To paint or not to paint

I bought a used 99 black C4S cab and the car is in great shape except for the hood. It has a lot of stone chips. the question is do I repaint the hood? If a potential buyer looks at the car I know that it is best if the car has not been painted. Will a quality dealer be able to give the car a factory comparable paint job? Love the car in black, but on a recent trip to California my wife and I saw a new C4S cab in Polar Silver and I am sure I will move to this in the next 6 months if I can strike the right deal. If you are **** about the looks of your car there is nothing more maddening than black when dirty, and exhilirating when clean. The problem is living in Northeast Ohio the car is more often dirty than clean. Opinions please. Thanks Bob

Bob, black is the easiest color to match but you will probably have to paint more than the hood... probably the whole front end to make it appear seamless... and there are some places out there who do a damn good job applying paint but $$$$ I don't know that the dealer will give you what you are looking for... good luck Pete

I checked it out yesterday, and got a quote for approximately $600 to paint the hood and blend in the front end...

paint it. what looks worse? shiny new paint or stone chips as long as it's never been in an accident, who cares from a buyer's point of view. porsche paint sucks anyway. no matter what you paint it with, couldn't be worse than the factory paint. i look at mine funny and it chips

What better time for a Kevlar vented hood upgrade? Changing your car color is big $$. I grew bord with my white BMW 850i so I figured I'd just paint it. Unless you've got a buddy in the auto repair business a full paint job in the quality that these cars deserve will run around $5500 . If you go cheap you'll definately have a problem with future buyers. So, I just sold it and bought the best car in the best color ever then used the extra $5500 for 18" Sport Designs and some carbon fiber goodies. Get some touch-up paint till you just can't take it anymore and then paint the hood.

No paint. if you are going to trade later you will have a lot of questions to answer at that point.

One question: are you sure you bought a '99 C4S Cab? They didn't make the C4S Cab until '04. Was it something aftermarket?

Typo. I have a C4 cab. Next one will be a C4S.

simply take "before and after" pix of your hood....then any concerns are put to rest when the next buyer comes along

repainting a black car silver is nearly impossible to do (at least at a reasonable price!) well because the black is going to end up showing up somewhere. in general repainting a car a different color isn't a good idea because of this, regardless of the before/after colors.

Just to be clear I never intended to paint the car silver. My question was whether I should repaint the hood black. I simply meant to say my next Porsche would be polar silver

I recently sold my 993, I left the hood un-repainted but had the rear bumper repainted due to a parking lot mishap. Everybody who looked at the car spent a lot of time looking at the chips in the front and ignored the rear, even after I told them it had been repainted

I've been told that the paint job will never cure as hard as the factory job, so you run the risk of having many more rock chips and blemishes on a re-paint (in the long run) than if you had left it alone. I think that ALL 911s are prone to hood chips, so you can look at it as a badge of honor. Or, you can repaint it and be VERY careful in the future about where you drive (and how fast)...

Repaint it.. any guy that knows the cars will know there prone to tons of rock chips, and if they are really good they will check the gaps to see if its been in a accident.. We just repainted the bumper and hood on our 01 Boxster... Looks 100% better..

Repaint it, then spend $350 on a front end protection film treatment...

i've got exactly the same problem. my hood, bumper and front fenders are littered with rock chips which look like crud on a black car. i'm getting ready to sell it and am pondering the spending of $1600 to have it done right when anyone will be able to tell it's been painted no matter who does the work. so, i'm still undecided if i should just sell it like it is so it's clear there has been no accident or paintwork or just take before and afters along with getting some affidavits stating rock chips were the only reason for paint.

Yep, water based paint. Presume they had it in '99 but don't know for sure. And after you repaint and wait long enough to StoneGard it you'll need another paint job. We picked our car up 1,000 miles ago and its a week away from StoneGard'ing. In that brief period we have been super careful to avoid roads that are gravel pits yet the hood and mirrors must have at least a dozen chips in the paint. Enjoy the car. They are well built durable machines and the paint is never going to be blemish free.