Hey guys, unfortunately someone sideswiped my G pretty good two nights ago while my car was parked at a friends house down by the street. Turns out to be some non driving ***, half drunk woman who's on probation for GTA driving one of those old GMC Jimmy's! My buddy saw the whole thing and actually had to run her down because she didn't even realize she hit something! This woman was out of her mind. Anyway, on to my problem.

The damage wasn't pretty, but I think I got away without any major damage. To me, it seems to just be cosmetic, but I'm still going to have to get basically my whole passenger side fender, door, and rear fender fixed from dents and horrible scratches. So where should I take it? Am I going to even have a choice? I'm hoping this woman's insurance will take charge, and I won't have to come out of pocket for this.

I heard the 2009 G37's have some kind of 'scratch resistant' paint on them. Is there any truth to this? And if so, will the place my car goes for repairs have this kind of paint available?


I hate this. I just traded in my '04 G35 coupe for a new G37-s coupe and 2 months into owning it this happens. I went 5+ years without even managing to get a single dent or anything bigger then a tiny scratch on my G35! Sure not starting off on the right foot this time around. Gotta love people who ruin it for others.

 

There is a special paint. I doubt your typical body shop will have it. Call the dealer where you bought it and ask them if their bodyshop uses the special paint.

Let us know how it turns out.

 

^+1...just get a recommendation from the dealership about where to go -- cost shouldn't be an issue since by every law available that lady and her insurance (if she even has any ) will be responsible for paying it.

Sorry to hear about such a crappy situation and GL with fixing it up!!!

 

I heard it's not worth it.

 

it helps with hairline scratches kinda. but pretty much anything you can did your nail into to grip i dont think it works on that. Some cars paints you see them swirls.. let the 09 G soak iin the sun.

 

it's not the special paint, it's the clear coat that has various layers to make it work.


see this autoblog article:

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/11/27/n...mobile-phones/


http://lms.nnanet.com/VAPublishing/A...eldDisplay.pdf

personally having a black '08 g37 coupe vs. the '09's in black on my lot, i envy the scratch shield clear coat

 

I'm suprised that my car does not have swirl marks.

I'm very careful drying the car after washing it, which is when most ppl. swirl mark their car. Even those that a very careful will get a few eventually.

I'm a believer in the pain, although I think it is limited to minor marks, anything significant will likely NOT HEAL on it's own.

 

So whats the word OP? My guess is you may have run into some
complications when you took it to get estimated?

For those of you who do not know, the special clear coat Nissan
developed for JDM cars and then US use (via Infiniti only) is not so
easily repaired. There are a few contributing factors, but the main one
is that Nissan has not licensed or released the coating to any other
commerical paint developer (i.e. PPG, DuPont, BASF etc) and Nissan also
does not release the coating mix in raw form for general sale or
wholesale purposes (so dealers can't even get it). So the only way you
could ever get a factory fresh repaint, is to somehow convince nissan to
take your car back to the Japan factory where its applied...not gonna
happen!

So how do you get this repaired? Well I dont know how all companies
treat this problem, but I know for a fact as of Spring-09, PPG's stance
on the matter was to advise their customers to re-clear the whole panel
without blending over any of the original clear coat. They then
suggested using the PPG Diamond Clear series of clears which will resist
sratching, swirling and chipping due to its hard resilient properties.

If you try to blend regular clears over the Nissan special-clear the
finish will look hazey until you put heat back into it (i.e.
buffing/polishing), but it will still return to a haze once it cools and
I doubt the heat from the sun is enough to keep clear all of the time.

I learned about this while I was at my PPG certification class this past
spring.

So OP, how did you fair? Any issues?

There were lawsuits against both nissan and body shops regarding this
matter for claiming that the paint was repaired with like OEM paints
when in fact they were not and suits against Nissan for not providing
this information to the "painting public".

 

First the Ester oil fiasco, now this?

Why is Infiniti not licensing the self-healing clear coat to other paint companies?

 

I wouldnt stress about the clearcoat since the important part is color matching.

infiniti special clear coat vs regular clear coat is the same look

 

More precisely Nissan, Japan.

I dont know, if you take your car to a shop you better hope the know about this issue otherwise it may be a few hours to a few days depending on how they prepped the car for pickup versus when you took delivery of it.

You should never leave the parking lot of an autobody shop until the car has been thoroughly looked over by you and someone from the shop. They may not be so nice about things once you leave and then try to come back a few days later.

 

It is actually the paint. When it heats up, either from the sun or a blow dryer, it moves around and makse minor scratches disappear. I had a scratch on my truck and I am sure the dealer used some heat and got the cratch out with minamal costs. Cannot even tell. For 2010 Infiniti desided that the additional costs were not worth it and went back to regular paint. If you have or need your car (2009 only) repaired, there is really no body shop that has the "self-healing" paint. The repair will be done with regular paint.

I recently had someone key the hood on my Coupe and needed to get it repainted. While doing that I asked many questions regaridng the paint products and what was out there for the repairs I had done. I cannot tell the difference between the repainted hood and the rest of the car. Good body shops are worth the money regardless of what paint is used.

 

Sorry for the long wait guys. Here's the story.

Turns out the dealership knew absolutely NOTHING about such said clear coat. Which it is the clear coat, not in the paint btw if anyone was confused.

They told me that it was just something my salesman probably told me to help sell the car (literally told me that). I insisted on it asking them to look into this for me.

So the guy picks up the phone and calls over to the body shop the dealership uses to ask a few questions.

The guy knows nothing about it! Never heard of it he said, and can promise me they don't use this clear on G37's - as he fixes and paints them all day long.

Unhappy I decided to do some more research on my own. I got in touch with an old friend who does paint and body work to pick his brain a bit.

He's heard about it, and knows a little bit about it. Apparently it was originally started out for use on cell phones, but has made it's way onto cars, and works rather well! The name he heard it as was "Scratch Shield". It's quite a bit more expensive by about double over your traditional clear, but truly does help out with those minor surface scratches and blemishes - as I've tested in a small area.

So I asked him to find out for me if there is any truth to this being on the 2009 G37's.

Sure enough, there is. But only for 2009 as they discontinued it in 2010 due to excessive cost. (My invoice listed it at $345 to spray the one side of my car that was damaged)

Next, I had to find a local supplier which wasn't easy, but this guy took care of it for me.

Conclusion:

Car went into the body shop my buddy recommended and stayed there for 5 days. When it came out it really did look brand new. I found 1 small blemish on the car that could be wet sanded right out. So far so good. Hopefully nothing changes in the years to come.

I attached a PDF of the pre mentioned "Scratch Shield". Check it out.

 

So did you show that to your dealership afterwards?

 

The body shop near me is authorized to use the ScratchShield. When my 08 was in an accident, they even mentioned it to me and said "too bad we can't use the self healing clear like we do on the 09s." Didn't really matter though since the car was totalled shortly after.