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.

 

What work are you having them do? Just repainting the front end? Maybe the pictures don't show it, but the paint looked pretty good before :P

 

Yes primarily the front end repaint. The front bumper was badly sand-blasted and scratched, the license plate frame had been pushed in and left indentations into the bumper, the hood had many little indentations almost as if it had been hit by hails storm however the rest of the car were void of these indentations.....

It's all surface work, plus PDR, then a full car polish. I'll post the before and after images when I pick up the car.

 

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 revealed a few minor depressions not noticeable before when the paint was still 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!!

 

Looks good! good prepwork, should be back home soon.

 

dame looks like a pro shop lols :P

 

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.

 

can u pm me the cost?

tia

 

Faiz,

Best to contact Mike at Michelangelo's directly to get a quote, each car and each job is different, the level to which I wanted the work done on my car would be considered crazy by someone who's not a "car guy", and I had a fair bit of work done too.

As an example, they recently showed me a pix of the number of yellow marker circles on the hood to show where each dent was just blew me away, most average person would just tell the shop to use body filler to "fix" it, but I wanted these dents PDR'ed out first to avoid any chance of body filler marks or lifting in the future. I will download the pix from their camera the next time I'm there with my laptop, it's an eye opener for sure.

Plus I wouldn't want to misrepresent the cost and the work done whether higher or lower than someone else's reference point or expectation.

So give them a call or go visit them, they will gladly provide you with a quote. What it boils down to is they can stand behind the quote, but I cannot on their behalf.