Hi everyone,

Today I finally got my car back from the body shop. I've been driving a Hyundai Elantra rental car for the past 4 weeks - my FD feels like a brand new car.

Anyways, my friend pointed out that my taillights were wired incorrectly. The shop put the turn signal bulb on the innermost circle, and the brake lights on the two outside yellow and red circles.

I thought to myself "Kind of shoddy, but not a huge deal - I'll just pull the taillights off and fix it myself."

That's when I noticed that my left taillight seemed kind of loose. It had a lot of slack and didn't seem 'tight' like the last time I removed them. I slid the taillight off and my suspicions were confirmed - the body shop completely snapped off 2 of the 3 mounting tabs that secure the taillight to the car.

My guess is that the dumbass worker at the shop couldn't figure out how to get the taillight out, so he kept on pulling on it until the brackets/tabs snapped off, and then he realized that you're supposed to slide it out. Needless to say, I'm pretty ******* steamed.

Not only that, my headlight covers don't sit flush with the hood. They're raised up about 3cm over the hood, and it looks pretty shitty. The rear bumper also has about a 4-5cm gap between the keyhole and the actual bumper skin itself.

Any suggestions on what to do? I talked with the owner of the shop today before I picked up my car - it turns out that I graduated with his son from highschool. I'm going to visit him tomorrow morning and explain the things I'm dissatisfied with. The only problem is that I've already been without my car for 4 weeks, and I leave back for college in 1 more week.

I really don't know these things happened. The place I went to is considered the most prestigious and expensive bodyshop in D/FW area, and comes highly recommended from a bunch of people.

Blah, ****.

 

Is it the tabs on the lights or the ones on the body? I've broken off one on the body and it was pretty cheap to replace.

 

Here are some pictures..

 

the head lights can be adjusted by yourself with the 4 phillips screws. Its easy to do. Just becareful as you might get it to rub on the hood.

The rear keyhole might be some work but I thought there was a small gap there regardless. To access it and see what going on is a good amount of work to remove the bumper.

The tails....they should replace period.

I went to a shop that supposedly dealt with alot of FD's. I had similar type of issues where the install was bad. I decided that on my next repaint I would personally take those pieces off and install them after the car was painted.

 

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I agree that they should completely replace your tails, that's just rediculous. As for the other things, the headlights you can adjust yourself (and I would do it myself instead of taking it back to them) and you might just have to be content with the gapped keyhole.