DT Panels in Clayton South, Victoria | Vehicle body shop

DT Panels

Locality: Clayton South, Victoria

Phone: +61 402 611 670

Address: 85 Main Road 3169 Clayton South, VIC, Australia

Website: http://www.dtpanels.com.au

Likes: 4201

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• Automotive, aircraft & boat
• Automotive repair centre
• Vehicle shop
• Vehicle body shop

25.01.2022 Cutting into a new Civic Type R Milton wanted to fit big fat tyres to his car, but the factory body design doesn’t comply. So we modified it a little, and now he can squeeze 265s under his guards !

19.01.2022 Love this Micra. Just a reminder that the government has deemed our workshop necessary, so we are working through the Coronavirus crisis ! We understand that this is not a comfortable time for everyone, but it may be a convenient time to have panel / mechanical work done while you aren’t allowed to drive your cars . Hit us up !

18.01.2022 Hey everyone ! We've been slack on the social side of things in 2020 (AKA very busy in the workshop), sorry about that ! This is our first post for this year and we would just like to quickly reintroduce ourselves to the car community. With your support we've been able to reinvent ourselves a few times over the past decade and a half, and we want to continue to grow bigger and stronger with you moving forward. DT Panels has always been known for paint work but since movin...g to the bigger workspace in Clayton we're more of a composite workshop, having combined with our mechanical arm Nakama Workshop. We now offer a lot more services for your cars Direct Insurance claims Not at fault insurance claims Private smash repairs Fibreglass repairs / fitting Full restoration work / rust repairs Custom paint work Mechanical maintenance / repairs Fitting service for your modifications This year we're also going to try and improve our social media coverage. We do a lot of interesting work daily at our workshop so we would love to give everyone an insight into the processes and explain what / why / how we do, with pricing guides in case you're considering bringing your car in for us to work on ! We don't have any professional photographers / social media managers, so please bare with us We will try our best to get our content out there If you have any queries on the above please send us a message ! - Vu

18.01.2022 C-West widebody S15, when’s the last time you saw one of these ? Owner: @kammo_reloaded Photos: @felippe_tan

16.01.2022 Michael’s 86 looking mighty shiny after we painted and fitted his Varis style bodykit !

16.01.2022 Hi guys, I'll be on leave this week and will be back at work on Monday the 16th of March. Contact from my phone / Facebook messages will be very limited. Thank you for understanding. Cheers,... Vu

15.01.2022 Hi everyone ! The world is a crazy place right now hey ? Hopefully you are all doing your best to stay safe and healthy. For us at DT Panels and Nakama, we will work through until further notice. However, we are adopting a strict no-contact policy. Our roller door will be closed, and our office will only be open for appointments ONLY. We would appreciate it if customers who may be feeling unwell not to visit our workshop during this time. ... Thank you for understanding during this trying time. - Vu

14.01.2022 Hello citizens of Facebook ! We hope you are all staying safe during these uncertain times. With Stage 4 restrictions now in place, we would like to reassure all our customers that our workshop is considered essential and will remain open throughout the lockdown. ... To align with the new restrictions, we are open by appointment only. We ask that you do not drop in unannounced for the next 6 weeks at least, and for those who do have bookings, sanitise upon arrival. (And definitely do not visit if you are feeling unwell.) If you already have a booking and are worried about the 5km radius rule we can send you an SMS / proof of booking upon request so you can feel confident travelling to our workshop. As a side note, our panel side is still very much booked out, and we will endeavour to work through the backlog before taking in new bookings. Our mechanical side is fairly busy also, but you can still make bookings here - Nakama Workshop As always, we appreciate your patience and understanding, not just through the COVID situation, but throughout the last 15 years, and hopefully the next 15 years. Let's get through this together !

14.01.2022 Athid from Melbourne Guard Rolling has been rolling guards for us for over a decade now ! We continue to book his services not only because he is the most experienced, but because we are dedicated to supporting our local businesses. Here’s to staying loyal to the ones who have supported you through the both the good times and the tough times !

14.01.2022 When you need a new daily for your daily

12.01.2022 The team at DT Panels & Nakama Workshop would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ! Thanks to your continuous support we’ve managed to battle through 2019 . Time for us to take a break and recharge our batteries, then we look forward to being a part of all your projects after the 6th of January, 2020 !

10.01.2022 Hi everyone ! Our business is growing and we are looking for one qualified automotive spray painter and one qualified panel beater to join our team ! The clientele we work with are generally more particular about their cars as they are mostly projects with bodykit additions and full resprays. We like our private / insurance smash work too though !... Applicants should be punctual, efficient and most of all, proud of their work. We have a tight knit team and we try our best to work together to provide the best results for Melbourne's automotive scene. For spray painters - we work with DeBeer solvent paint, and mostly DeBeer / Body Shop products. For panel beaters - we work with fibreglass bodykits, most of which need some prep work, custom / panel replacement / body filler work. If you fit the criteria and are looking to apply, please message us here or call Vu on 0402 611 670. Tag all your painter / panel beater friends ! Thanks - DT Panels / Nakama

10.01.2022 We spent most of last week preparing, painting and fitting Varis sideskirts and rear bar this immaculate STI, fibreglass is always a challenge Thanks for entrusting your pride and joy with us Dung ! Also a quick shoutout to our friends who travel far and wide to come to our workshop ! We appreciate all your support Instagram: @subaee_sti

08.01.2022 Josh from Vivid Motorsports has been sending cars down to us for close to a decade now ! We love a good success story - over the years he and Mo have built a huge community with members who have passion for everything automotive. Nowadays Vivid do a lot of events for all types of cars, so hit them up if you want to see what they have to offer ! This time Josh sent us another Josh with a Golf haha. He wanted his front bar plate holder holes shaven, so we plastic welded them up and painted the front bar. We also blacked out all his badges and installed a spoiler. Subtle changes, but a much cleaner appearance ! We do this quite often so if you don’t like your bulky number plate holder send us a message

07.01.2022 Dino entrusted us to restore his Porsche 964, and it definitely challenged us ! It’s not often a client asks us for a glass finish and actually knows how much work is actually involved. We did manage to lose our confidence along the way but Dino believed in us and pushed us across the line. It is the most extensive respray we have done in all our time, but the results are amazing ! It stood out in our workshop not only because it’s red and German, but the finish on it is so deep and reflective ! Thank you for working with us Dino, enjoy cruising in your *new* 911 !

05.01.2022 How many of you have taken a hard lesson with fibreglass panels ? I’m not exclusively talking about ‘cheap Chinese copies’ either. Genuine or replica, ALL fibreglass panels outside of original car manufacturers are a cheaper alternative to a perfectly fitting, OEM quality panel in plastic or steel. Fibreglass is the most cost effective way for aero companies to be able to sell their products. Years ago we stopped trying to source aftermarket fibreglass panels for customers a...s we couldn’t find a reliable source for good fitting kits. Nowadays we have customers do their own research on what products they want to put on their cars. Unfortunately most of the time the panels will need some sort of modification, trimming, alterations and a lot more prep work for a favourable result. We don’t mind doing it as long as the customer understands the extra costs involved and what to expect in the end. Once we’ve trial fitted panels to a car we’ll update our customers with the concerns we have, and they will decide whether they want to go ahead with the job or not. In this particular case after the customer saw the photos of fitment, they decided not to continue. The lines did not match the rear quarter panels, the bootlid or even the wheel arch ! They’re now out of pocket for the cost of us trial fitting the bumper, and possibly the bumper itself if no refund was offered by the original manufacturer. We hate seeing this, but we understand that the price tag for aftermarket fibreglass panels are sometimes too attractive to resist. We also agree that SOME products can look very close to perfect if the correct amount of work is carried out. We personally don’t condone copy parts as it’s offensive to the original designer / prisoner, but over the years (on customers behalf), we have slowly learned to trust a select few local companies with their products (for fitment). - Carbon Plus - JSAI Aero - Zero Offset. - Shine Auto Project We have painted and fitted panels from all these companies and the end result is passable for us. Yes they still require some work to fit, and no they are not perfect, but we’ve worked with enough of their products to know what to expect and can convey that to the customer. There’s a lot more to discuss on this subject, but I’ll probably expand more on it in future posts. Sorry for the long(ish) read ! Also if you have any feedback, please comment below

04.01.2022 *Reuploaded* Before and after: Vincent brought us a heavily damaged S15 fibreglass rear bumper before WTAC. We spent a few days patching it up with fibreglass repairs and repainted it to match his car. Although we don’t mind this type of job it can get fairly expensive for the owner due to time / labour. Most of the time a new bumper will be a more viable option. We can’t say no to S15 owner who needs our help though !

04.01.2022 Hello ! It's been a while hey ? Victoria has finally reopened after several months of restrictions and we're glad we can reopen our doors ! In this lockdown we have had time to assess and review our workshop and come up with some new strategies to help improve our efficiency, taking on a new direction and being mindful of our team's health and wellbeing. ... From a business perspective we realised were constantly under the pump due to the sheer mass of daily inquiries and bookings even after the move to the bigger workshop. We found we were ALWAYS working at full capacity, which meant that sometimes we would fall behind when it got even busier. We hate missing deadlines and do our best to cater to everyone, but we just simply couldn't keep up. We are very grateful to be in the position that we are (especially after surviving through COVID restrictions), but we also don't want to let our workmanship slip just because our workers are tired or we're overlapping jobs. In a bid to become increase efficiency, we won't be taking anymore bookings this year. This will give us a chance to finalise the remaining cars that we have in the workshop pre lockdown, and start 2021 with a fresh slate. We will also be cutting down our workshop opening hours. We will now only be open Monday to Friday, 9-5pm, and closed on the weekends. After working 6 days a week for 15 years, this is a very important change for our team. Happy staff means efficient staff. As for the new direction, we will cutting down on custom work. Fibreglass work, bespoke guard work and moulding of bodykits onto metal panels often costs us many hours of labour, many of which we had to underquote just so the customer would be happy. We have decided that from now we will favouring smash repair insurance work first, fitting pre made plastic kits (Flow Designs / Maxton etc), then paint work and resprays last. Anything outside of these will be quoted at a market rate, which will seem expensive for most, but we need to be able to account for the exorbitant hours of labour involved with custom work. We appreciate everyone who has supported us and helped us to reach this position, but it's time for us to look after ourselves and our families. Thank you for your business, loyalty, and respect for our decisions. Cheers, - DT Panels

03.01.2022 Over the weekend we fitted up Shane's Kia Stinger GT with a fully adjustable splitter kit - a subtle transformation to set his Stinger apart from the rest ! Did you know that we are Flow Designs Australia's ONLY PREMIUM fitter/installer ? We've been working with the FLOW team since day dot, and we can supply and fit their whole range. Let us know if you need your car done ! You can browse their range here: https://flowdesignsaustralia.com/... Instagram: @dynsti_

03.01.2022 We don’t always get it right at our workshop. There are so many variables when it comes to paint work, there’s no perfect formula. Our dad has been always taken care of the paint matching and painting here and although we stick to all the protocols sometimes the result isn’t what we or the customer expected. Toyota / Subaru K1X white especially has been a thorn in our side since forever. It’s a 3 layered pearl, and any variance in any of the layers can change the final outco...me. On top of that each individual car has different levels of fade / yellowing over time to make it just that little bit more difficult. It’s only slight but you can see (photo 1 and 2) the front lip we painted for Jackie’s 86 is slightly whiter than the rest of the car. It looked okay in the workshop but much more visible in photos taken after. Jackie was concerned and with no hesitation we offered to re do the lip in a slightly darker shade, making it a closer match to her front bar (photo 3). (As a side note in photo 2 you can see the front bar looks different to the bonnet, this is factory paint which should all be the same but paint will reflect differently due to the granular make up of the panels.) These aren’t excuses from us, we will always strive to make our customers happy, and will try our best to fix our mistakes. This post is more to give people more of an understanding of how we operate. We’re always learning as well, and we will continue to pass on this information in future posts. If anyone has questions don’t hesitate to comment :)

03.01.2022 "How much to respray my bumper ?" It's probably the most common question we're asked in our paint shop. There's so many variations to painting a single panel that can change the final price - the size of the panel, the colour(s) it needs to be painted, the material, difficulty in standard panel removal, difficulty in fitting the new panel. I will try to cover as many as I can in future posts, but for today we'll look at the breakdown of paint work for a fibreglass bumper on a...n S2000. Fibreglass bumpers are always a hit and miss for us to work on. The general consensus is that 'genuine is always going to fit better'. The majority of the time that's true, but if you keep in mind that fibreglass in the first place is a method of keeping costs down (because who wants to pay for custom plastic body kits) you will soon realise that even genuine parts from reputable Japanese companies can sometimes be poor quality because corners are cut. When we receive a fibreglass panel from the customer, we always trial fit it first, even if we have dealt with the company / product before. This gives us an indication of how much work it's going to need before the final fitment. We also give the customer an update, and adjust costs if needed. Once we're happy with the trial fit and the customer is updated, we then prep the bumper. We go over it with a fine tooth comb, picking up pinholes, low spots and cracks (you can see in the photos where the bumper is on the stand) and filling them in. It's not viable for us to take out the 'ripples' and 'warps' because it would blow out the costs due to time / labour costs. Then we prime the bumper and let it set. After 2-3 days we sand the bumper down, paint it in the booth, bake it, and let it dry. When it's dry enough, we'll fit it back on the car, remove any paint runs / nibs, and give it a final polish. This process takes around 4-6 days in total, and can cost the customer anywhere between $550-850 for the front bumper. It can go beyond that, every bumper / car is specific, so we try to ask customers to give us as much detail as they can when they're asking us to quote up their parts. I'm hoping these posts are helping our readers understand what goes into paintwork. Let me know if it is, or whether I'm wasting my time writing these long winded posts haha. There's HEAPS more I want people to see, we want you to know what you're paying for ! (If you want to know about a specific process please let us know as well !)

02.01.2022 One bagged Liberty Walk C63 coming right up

02.01.2022 Bagged saloons are one of our favourite stylings ! Ryan’s Crown Majesta is an amazing example. To get the massive VS-XXs tucking under the guards without running excessive negative camber, we reshaped the fenders and painted 4 corners the car. Ryan didn’t want to stray from the factory body line too much so we kept it very subtle We really enjoy custom guard work, it gives us the opportunity to translate the clients vision into reality. We also understand how nerve-racking it can be to leave your car with a workshop for ‘automotive surgery’ so we appreciate everyone who entrusts their car/s with us !

01.01.2022 Hi guys ! We hope you’re all staying safe and adhering to restrictions put in place to help us get through this pandemic. Meanwhile we are getting absolutely smashed (probably not the right word hey ?) with bookings. We appreciate all the work that you guys bring in for us, but right now we need a breather to finish the cars we have here. As such we will have decided to stop taking new paint / panel bookings until late August. Once we catch up we will put up another post. ... Our mechanical side will still be open for all your maintenance needs ! You can message us for that at Nakama Workshop Thank you all for your patience As a side note, how nice is Jared’s 67 Impala Caprice ?!