As some of you know I was in a rather bad accident a little while back in my '03 4Runner (link). Since then I had purchased a new '05 and have been loving it. No, I didn't total it like the last one but I did just scrape up the rear passenger door while attempting to pull into my garage tonight (there was a ton of snow/ice on the way in and by time I realize I slipped it was too late).

I'm heading into the dealer on Saturday for an oil change however I don't think they have a body shop. Anyone recommend any good body shops in either Rochester, NY or Philadelphia areas?


This is what I can see as the damage...


The white is due to the wood frame around the garage opening being painted white. It doesn't look there there is much in the way of dents or anything, just some scrapings and remnants of the white paint. Is there something i can use myself to clean it off without scraping (i could lightly scrape with my fingernail and it would come off, but I didn't want to do too much like that)?



I think I might have just bent the end bracket or something by the looks of that... I can't get in the garage now to look at it as there isn't much light and there is another car next to me stopping me from getting enough room to play with it.

i think most of that will buff right out if you take it to a good detailer, but I bet there will still be scratches underneath it. Since that most likely will be the case, I'd skip the buffing, and take it to a body shop.

So it took me a while, but I got the panel taken care of. The detail shop was able to remove all excess paint and buff out 99% of the scratches left over. However after I pulled off my running boards tonight (i'm attempting to build some lights into it), I noticed that the end cap has quite a bit of damage to it. I tried bending it back into position but it wouldn't budge at all without damaging it further.

I tried partznet and called my dealer and both showed that I can't get just the endcap for my 05, they only have the entire running board assembly. So i'm heading over to a junkyard on Monday to see what they have but I was curious if anyone knew of any place online that would have spare parts like this or if another years end cap would work (the 03 parts are all available).