I need to be talked into or out of replacing my front fender and hood myself. Someone kicked in the front passenger side fender and I also have a 2"long 1/2inch deep dent in the hood. Since the car is in the shop being fixed after a light rear end colission i deciced to ask for a quote to fix the front of the car at the same time. They quoted me $960 to fix the hood and the front fender.

I looked at ebay and also a wholesale aftermarket parts wholesaler and it looks like I can get a new non OEM hood and fender myself and have them painted for about half of what the shop quoted me. BUT.......I have never done any body work before. I have done quite a bit of suspension, engine and electrical work on jeeps, hondas, subarus and porsches. I also have a very well stocked garage.

Anyone with experience please let me know if it is worth doing the repairs myself. Also, if I do this should I have the parts painted and install them after or should I install the new parts and then have the car painted with blending on opposite fender and passanger door.

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

By the way i have a platnium silver 99 civic ex......

 

If you are the do it yourselfer, then go for it. i had never done bodywork myself until i totalled my avenger. they called a complete loss. i got a new hood, z3 fenders, tc2 bodykit, radiator supprt, and core support. it took me a weekend. and then the car was fine, and looked good. buy a book for your car, and dive in. thats only if your confident. but a fender and hood would be really simple. it would probably take you a half day if you dont know what your doing. just follow the instructions.
good luck.
mike

 

Do it. Save the money. Directly replacing parts like that is easy. Just get it painted by a pro...............which I see youve got planned. This shouldnt take you more than 2 hrs....

 

Replacing the parts should be easy enough. I wouldn't recommend trying to fix the dents if you don't know what you're doing. Get to know your local junkyards, you can probably pick up a silver fender and hood pretty easily if you're willing to search and/or wait a while. Or you could pick up a used carbon fiber hood for a couple hundred bucks, maybe.

1999 or 2000 parts will work for your car.

 

Agreed dont repair it yourself. If you can get oem replacement its as easy as turning a wrench. The hardest part will be getting everything to line up properly. Hint. Keep all the bolts at finger tight till you line it up as best you can then tighten. Sounds obvious but getting hoods and fenders to line up properly can be a real pain.

Berz out.

 

It will be cheaper to just get replacement parts and install em yourself, then just have to pay for paint.

 

I have some experiance with body work, and i don't liek it at all. There is a very crappy mustang we are working on in autoshop right now. A fender and hood shouldn't be too hard, but my experiance is to the contrary. The mustang i was referrign to needs 2 new fenders and the doors installed again. When you replace any body parts, you have to align them. It isn't just throwing some bolts around (thats what i first thought). Aligning doors especially is a PITA, i hate it. I think that you could do, but i'm just trying to tell you what your getting yourself into. Aligning stuff requires lots of patience some times, especially if the aftermarket parts don't line up quite right. However, i am working on a 40 year old car so the aftermarket stuff isn't so great. If it was my car, i'd give it a shot. Worst that would happen is that you get everything off and figure out its over your head and take it to a body shop. Best thing that could happen is its a piece of cake and you save yourself a buttload of money.

 

Thanks for the quick replys.

Yeah, I would not try to repair the parts. I plan to just put on some new ones. It seems pretty straight forward, I've been wrenching on cars for years. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. It seems the easiest choice is to find take off silver parts, just need to know where to look. Is there any place that would be a good start for finding parts? All I have found so far is primered new aftermarket parts. I'm in southern california and could use a little wreck yard guidance....... I can locate just about any new part but have never looked for salvage parts before.

 

I think you should be able to buy some aftermarket fenders and hoods from where ever. I dunno why you would want to goto a junk yard to get a fender and a hood, i don't think they are that expensive. I would have it painted after its installed because you could bend or scratch up the parts when your installing it. I know that on the mustang we scratched the crap out of that fender trying to put it in, but its not painted yet so its fine. If you put small dents and stuff in the fender when you are putting it in, its pretty easy to fix with some body filler. If its already painted, then you gotta be super careful not to do any damage.

 

http://www.keystone-auto.com/ is a good place for getting after market parts...keep in mind that after market parts never fit quite like factory but my old man has been using Keystone for years...I bought fenders for my prelude back in the day but opted for a factory hood. Installing them takes patience but it can be done yourself. Have the pro's paint them though...it's a good idea to blend into the adjacent panel to help ensure color match...I'd say if the cars already at the shop getting fixed you may as well have them do it. Were they going to straighten or replace the panels for you? If they were replacing ask if they will use aftermarket parts.

My old man owns a body shop so if you have questions feel free to PM me.