Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wrecked Tacoma - Buy or Pass?

My son and daughter-in-law bought a lot of salvage title cars and trucks. It didn’t matter to them a bit because they bought them to use. If that’s what a person wants who cares what the title says unless you’re the person that’s gonna try and sell it then the person buying it isn’t too enthusiastic about buying something with a salvage title. As was mentioned before, short of frame damage, a salvage title won’t hurt anything at all.

A small Mulie buck did this in 2020 in Utah. I got it patched together there and drove it home. I'm still driving it today with 200K+ on it.

that depends entirely on Who! did the prep & painting & What! products they used $$$...

Other than Kindig in Utah, no one can beat factory paint…

LOL, that is both funny! and a coincidence!... if you watched Kindig's Kustom "Gull Wing Mercedes" episode, that short guy in the booth when they painted it is Rick Harvard, the Head Honcho at the Akso Nobel (Sikkens) application center in Troy Michigan... he is a friend of my brother... we have prepped & painted with Rick in Troy... When we built a "No Holes Barred" RestoMod Trans Am some yrs back, my brother flew Rick in to Shoot it... after he shot the body, my brother wasn't happy with it, as it would have required a heavy cut & buff, and we wanted an OEM factory texture (aka orange peel)... He sent him home & i shot it with over reduced clear at a higher air pressure... after lightly nibbing the dirt specks & then lightly buzzing it with 3000 grit Trizact on a soft interface pad, followed by a light buffing with 3M perfect-it 3 step polish, it is a "Dead Ringer" for a factory paint job... Rick is a good Painter (and Chemist) with more experience than me... but i can Outshoot him when it comes to matching an OEM factory painted look...

A good repaint makes a factory job look like schitt.

Factory paint looks dead with minimal depth.

Straight from the booth, no polishing yet.

It’s not how the paint looks at first. It’s also what it looks like years later. The color has to match as it ages. Also repaints on bumper covers totally suck too.

that has everything to do with not fully curing the undercoats (aka primer) before painting, and then not letting the paint fully cure before cutting & buffing which leads to dieback of gloss down the road... and also not using Top Quality products so it holds up to the elements long term... some (most?) collision shops like to rush things to keep the customers happy & get paid $$$, and also cut corners on product quality to save a few $...

I have an uncle who has wrecked his 2017 tacoma twice. Both times the front end was smashed in enough that the doors had trouble opening but the truck remained drivable. A good paint and body shop fixed the damage both times and the truck looks as good as new and it works the same. The work is "guaranteed for life" which means the life of the business that did the work.....and I believe transferable to a new buyer. The cost to the insurance company was astronomical and now my Uncle's insurance bill is the same.

He is getting pretty old and probably should stop driving.

All depends how good the prep was and how good the painter is.

You can keep qualifying the paint job like finding a woman that can stand up to the rigors of a real soldier, but day in and day out that is the exception, not the rule…

Good for you, but not many can back up that claim. Kindig puts out stuff that factories can’t match in their ability to fabricate and paint. Try and find a shop that can accomplish the same finish.


I had my GTO repainted about 8 years ago by a Chevrolet body shop. They took all the parts off and hand worked the whole car. I doubt it looked this good from the factory, but that was 1965.

Today they have some great paint applied to a body you can’t do in a paint booth…