Thread: New 90. Dealer stuffs up colour....

I assume you are talking about the wheel arch flares? L.R. uk calls them eyebrows. Yes they can be painted. However they can also be easily removed and refitted.

Don't get too vexed, its pretty minor in the scheme of things. The arches come off real easy, they are plastic and can be painted.

Swapping with demo is one option if you are happy with the condition. Otherwise ask them to remove the brand new flares and have them professionally sprayed in correct paint code. Put the freshly painted flares back on. All new. No major.

Yes, just get your Dealer to remove & repaint them. Having looked at ours, I'd say there's a good chance that they'll come up better than factory. There's very little paint on the undersides of ours. Our Dealer always specifies that they be painted body colour.
Pickles.

This happened to me aswell.

Until the 2014 model year the arches and roof were automatically painted body colour if a metallic paint was specified.

LRA for some reason changed how this was done and you needed to add the roof and wheel arches separately now. Unfortunately they appeared to not tell anyone so ours left the factory with a white roof and black arches, when it was ordered off the 2013 MY sheets (In November 2013) as one colour all over.

When the 2014 specifications were finally released here, about 4 months after they started building 2014 MY cars I downloaded the documents and knew this had happened before the dealer.

My dealer were all set up to sort the paint, but when it arrived it had been done. It appears that LRA sorted mine as soon as it landed. I know for a fact it left the UK wrong as I had it confirmed by LR customer services.

Paint finish on the arches and roof is identical to the rest of it.

I don't believe mine was the only car that this happened too at the start of the MY14 Defender, but I would have expected by now they would all be aware.

learn something new everyday! My defender has the black arches.I always thought the painted ones were metal.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

Yes, just get your Dealer to remove & repaint them. Having looked at ours, I'd say there's a good chance that they'll come up better than factory. There's very little paint on the undersides of ours. Our Dealer always specifies that they be painted body colour.
Pickles.

+1 The underside factory paint on mine is rubbish too.

Even washing the arches out with a regular garden hose pulls off paint

So far so good on the bits you can actually see though, so in the scheme of things not a big deal...

Thanks guys, sounds like I'm overreacting a bit and not such a big deal.

Spoke to dealer and they'll pop them off and paint them with correct colour code, and then off we go. All good.

The dealer also mentioned that he had heard of a few other dealers accidentally getting cars with standard white roofs after forgetting to specify colour. That would be a bit more of a drama!

Does anyone know if there is a charge to get the wheel arches painted when ordering or is it a no cost option?

Cheers guys - appreciate the help as always

Tom