Auto Body Painting for West Hill

Matching the colour your car is now

A lot of the cars we paint from West Hill are not new. They are the long-owned sedans and small SUVs that sit on a single driveway on a street off Lawrence or Kingston Road, or at the curb when the driveway is full, through ten summers of sun off the lake and ten winters of salt spray. That changes the job. A paint code tells us what colour the car was in the factory; it does not tell us how much the clear has dulled on the roof, how far the red has drifted toward orange on the hood, or how the metallic on the doors reads in low light. Matching a fresh mix to that is the actual work, and it is why a door painted somewhere else can look like it belongs to a slightly different car than the fender next to it.

We spray a test card from the mixed colour and compare it to the car in daylight, tint until it agrees, and then blend the new colour into the neighbouring panels so the eye has no edge to find. On an older car that step is not optional.

Trim comes off because tape lines are where paint fails first

The panel is stripped to a sound surface, any filler is shaped and sanded, and primer seals it. Handles, lights and mouldings come off rather than being masked around, because a tape line under a rubber seal is where refinish work lets go first. Base colour goes on in the booth in as many coats as it takes to cover, then clear, then heat to cure — and after that, wet sanding and polishing until the texture of the new clear matches a finish that has been hand-polished for a decade, which is slightly flatter than factory. The refinish carries a lifetime warranty: if the colour shifts or the clear lifts, we address it. The estimate is done from photos, and the rental, if there is one, is timed to your drop-off rather than the day you first called.

• Stripped, filled, primed and sealed before colour
• Colour tinted against the car, not only the code
• Blend into adjacent panels so no edge shows
• Lifetime warranty on paint and refinish

Guildwood sun on top, Kingston Road salt below

West Hill paint fails from two directions. On the Guildwood streets above the bluffs the cars sit in open summer sun, and it is the horizontal panels that go — roof, hood and trunk lose their clear first while the doors below them still shine. Along Kingston Road the attack comes from underneath: salt spray draws a dull, chip-pocked line along the lower doors and rockers, and the tops stay presentable. Which pattern your car has decides the estimate. A twelve-year-old car with a failing hood and sound doors is properly served by a hood refinish blended into the fenders, not a whole-car respray; the reverse car — good roof, salt-worn lower doors — is a lower-panel job, with any rust cut out before the paint goes near it.

The aftercare has a reason behind it. The clear leaves our booth cured by heat but still off-gassing solvents for a few weeks, so wax or sealant applied too early seals them in and dulls the finish, and a stiff brush wash can mark a surface that has not reached full hardness. Hand wash, hold the wax, and after about a month treat it like any other panel. Winter is fine for the work itself — paint cures in the booth, not on the driveway — but where the job includes bare-metal rust cuts on those lower doors, an autumn booking beats a spring one, because the new seam meets its first salt already sealed.