dent isnt worth it. I received one quote of $1600 from a mob that I would assume is only interested in insurance work. Can anyone give me a recommendation for a reasonable workshop that is more customer orientated?

post pics of the damage. for just a touch up without doing anthing to the dent i may do it for a carton or 2

The paint is metallic. As you can see its gone back to plastic on the bumper.

give coconut panel and paint a go.

or not.....


give it a good cut an polish and see how it comes up. most of it looks like other paint other then the black bits which look like plastic. But the dent looks pretty bad.

proper way: dent will have to be pulled with a weld on slide hammer or some panel shops will request you get a new hatch (depending who they are) will get bogged primed and blended. your rear bar will be feathered out primed and repainted.

quick fix: if you dont mind the dent in the hatch just hit it all with cut and polish as Jet_Rb25 said and use your touchup paint in your glovebox to paint where the bare plastic is showing to try and make it less noticeable.

which panel shop quoted $1600 if you dont mind me asking?

for a cheapish quote see TL Panel Works otherwise just go and see a few different panel shops and say its a cash job you might get lucky and find someone to do it.

can you get to the dent from inside the car to push it out?

if you pop it back out from the inside Adam there is a very good chance you will crack the paint and in fact make it worst.

ah, good point. when i had the vh, there was a dent on the rear quarter. when i was painting it, i bogged it up and primered it. the bog fell out a few months later. so i hit it with a hammer from inside and it popped back out. i was taking it back to bare metal though.

It looks as if the dent is on the quarter??

If carressed in the right way most of that will pop out by hand. You should be able to access it through the inside of the boot after removing the trims.

All the white marks will polish off, but there will still be scrathes in the clercoat that will be visable but nothing too bad.

If you dont have a touch up tin in your car, repco sell a fair range of coloured touch up pens, they might have one thats close.

Alternatively, Mitchell's panel and paint on Bombing rd.

Cheers guys. Will try the cut and polish for now, however i'll probably want the dent removed eventually.