The make-over has begun!

The winter make-over for my Viola Metallic 996 Cab has begun, I am using Michaelangelo's Auto Salon http://www.autoclean.ca/ at Lansdowne and Bloor area in mid/west Toronto after getting an off-list referral from Rennlist member Coop, I paid a visit to their shop a couple of months ago to see the place and was sufficiently satisfied to decide on relying on their expertise for this make-over. Had the car flad-bed towed to their shop a week ago, Mike the owner was away, however partner Rhonda was kind enough to allow the car towed there on a Saturday and we spent a couple of hours chatting about what needed to be done, BTW Rhonda is also very knowledgeable with the technical aspects of the repairs and was a pleasure to have the discussion with. The make-over will include front end repaiting mainly for the hood and bumper but also a very small amount of paint chips on both fenders surrounding the headlights needed to be taken care of, PDR a fair number of little dents around the car, and a full car polish to bring back the shine as the car is covered with swirl marks from lack of paint care by the original owner I purchased the car from. All 4 rims will be refinished as well by the shop. When I checked in a week later they have scuffed and filled the fenders, the pictures show the guide coat which will be block sanded off to ensure perfect flatness, the bumper has been cleaned up very nicely and ready for final sanding before painting, the hood was a total transformation since it had a LOT of small dents and a few small protrusions from below, likely from the hood being closed on something a bit too tall in the frunk, they spent a day taking out all the dents rather than using body-filler, this is a step a less expensive shop will not spend the time on since "time is money", however both Mike and I wanted the job to be done right and PDR is the right way to approach this. A depression on the cab cover metal plate was pulled up using glue-pull proecss and looked a lot better now and will be cleaned up with touch-up paint. The PDR technician also removed all the door ding type dents on the side of the car as can be seen in a couple of the side shots of the car. Mike also mentioned that while he had the color mix formula for my rare factory color, he wasn't satisfied enough when he did a spray-out card to check color match to the rest of the car, so he took the gas door off to send it to PPG for them to obtain a perfect match, I appreciate this extra effort because it would be a real shame to go through all the trouble and expense only to find the re-painted area did not exactly match the original paint on the rest of the car. I am very satisfied so far with the prep work done at Michaelangelo's Auto Salon, and will follow up with additional images of the finished product as I get the chance to take them at the shop.

Thanks for the set of pics and explaination. I have a feeling you will love it after you get it completed. I think the next time I have my front bumper off I am going to install screens in the air intake openings.

You had the car flat-bedded to a shop to have some paint work done? That seems kind of strange, though I don't mean anything by that and was just curious.

Mike is absolutely fantastic and has a huge amount of integrity about doing things right. I'm sure you'll be thrilled with the result. GL!

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Had to, I've taken the liability insurance off the car for the winter storage months so I could not legally drive the car there. Good to see/hear another vote of confidence for Mike, I am looking forward to the end result too!

Excellent opportunity to clean between the AC & engine radiators on both sides.

Surprisingly enough there wasn't much debries when I looked with a flash light, I won't bother them to do this in the paint shop, and will have a better look in the summer as I may need to take the bumper off for something else I have in mind anyway.

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Ah, gotcha. If you get a chance to post pics when it's done, please do so! Hope it goes well!

That's sounds pretty reasonable to me if you can get this work done for $1300.

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Definitely will, I am also excited to see the finished product myself too! The work being performed on my car will be noticeably more than $1.3K which was the standard no-frill refinishing/repainting of the bumper and the hood, the franchised shop used the standard book rate from their computerized system to quote the $1,300, however they are likely going to take some short cuts doing the work, one such element is they would likely just mask the black plastic pieces clipped into the backside of the bumper before painting where Michaelangelo's removed these plastic pieces so there won't be any tape lines/edges on the bumper or oversprays onto the plastic pieces, the other shortcut is to use body fillers for the dents on the hood, both are undesireable in my book so I wouldn't have used the franchised shop, then there is the care in matching the paint color exactly which the franchised would not likely go the extra mile as Michaelangelo's has done, so the $1.3K quote was only used as a baseline refrence point for me. I expect the front end refinishing work without the PDR work on the hood will be somewhat over $2K, so the PDR of the hood plus other parts of the car will bring that number up further, I just don't know what the final tally is going to be yet, then there is the full car polishing and refinishing the rims....... As well the left side bolster of the driver's seat is showing some surface crack and wear as well, so they will look into what can be done to address that aspect.

top notch attention. it should look fantastic and it's great that you're getting it done properly. Viola Metallic color is very attractive, no homo.

Stopped by Michaelangelos today, pleasantly found they had painted the hood and fenders yesterday, too bad I could not be there but I can't expect them to hold off painting the car just because I wanted to take pix of it being painted, however they did take a few pix for me. The paint job looked sharp even before any touching up and buffing The color looks great, and appears to match as perfectly as I can tell from different angle and lighting shining on the area, the extra effort to match the paint had paid off, PPG now has this color code formula in their world-wide system. The left side is the new paint, the right side is the original paint. Some PDR work still required as the new paint brought up a few minor depressions not noticed before when the paint was very dull. The next few images showed just how dull the original paint was compared to the new paint: A red Turbo had just had its left rear fender repainted: There are a few other cars they are working on, I've only taken pix of the project cars rather than the normal insurance repair type work: Fianlly a couple of exterior shots of Michaelangelos' shop Still some work left on this make-over, including painting the bumper, touching up the painting, polishing, sealing/waxing, rim repair etc., looking forward to get this back in my garage!!

great pics! it's gonna be tough to have such beautiful paint and not want to get it dirty, let alone put a microfiber cloth on it. I personally havent tried the two bucket method for washing, but I use ALOT of water; frequently wash the microfiber mitt as I wash from top to bottom; and a good wash and only a blow dry from now on.

+1 Michaelangelo's Auto Salon, they do great work!

I'm debating about doing the same thing. I pulled my front bumper off last weekend to clean the radiators. It has a few chips nothing horrible, but I was going to have the licence plate holes filled. I stopped over at a friends shop and asked about a repaint on the bumper. He told me to get it dead on it would be better to blend into the hood and fenders. This is pretty much what you did.

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Thanks for the tip, I may very well have to change my car washing techniques now, my current DD and previous car are both silver color for the reason that it is almost impossible to see the dreaded swirl marks as would on a dark color car, I did have two dark color cars previously and it's a pain keeping them looking good.

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They have been pretty easy to deal with as well, all the guys there and Rhonda are down to earth and straight forward.

Got the car back today, I am very satisfied with the work performed by Michelangelos Auto Salon, the paint color match was as perfect as can be from what I have now seen under sodium arc lamp, flourscent, overcast sky, sunny sky, I simply cannot tell the difference. Tha paint polish has also removed the swirl marks all over the car before and restored the shine the paint was capable of, a full interior shampoo/cleaning was also performed to make this a very complete job when I picked up the car. Just to show a few "before" pix of what the car looked like when I purchased it last Aug with badly swirled paint throughout the car, many small dents on the hood, badly scraped front bumper which also had indentation from the license plate mounting holder being pressed against the bumper itself: A few recap shots of the passenger side fender & door before painting, after painting, and after polishing: Finally a few, OK, quite a few shots of the final polishing and the finished product: This experience has realy shown me how important it is to have a good shop such as Michelangelos who's willing to work with the client to achieve a high standards of finished product, the small premium is worthwhile to achieve a quality work as compared to the typical paint/collision shop.

WOW That looks great!

Looks really good. I bet it runs much better now to.

+1, very nice work. I wonder if Eric at BP can get you some bumperettes matched up. I would suggest a few other mods, but you've spent plenty of coin already.

really great paint match...its ashame there aren't more great painters around. most shops do crappy paint match. not many artists left who can spot paint and make it look close to perfect. dink farmer in ukiah calif. is one of the best. i remember him spot painting 356 show cars that needed small apple sized areas or larger panels painted to match the 30 year old metallic paint. he is a master.

How much was the bill? Looks amazing.

I felt I received good value for the work performed, it certainly cost more than the everyday bodyshop, however I doubt an everyday bodyshop could have done as good a job as Michelangelos has done for me. As well each job is different than the next, so anyone who is interested in using Michelangelos for their excellent service should contact them and discuss cost directly.

FOUND YOU! Looks really good, def not the same colour as mine though. The work looks impressive, mine is going to either Antica or SpeedStar to get the work done. Thanks for the tips and I'm all joined up now. Cheers, Martin

Welcome Martin. I wonder if your car is the Millennium Edition then? Does the color change between dark blue, green, black depending on lighting condition? If it is then it's called Chromaflair. But I don't think the Millennium Edition came in Cab configuration though, everyone I've seen or read are hardtop. I still think you may have the very rare Viola Metallic color. The pictures of my car show the color as brighter than it really is in person, is there a paper code list under the hood? It will list the color code of the paint along with option codes. There is also a metal plate under the driver side (front) trunk liner that looks like below as in my car:

Really cool color. I bet its hard to keep clean in Canada weather.

My 911 was Vesuvio Metallic (more like "eggplant" rather than the car in this thread); both colors, however, are attractive, in part, because of their rarity.

Wow! That is a really good paint job and I believe its worth every penny. I had my front bumper, hood, fender repainted by a local dealer and they didnt perform such well job and I paid well over $2k. so I had to get them to repaint everything all over. I wish I lived closer to Michelangelos Auto Salon.

A standard refinishing of front end is $2,500 + tax at Michelangelo's, but my car required more work due to the gauge marks and many dents on the hood. Yeah I got a good paint job!