Have you got any pictures?

From what you've said so far it sounds very much like you could have the hood, fenders, and bumper removed and resprayed

If you were to do this you would be having a 'perfect' job done, as the whole panel would be being prepped and painted rather than spotted and blended

A good shop could do this no problem, and depending on what standard you wanted the work finishing to, they could most likely remove all traces of orange peel, or even match the panels with the same amount of orange peel that you have on the rest of your car

Some of the hotrod shops would do this with absolutely no trouble at all

 

In my line of work I deal with custom painters often and have since the '70s. I have also prepped and painted cars and done some custom painting as well.

It is very difficult for any individual shop to do a factory quality paint job for a number of reasons.

First the car must be pretty much be totally stripped to just a shell. This can take days to do correctly and longer to put back together. It's often difficult to assemble as accuractly as the factory because they know all the tricks and have special tools not available to individual shops.

Often, timing is critical to applying paint within a certain window of primer cure for the best possible adheision. It can be very difficult even for an expert painter to match the factory stipple to that of a painter that paints the same parts day in and day out with the same factory paint. This is an art, something that is learned over years of trial. Each factory has it's own stipple and texture of the paint that's like a trade mark and remains as shot on that last coat applied.

Those not in the know, don't realize that "the as sprayed texture" or stipple is a highly sought after and desireable finish and is held in extremely high regard by serious collectors and concours judges. It is often a deciding factor in what shop or painter gets the job for serious piece.

Another very import issue is long term durability. It's really hard to improve on the factory paint here. Many repaints start to shrink, crack, craze, dull and show sanding marks prematurely compared to factory jobs.

There's a lot more, I just highlighted a few areas if importance. Many think the color sanded, blocked and polished to a mirror flat finish is the best of the best. This is generally reserved for custom cars and hot rods and is actually the easiest finish to reproduce. The final paint coat can be sprayed too dry, too wet, with runs, even dust and dirt and easily be fixed later to a mirror finish. I cringe when I see factory paint destroyed by being polished flat to a mirror finish, but that's just me.

 

What about the roof? That is where the worst of the nicks remain.

 

The hard-top would be the same as any other panel on the car. Any good paint shop, especially one with computer controlled equipment and pristine paint booths, can do any paint job. Do a walk through of the shop and see for yourself. There have been some amazing improvements in auto painting in the past 15 years. Use a shop that has them.

 

I agree this is true in shows where originality are more important than the overall finish of the car (collectors and such)

But people should know that orange peel is nothing other than a defect

Manufacturers get away with this defect as its time consuming and costly to resolve,(Aston Martin and Rolls Royce flat their cars during painting) and not many people know what to look for in a paint job anyway

In a show where standards are more important than originality (HotRods and Customs) you would be nothing short of crucified if you showed a car with the slightest signs of stippling

 

+1....not to mention many cars are fixed or resprayed at the port due to damage.Hell my torbo from the factory had dirt in the paint and a run in one of the wheel wells from new.

 

Just drive the car, that's what you bought it for isn't it? You will go through all this work and expensive that you will never recover if you ever sell it. 996 GT2's are great cars, enjoy it and forget about a couple chips.

 

I don't disagree with you. I do drive it, and LOVE it! It was just my goal when I got it to get it back looking new again, since that is probably as close as I will ever get to a new GT2.

 

^^^ 996 GT2 is the widowmaker...it's also known as the last of the great driver's turbo 911 after the 993 GT2 which is not available in the US ...the new GT2, albeit a fantastic car, has PASM (Porsche Active Suspension) and PSM (traction Control)..it's much closer to the turbo both in feel and function...it's more refined and less raw, due to a large part of the attrition rate and driver's crashing the 996 GT2 that Porsche made revisions making the car "less raw" in the newer version(s) going forward...

 

interesting you say that...Porsche engineers put thousands of hrs in designing the lights for the 996 Gen 1 and Gen 2 (known as 996.2 which is all the turbo and GT2 assemblies)...

the goal was to create a single light unit with fog light integrated in the same housing as the headlight for more effective ray utilizion in terms of height of projection. This was the design they chose and was subsequently used on the GT1 racecar at LeMans and Porsche engineers really liked this design, and it proved very effective on less than desirable weather conditions in the GT1 on the racing circuit as well as Porsche's road going 911 cars.

Purists did not like the early (gen 1) version of this integrated assembly, it was not so much the Gen 2 (like ours) but the early Gen1 911 style that was unpopular, they wrote in and complained by the droves. In the end Porsche scrapped the integrated light and went back to the 993 style headlight and seperate foglight assembly, which the engineers did not think was the most effective way to create the design (with the fog level projection) but in the end sales and the loyalists prevailed.

 

interesting thread....

 

Yes, I had heard this, but I did not have the facts so I did not want to speak on it. I find it somewhat comical that so many loyalists insisted on an inferior design that was ugly in comparison, and Porsche caved. Still the best cars in the world, but they could have been prettier. Oh well, the Germans were never known for style anyway. You have to go to Italy for that. When it comes to engineering, however.... the center of the universe.

 

I am not a fan of the normal 996 Turbo front bumper, but I love my 996 GT2 front bumper, even with the 996 lights. The bumper makes all the difference to me.

 

Unfortunately though the light quality of the 996 is pretty poor, at least when compared to my previous car of the same age an E46 M3. It would have been nice if they put more effort in to getting them to do a better job.

 

Mine came with HID's, which is great light quality compared to anything else.