Hey guys,
My brother scratched the heck out of my driver side trim on my 03 EX Coupe yesterday, and I mean bad. About 3 inches from the back of the driver's door all the way to my back wheel well, the scratch is a good foot long. The metal trim bent in as well, so.. that'll be a pain to fix. So, my question concerns lip kits and side skirts. I was gonna buy rims before i changed the body per se, but now that this has happened, I feel that I need to fix my sides first. I plan to do something with the sides as far as lowering is, and I do not intend to drop my wheelbase at this time. So. Lips on the sides, or Side Skirts? Do either get rid of the stock side panel on the bottom (closest to the road)? Ultimately, my main concern is knocking that scratch out of the picture, ie, I don't want to bother with the side skirts or lips if they wont get rid of that panel. By get rid of, I mean will they require me to remove it and then replace it with the 3rd party part. Anyways, a bit of clarification will be great. Thank you very much.

 

"Lip Kit: A kit similar to a body kit that attaches to your stock body panels instead of replacing them. Generally they're much smaller than body kits and attach to the front and rear bumper and side skirts.

Side Skirts: The lowest little panel on the sides under the doors."

Just saw that from the sticky up top. Going off of that, I should be buying side skirts? Will those look okay if all I want to do is buy a front lip and not new bumper?

 

A front and rear lip just attachsto your bumper thats already there, if you get side skirts, you remove the factory skirts and then they replace them. If your scratch is not on the factory side skirt then a lip kit will not be your solution.

if it got scratched to themetal it should becoverd up right away before rust starts to form, just go to a dealer/automotive storeand get some touch up paint.

 

Alright, well I sanded it a bit and then washed it all up and added a layer of touch up. That didn't get rid of all of it, it will probably take another couple layers of snading/painting, but it looks a lot better. Thanks for the advice.

Does anyone know where I can pick up a good amount of paint with the metallic flakes that a stock Civic paint job has in it? I know my color code, and I have my own spray gun, so I plan to do a good touch up job to my front hood and bumper some time soon, so I would like to get some info on the subject. Thanks a lot!

 

you can try any of the car places, napa, part source. these are canadian places, not sure if they have any in the states, but even a paint can can do the trick, remeber to keep it not to close, and keep it real even.