| Author | Message | ||
     Jason Pfeiffer New User Username: jpsnaggs Post Number: 9 Registered: 7-2006 |
Hey all.. Question: I am going to be needing a paint job in a few years, and want to prepare myself. What do you guys & gals think the differences are in paint costs? Am I really going to be well served to pay $10,000 us on a paint job, when a $5,000 will be just a nice? Is there any difference between 1,000 & 10,000?? Help!  | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 633 Registered: 4-2003 |
Hi Jason, The quality of the paint job is determined by the time spent in preparing the car before any paint is applied and this what costs the money; the cost of applying the paint after preparation does not vary a great deal. How much you spend depends entirely on your future plans with the car: - if you intend keeping it as a family heirloom; save up and do it right with a "bare-metal" respray as this will show up any previous repairs and allow "dodgy" work to be rectified before it is subsequently discovered after respraying. - if you expect your wife to have it after the divorce settlement; lowest price will obviously prevail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | ||
| bob uk Unregistered guest Posted From: brig-cache-4.server.ntli.net |
For the very best paint job only a bare metal job is the way to go. To remove the old paint is a very time consuming job and much money can be saved if you DIY the paint removal. Presenting a car bare metal to a bodyshop also gives the body shop a much better idea of how much the invoice will be because every thing that is wrong will obvious. You can elect to have the body shop finish the car off or you can further prepare the car before they finish off, bearing in mind that no matter how much prep you do the body shop will find some more. Regardless the first stage will be to go bare metal. also do not forget about things like glass rubbers and various trim clips etc which WILL HAVE to be replaced with new ones. When ever any car is stripped down they are always parts that will have to be replaced. From experience the more you pay the better the end result however a £10,000 job may not be twice as good as a £5000 job. A £1000 pays for a good respray over exsisting paint with some minor defects sorted. The choice is yours and I never knock anybody who has a cheap respray done on a daily driver because so many times I have seen a a very good paint job damaged by a careless door opener in a car park. (Message approved by david_gore) | ||
| Jason Pfeiffer New User Username: jpsnaggs Post Number: 10 Registered: 7-2006 |
thanks all for the advice. Lots to think about! | ||
| bob uk Unregistered guest Posted From: brig-cache-4.server.ntli.net |
Further to my last posting on paint work I have had the chance to talk to our paint man at work. respraying over a sound but old finish can produce a good job providing that the car is rubbed down properly. But a build up of too thicker paint finish can cause the car to lose difinition however Shadows are rounded at the edges so this should not be a problem but door gaps being tight can cause interference. Also thick paint can get unsable. Two pack is the only way to go the old celly types paints are hard work and naff. It pickling occurs -- they test with a trial coat then bare metal is the solution. Barrier coats such as Barcoat can give more problems than solve. ( PUN here because pickling is caused by the new paint dis-solving the old) Best way to strip to bare metal is by sanding, using 40 grit production paper and a DA sander. He said that he buys a cheap £15 mains voltage sander and when it burns out he buys another. Some is done buy hand. Wear gloves to stop vibs giving you white figure. Chemical stripping is the best way and requires the whole car including all trim and mechanical parts to be removed because the chemical bath will destroy everything that is not metal. But you get a body shell that will be total devoid of rust and sealer and paint. filler drops out leaving lead work intact. Paint stripper is very messy and any residue left under rubbers in door shuts etc will come back to haunt you. The amount of water used to clean off the stripper will cause rust in very akward places. However he did say that a smear of diesel will help but then we have a containmenation problem. Shot blasting using crushed walnut shells works well but can ripple panels. Also note the recent posting concerning electrical damage due to shot blasting with baking powder. excellent for general parts but caution reqiuired with body panels. He suggests that one panel is sanded back to bare metal at a time then the panel is mist coated with an etch primer to stop rust. Note no primer is water proof and etch primer will allow rusting if car get too wet for any lenght of time say a couple of days. Etch primer is unvailable in handy aerosol form. Using filler is not a bodge method and is used to tidy ripples and should never be thicker than 1.5 mm. Rust must cut out and new steel butt welded. Edges that need filling should be lead loaded, such as where the sill joins the wing. sill is a rocker panel in Yank speak. He said think of filler as part of the paint process and not the repair process. Filler can be applied over misted etch primer but not filler primer or top coats. Also he said do not under estimate the amount of time it takes. He has many hours doing exaclty this on cars is the past and owners just do not understand how he can spend say 4 hours just taking the paint off one panel at £35 per hour. A Shadow once devoid of is furniture would take at least 50 hours to sand back to bare metal. If you elect to use stripper buy the heavy duty type and sand the car with 40 grit first so the stripper has something to bite into rather than have to bite through polish first. He also added that you will be surpised how many times an old car has had accident work done to vary degrees of competance which is revealed as the car is stripped which is why he prefers sanding because he once stripped a NEW Ferrari before it had been delivered to find out that the factory had wheeled some of the panels with a knurled wheel over the welded joints in the alloy body and Ferrari had used filler to smooth the marks out if he had used a chemical stripper all that would have to be redone when the body was in prefect shape but the wrong colour. This does not apply to Rolls-Royce because they don't use knurled wheels in the wheeling process and beside the bodies are pressed not made by hand but you may find that the car at some stage has had a minor accident and been expertly repaired using a skim of filler say across a door panel to give a ripple free panel ready for painting hand sanding allows the worker to stop when he finds such work whereas once applied chemical strippers will attack filler and there is no going back. Be carefull with dark colours my car is black and when I repainted it I spent a lot of time skimming ripples with a very thin coat of filler and in some areas an extra thick coat of high build primer. The primer I used can be laid on 20 thou thick ( 1/2 mm ). Originally the car would have been made ripple free in this way by Rolls-Royce.( not filler -high build primer ) because even the best body man in the world cannot get every panel ripple free by hand beating with spoons and panel hammers. When you have an old body that has suffered the rigors of every day life then it becomes even harder-- new bodies have not been scapped in car parks etc, some panels will be in-accessable from behind and the best that can be done is to pull the panel by spot resistance welding a rod to it and tugging the dent out which always leaves imperfections. If you watch American Hotrod ( Boyd Coddington ) you will see that the paint shop covers the whole car in thin filler and then sands back to give that ripple free finish. I am impressed with the finish they get but I have never seen a car in flesh. However I notice that they fill to the egdes of the panels which is not a good idea because one slight knock will damage the finish because filler has no strength worth talking about where as lead is much stronger and does add stiffnest to the edge.Rally cars have all the spot welds continously welded over then lead loaded to give a stiff body shell. A I tell by looking at the reflection of strip lighting in the panel. Staight reflections and gently curved refelections where they should be means a straight car. Also do remember that panels that are meant to be flat never are they will have a slight curve in both directions this is beacuse a totally flat panel cannot hold it shape give it a bit of entasis like the Rad shell and it will look flat the stay that way. look at the side of a large furniture lorry and it will look rippled because the alloy panels have no bias and are riveted to a frame after they are cut from flat sheet. The bias or entasis addes much strengh to a panel (Message approved by david_gore) |
