Looking to mod my Vibe.

[spino]

Well, close to paying off my Vibe (04), but I've managed to scratch the plastic around my Vibe's exterior over the years. Since I'm not paying a car loan anymore, my idea was to simply replace the plastic with a third-party kit and get a new paint job, but hey, what do I know about doing that? So if anyone lives in Southern California has some ideas of how one might go about this, I'm all ears. Also any alternative suggestions are good too. (Looking to fix around Christmas time.)ThanksDavid

[GrayFox]

well I don't live anywhere near california but hopefully I can help you out with suggestions Unfortunately there aren't many options for our cars. There is only one full 8 piece kit make by street grafitti which replaces the front/back bumpers, side skirts, front fenders and roof racks. You'll still have some of your regular cladding and if you have a two-tone those pieces will have to be painted to match. RKSport also has a kit which has a front lip, side skirts and a full rear bumper replacement. And then there's the discontinued Pontiac kit. You can still find it every now and again on here or ebay. This kit replaces the side skirts but only adds additional pieces to the stock front/rear bumpers. Or you could do what I did and just get your cladding painted (see sig)

[Lancer]

I've seen some people take the body kit for the mazda 6 and had it spliced to the front and back of a vibe. Looks awesome!I'm sure you could do the same with the body kits for the matrix. It's not all that hard to do. Deffinatly cheaper than getting anything from GM! Just the front bumper extentions were almost $400!!

[ITcar]

how much did it cost you to paint it? and does it look good, or can you tell it was painted?

[GrayFox]

this thread has more pictureshttp://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=22716I think it looks pretty good I'm not sure what you mean by "can you tell it was painted?"I cost me about $400. It would've been $250 but the stupid clips that hold the cladding on tacked on another $150

[ITcar]

well, i really was considering getting mine painted to a monotone, and what i meant by "does it look good" is can you tell a difference between it and the rest of the car? I looked at your pics and it looked very clean, but pictures can sometimes fool you, so i just wanted your input on it. that may be the first thing i look into doing to my car, so thanks for the help!

[GrayFox]

there's a difference in the paint b/c I had it painted regular gloss black. The rest of the car (moonstone ) has flake in the paint to give it that "shimmery/shiny" effect. If you were to get yours done monotone they would match the paint so there shouldn't be any difference. Depending on what year yours is you might be able to notice a difference between the brand new paint and the factory paint just because of its age. Buffing and some touch ups could help that tho

[ITcar]

awesome! thanks for the input

[GrayFox]

no problem one last thing I forgot to mention... I'm good friends with the body shop that did my cladding so don't be surprised if you get a higher quote than what I had to pay