davyjordi

hey guys/gals -

has anyone painted the black portion of the lower rear bumper to match the color of the car? the modellista kit which covers the black portion is amazing, but also amazingly expensive. the previous generation had the ground effects kit which is along the lines of the modellista kit now available for the 3IS.

any similar kit out there that is much more understated akin to the previous gen's ground effects kit or this gen's modellista kit? if not, opinions on painting the rear black portion to match the rest of the car? my car is matador red mica if that makes any difference.

thanks!

TheForce

You mean like this?

silvaIS

iTrader: (2)

I just noticed something with your reverse lights...are they led? cause we have crappy yellow ones here... and swapping the bulbs just makes it worse. I think the actual lights need to be upgraded.. am I correct?

TheForce

See your other thread.

magne

I'm strongly considering to get the rear plasic wrapped.
But it is hard to find a matching wrap for the silver color.

davyjordi

thanks for responding! that's not quite how i'm envisioning it, though. i want something super understated and i don't want to see any black at all.

here are the 3IS modellista and the previous gen's ground effects rear bumper portions for reference -


3IS modellista rear



2IS Ground Effects Rear

so, the ground effects kit isn't made for the 3IS and the modellista costs like 5k to import from japan to the US or the EU. i haven't been able to find any others that are similar and so i was thinking about painting the black portion to match the rest of my car. is it doable? and equally as important, will it look weird? i can't find anyone who has done it via an image search here or on google. ugh.

thanks, guys/gals!

davyjordi

yeah, wrapping it would be really difficult if you're trying to accurately match the color. i'd imagine it would be impossible lest you have someone customize the wrap's color and i don't know how many companies would be able to do that accurately enough to not have it look obviously covered.

magne

Other colors would probably be easy to match. At least black or white. But the silver color lexus use is almost impossible to reproduce with aftermarket paint, so vinyl is pretty much impossible.

davyjordi

my car is matador red mica and so it's also difficult to match. it'd have to be painted.

corradoMR2

Vinyl wrap would have a hard time sticking properly on the fine-grained black plastic on the bumper since the wrap requires a perfectly smooth painted surface for best adhesion. Your best bet is professionally get it painted if you want the exact match to MRM.

davyjordi

thanks! i think i'll try to play around with photoshop despite not knowing how to use it to see if the car would look decent with the black portion painted MRM.

if anyone has done this and wishes to post pics, please do! if anyone knows how to use photoshop proficiently and can quickly make the entire rear of the 3IS the same color, i'd be appreciative!

thanks, all!

davyjordi

i think it might be best to just buy the modellista kit in several months as tuition comes first and all.

it's too pretty and i'm thinking the purchase will be worth it. it'll have to be painted, though, as pre-painted MRM isn't offered by modellista. it also comes with an exhaust kit and i'm not quite sure how extensive that is -- just the exhaust tips or a nearly complete exhaust system? i'll have to figure this all out. ahhhh!

magne

I also looked into the modellista kit.
Just the rear bumper with shipping comes in at around 6000$ total!
If it wasen't for the exhaust, it would be a lot cheaper. The exhaust is at least a rear muffler with tips, maybe even a whole cat-back system.
The exhaust is a sport type, so it is louder than stock.

Because of the price, I cant really justify the modellista kit. And I don't want a loud exhaust. It would just sound silly on a hybrid with a cvt gearbox... Plus I would loose the comfort and silence of the hybrid.

Hoping someone else relases a kit that looks somewhat similar.
If not, I may get the rear platic bit from a 250\350 and paint it.
the hybrid has all the curves on the plastic, that might look a bit silly if painted..

davyjordi

it is expensive, i agree, but it's super pretty! and while another company might produce something similar, the modellista kit is super understatedly elegant and aftermarket, copy-cat replica kits often look, well, as aftermarket, copy-cat replicas. some are undoubtedly better produced than others, but it's a roll of the dice.

i can't say that the increased noise hasn't crossed my mind, though -- it has. that said, i could very well leave the stock exhaust on and just have the exhaust tips affixed so as to keep the stock system's noise level static whilst selling the rest of the modellista exhaust to someone else. modellista won't sell the rear bumper lip without the exhaust, right? if they were to, i'm pretty sure i could have the dual-exhaust tips for the 250/350 fashioned without having to pay for the entire system. moot point, though, as i'm nearly positive that modellista doesn't sell the rear bumper lip without the accompanying exhaust system. that said, i don't really want to increase the exhaust's noise output either and the stock system for the 250/350 isn't much noisier than that of the 300h, although i'd be willing to put up with a certain level of increase because i like the kit that much.

it's difficult to gauge performance changes, even if superficial, because i'd surmise that the vast majority of reviews are written in japanese forums and totally inaccessible due to not only translation barriers as google translate will roughly fix those, but rather the obstacles a non-japanese speaker faces going about finding said forums.

as an aside on EU pricing, it's cheaper to have it shipped to spain, so perhaps you could order and have it shipped to another EU port and drive to pick it up - denmark maybe? france? the uk?

magne

The moddelista rear bumper only comes with the exhaust.
No possibility to buy just the rear bumper and not the exhaust. Alreday looked into that.

The shipping is about the same to all of europe from japan. It is the weight and size of the exhaust that makes shipping expensive.
Closest EU port would be sweden, gothenburg. But the gain in price for shipping I loose on the way with gasoline and roadpricing charges. Would cost me about 100euros to drive there. And The shipping was not easy to estimate in the first place.
Anyway, the main cost of the kit was the bumper and exhaust, at around 2700$ itself.
Even that is about 2400 euro.
It will hurt to spend that much money on a rear lip, when the stock black plastic one can be bought for a couple of hundred euros. And be painted for a couple of hundred more..

If they ever sell it without exhaust, I'll probably order it.

Until that, I'll see on the web if someone else paints their rear bumper, so I can see how that looks to compare.

Have tought a bit about the aimgain rear lip tho..