Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior Body Kit installation advice!

My friend bought a body kit from e-bay for his solara and had it installed for like 1100$ and it was just a small ground effects kit. It was a no-name kit he paid about 500$ for it. And they had the car for 2 weeks!

My question is that i want to buy the full RMM kit but dont want to pay that much and or wait 2 or more weeks. Would it be smart to just get the pieces painted and install it myself or do you think i should have a collision shop put it on my car.

Basically what would you do?

btw: labor rate down here down in bama is 60$ per hour

they probably charged him that much 'cuz his kit didn't fit right since it was a no-name brand off e-bay.

the RMM kit should fit perfect right out of the box. all you gotta do is test fit it & see if everything fits to your liking. if it does, then just drop off the piece to get painted ($350 at the most they should charge you) and install it yourself if you wanna save some $. lip kits are really easy to install.

rmm should fit perfect, don't buy off brand kits off ebay.

If you drop off the kit to get painted, will they be able to get the color right, or will your kit parts be a shade lighter and whatnot

in my opinion: body kits should be put on by a professional or someone who has good knowledge of auto bodywork.

so, because you are asking this question in the first place, you should know put it on yourself--get a professional to do it.

but anyway, here are the locations of the attachment points if your interested:

https://celicahobby.com/ubbthreads/thread.f_57083_0_collapsed_2__1.html#57083

just do it yourself

Shouldn't be too hard

paint hardly ever matches up perfectly..even if they use the factory paint your car will have most likely faded slightly.

that's why most halfway decent paintshops use a technique called fading..they paint the parts that need to be painted..and then fade out over the areas near the newly painted parts to blend it in. you couldn't tell the diference if you wanted to

but yes, there are some low-class paintshops that will only paint the parts that need to be painted..and you can usually notice that the color is off slightly.

install the pieces yourself unpainted. then drop them off at reputable place in your area to be painted. this is what i did, but as for color matching, my car is black so it is exact. unsure about silver, supposably it is a bit harder to match without blending but can be done

thanks guys, the different paint colors makes sense i'll just drop the car off, i dont want 2 different color body pieces


thanks

no prob, glad we could help

just make sure they blend the paint in..otherwise the colors will look slightly off even if they are the exact same mix due to the slight fading your car's original paint would have already experienced