When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
They are already lightweight aluminum. Not sure what additional advantage there would be with CF. A piece that large would be very expensive in any case.
I appreciate your response sir and as a mechanical designer for over 30 years I can assure you I am very familiar with the properties of various materials and their costs. However, I was asking because on Sat I drove to the local hardware store and while I was there a guy in a pickup truck backed into my nice new car and did to the hood what you see in the attached photos. So, the reason I was inquiring is that I am concerned with a body shop being able to match the color. Someone I know suggested a carbon fiber hood and then the color match becomes a non-event. I did search the inter-web and could not find any carbon fiber hoods for the C7 body style and figured what better place to ask because if anyone would know they probably frequent this forum.
FWIW, a good body shop, especially one that's Audi Certified, should have no problem matching the factory paint. I just had $9500 of side body work (I recently was forced by a semi into scraping a guard rail) and I can't tell there was ever any damage. They matched the paint perfectly including blending the undamaged hood to match the painted new fender.
A similar thing happened to mine in Korea. The damage looks almost similar, but the headlight cover was only broken, not the entire unit.
Replacing the hood cost for the part was $2,300. Labor I don't know since the other guys' insurance took car of it.
I don't know if there is a price difference based on geographical location. But it wasn't as expensive as I would have thought. To fix the whole thing was less than $5,000. Labor of course is less and it was at the dealer shop, not third party since here is no "certified" body shop for Audi in Korea besides the dealer.
The Crystal & Pearl paints are hard to match without blending over a large area. Metallic is pretty simple for any good shop.
Can't just blend the repaired area. With any color, to be done right, the entire hood would have to be repainted and blended with the fenders. My whole undamaged hood had this done to blend in with the replaced right fender.
Dan,
I am wondering if anyone answered your question. Did you ever find a carbon fiber hood?
What did you end up doing to fix your hood?
I am looking to see if replacing my hood with carbon fiber is worth it.
Any information on lessons learned would be appreciated.
Dan,
I am wondering if anyone answered your question. Did you ever find a carbon fiber hood?
What did you end up doing to fix your hood?
I am looking to see if replacing my hood with carbon fiber is worth it.
Any information on lessons learned would be appreciated.
Color matching really shouldn't be a concern. Even with difficult colors.
My car is the Daytona Grey. It has 3 different color pearls (blue, purple, white) and my indy body shop blended it perfectly on 3 different repairs. Even looking critically at it in different lighting I can't see where the blend happened.
Next up for him is Volcano Red on my A4.
P.S. - Buying the "correct paint code" hood, door, trunk lid, etc. is not a guarantee your colors will match. It has to do with the base primer colors, etc. which are not part of the paint code. My daughters Mini Cooper S was metallic blue, but when my guy looked it up they used 5 different primer colors. So that's why shops use a "spray card" to do a test spray and match their new topcoat to the existing paint your car.
09-28-2015, 01:21 PM
