Bedside Paint Repair Question

Hey all, as some of you know, my baby's getting fixed following an unfortunate encounter with a deer. The bedsides are fine, but I've had a dent/scratch on the bedside since I bought the truck 4 years ago. I'll see if I can find a picture, but basically it looks like the previous owner scraped the bedside on a post. The damage goes all the way down to the paint, its about 1/2" wide. To keep it from rusting, I've just been touching it up from time to time.

Now here's where it gets kinda funky (from my perspective). The body shop wants to strip the paint from the entire bedside and repaint the whole thing for a dent that I figured could be just taped around and repainted. Keep in mind, the scratch/dent is only 1/2" wide. Is it normal procedure to remove paint off of a whole bedside to just fill in a small area?

 

Yes it's normal

 

No it’s not normal to strip the paint off for a simple repair. You may have misunderstood what they were talking about. They will need to repair the dent and scratch and then CLEAR the entire bedside. I see a lot people that get that mixed up.
If they truly want to strip the paint off the bed find someone else to repair your truck.

 

I would rather them do the hole bedside then to try and paint fade it back in. The transition from cab to bed side you wont even know what happened same with tailgate.

 

Looks like you are in the body repair biz. So, per the OP pic looks like a scratch and dent. Your repair procedure would be? Asking because I’ll be doing a repair tomorrow.

1) Bang dent out then fill with bondo.
2) Sand smooth.
3) Primer coat bondo area with close color match.
4) Finish coat bondo area with finish color coat.
5) Clear coat entire panel (corner to corner).

 

See, I’d much rather have them paint the small dented area (even if it’s not absolutely perfect) than pay a grand for them to do a lot of work that’s not needed.

 

I understand that ! For sure .I am right their with ya on that .

 

If you have them paint the whole side of the bed they will need to blend the cab, if they don’t you get what I got..........

 

I purchased the truck from a Toyota dealer on bright sunny day with a lot of other shiny trucks around and I could not see the difference till I was home and it was too late.

The dealer had the bed repainted as it had brush scrapes down the side of the bed and they would not repaint it for me.

 

Remove the rear bumper, RT tail lamp, top pad( a lot of time the top pad has to be replaced due to broken clips).
Remove and replace the TRD decal, set the bed back.
We always try to push the dent from the back side, welding studs or tabs often introducees rust. Then metal work the dent best you can. Next filler, primer, block, prep and paint then clear the panel edge to edge. Then you get to nib and polish any trash. I never recommend a clear burn in, it will always show in time.
That may be jumbled up im tired, been up since 4am.

 

You are absolutely right, some colors are better than others to panel paint. But blending is always recommended.