Some little **** keyed my car today - ARGHHH!!!

Selik

Well, the title of the thread says it all really. I'm really fuming about this. I parked my car this morning up the road from where I work near enough it's usual spot in a quiet little estate in Blackrock. I arrive back to my car to find the whole right side of it keyed to bits! It starts just above my fuelcap cover, onto the rear door, then the front door and finally onto the front wing below the bonnet. If I ever get my hands on the scumbag skanger who did this he'll wish he never looked twice at my car and I will not be responsible for my actions... Fat chance of course :mad:

It looks so malicious as well, total intent to ruin my car and nothing else. I got a quick estimate at a local garage this evening and they reckon €700 - €800 would be the repair cost. Both doors will need to be resprayed as well as most of the front wing and of course the back part to the right of the boot :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Ok now my rant is over and I don't even feel better in the slightest! To make matters worse my car is shiny black so the scratches really stand out and look obvious. Anybody got any ideas as to how I could sort it out without spending the guts of a grand? Any advice will be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance guys

Chimaera

If they've scratched right through to the bare metal, then it'll need respraying. If they've only damaged the pigment layer, you might get away with using a colour stick and some elbow grease. Doesn't sound that trivial though from your description.

Try and find a decent panel beater, and get them to give you an estimate for a partial respray.

Selik

I think that the only scratch out of the four (seperate ones) that might be down to the metal is the one on the front wing... The rest appear to only be as deep as the white undercoat under the black paint. Another problem which I forgot to mention is that I got this sealant product called Tougheal applied to my car recently and I'm not sure how someone would go about respraying the doors etc. Would they have to completely strip all the pint off or would that be done anyway?

What I might try and attemt is to get one of those paint marker things in the exact colour of my car (Golf IV glossy black I think) and try and do the best I can with it. If that's no good I'm gonna have to get a professional job done on it :mad: as I don't want my car to be undervalued in a year or two when I decide to sell it.

I swear if I got the prick while he (she?) was doing this I would have lost it big-time! :eek:
To quote Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction...

"It would be worth him doing it just to catch him doing it"

daveg

Originally posted by Giles

I swear if I got the prick while he (she?) was doing this I would have lost it big-time! :eek:
To quote Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction...

"It would be worth him doing it just to catch him doing it"

I was just about to post that.... Bad luck mate.. the cúnts.

sirlinux

Check out these guys www.carcraft.ie they might be able to fix it much cheaper! A few mates have used them for scratches etc, they are the biz.

Hyzepher

I feel for you m8 - just yesterday I came back to my car to find I had been 'reversed' into and considerable damage done - is there any ethics or morales left in Dublin. To make it worse my car is less than 4 weeks old!

If someone invented or provided an in car CCTV system that activated when you parked - I would buy it. If only to have the satisfaction of arriving with the gardai at their door to haul them away

Hyzepher

Victor

So were you the guy parked on the footpath when I was taking out the bins in the morning?

Spunj

I recently got the most of one side of my car resprayed. The guy hung and sprayed two new doors and 'blew in' part of the rear quarter and front wing and lacquered all four panels.
looking at my car now, its 100% and theres no way to tell it was sprayed.

Cost of the guy doing that, spraying inside the doors (were a different colour) and rebuilding all the window mechanisms, door locks etc?

€380

My only advise is to get a recommendation of a competent private panel beater / sprayer.

For spraying only I'd say mine would have cost 240 - 280, not as bad as you would think.

Victor - I don't like the tone of your post, looks like you condone the type of vigilante action where someone doesn't like the way a car is parked and 'keys' it to teach the person a lesson. Bad form indeed. Someone parked on a footpath deserves a parking ticket and its the garda's job to enforce that, not some muppet with a key and a grudge.

Victor

Originally posted by Spunj
Victor - I don't like the tone of your post, looks like you condone the type of vigilante action where someone doesn't like the way a car is parked and 'keys' it to teach the person a lesson. Bad form indeed. Someone parked on a footpath deserves a parking ticket and its the garda's job to enforce that, not some muppet with a key and a grudge.

Condone, no. Understand, yes.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Victor
So were you the guy parked on the footpath when I was taking out the bins in the morning?

I thought the same. Actually my first thought was that someone doesn't like you parking in the "quiet little estate in Blackrock". Since (and apologies if I'm wrong) it sounds like you can't park at work so you are parking in a residential area near it. Not that I condone vigilantisim either. But if you are doing this, especially regularly. It drives people mental. Of course it could be just some idiot walking by, and you'll get that anywhere. But it isn't and you get it repaired theres a good chance they'll do it again. Especially if you park it in the same place. Of course if its the local thug, and he see's it, he'll definately do it again.

Where I live you get people parking to catch the train and bus and they park all over the place. Sometimes leaving the car there overnight. One one occasion I had a awkwardly parked car there for almost two weeks. I wasn't best pleased. Its a big problem all over Dublin.

If you are getting it done try and get them to do any stone chips and the like aswell. Might as well get value for your money. Though be warned if you are planning on selling you car make sure you get a picture of the damage first before you get it sprayed, and keep the reciepts. Get them to include a description of the damage on the repair quote or bill. Because if I was looking at a car for sale and found most of one side had been resprayed I would just assume it had been pranged. If the seller hadn't told me about it I'd walk away too.

Just some things to think about...

Selik

I've decided that it's just not worth getting a full respray done so I'm gonna bring the car into Carcraft (rang them a couple of days ago - thanks Sirlinux!) and see what they can do for me. The guy on the phone was very helpful and seemed to know his stuff pretty well which has to be encouraging.

Ricardo, whenever I park in a residential area I always take utmost car not block anyones driveway / gate etc - strangely enough the day my car got keyed I parked it around the corner up on the kerb slightly as there were no suitable spaces on the road I usually park on (Green Ave I think it's called, near Carysfort Ave in Blackrock - they can't install disc parking there presumably because there are driveways on both sides of the road all the way up). Anyway after calming down a little bit and taking a good look at the scratches again I'm reasonably confident that they can be filled and buffed to level that they won't really be noticable unless one was actually looking for something like that. I'll let everyone know when I've got it sorted this week how it looks. www.carcraft.ie said the job shouldn't cost more than €70 which compared with €800 for a repray job isn't all that bad! As somebody has already pointed out, if one whole side of a car has been resprayed, the logical assumption would be that the car has been mangled in a crash!!!

RicardoSmith

Sounds like a good approach...

Selik

It's certainly the most cost-efficient one anyway!