Porsche 996 side repair -

This body repair on a Porsche 996 was a good example of in-out respray that had to be done in under two days. The owner didn’t judge the width of a pass, which resulted in a visit to RT Performance body shop.

First off our prepper has removed the paint around the damaged are to assess what needs to be pulled out and filled in. We always treat any bare metal to prevent it from rusting in the future. The biggest challenge in any body work repair is to contain the original shape of body panels when sanding filled surfaces. Luckily our staff are aces in this and Porsche was quickly becoming ready for the priming stage. We use a high build Ruperto primer for this type of repair. It evens out any minor imperfections left in the filler. As a standard practice, we leave UV panel lights over the primed panels. These lights dry out primer from the inside. Once dried, the primer is rubbed down and the car is getting ready to go in the spray booth.

It is important to have all panels de-greased properly to avoid any contamination in the spraying process. We have had the silver Porsche colour matched and mixed to suit this particular shade. Because only front fender and rear quarter were damaged, we had to do a blend onto the door to ensure there will be no visual difference between fresh and old paintwork. For the blends, we use special blending thinners by Nexa, which are mixed and applied gradually in different proportions at different stages. Silver paints also require special mixing thinners which will not cause a chemical reaction between paint particles and make the paint look “patchy”.

Once sprayed and lacquered, the car was left to dry out. Last stage is to assemble any parts that were removed prior to repair work. At RT Performance we prefer to remove all possible parts that are in a way. This ensures consistent delivery of paint and reduces contamination from hidden spots. Once the 911 was put back together, we gave it a final clean and checked again everything was in order. A lot of work for 2 days but another outstanding result from our team.