Cost of professional paintwork?

[richard sprint]

I start this post by saying that a good paint sprayer holds my respect very highly indeed, over the years with metal bodied cars I have found a man who works at a VW main dealer and has consistently carried out work to a supreme standard...

So I would like to understand why the price for painting a tiny elan is so high by comparison?

I can see that removing the old paint is a time consuming task but given a stripped out shell and the size of the unit why is it that prices quoted are so much more?

I'm not necessarily complaining but would like to understand how the figures are made up?

I could be prepared to strip the shell by soda blasting and thus remove the labour element of this but so far the quotes have not seemed to reflect a substantial reduction...

Someone however suggested that in so doing it would give the paint shop an excuse later on if there was a deterioration which is to my mind a valid point!

My shell has no accident damage and just one respray so there are not layers and layers of old paint.

I have been quoted 3,500 for repainting the shell with paint removed, 5,500 by option 1 which means they would apply a complete layer of fine tissue, the same by a reputable company with a reduction of 500 for removing the old paint and 10k! by another.

Supposing we take ?50.00 per hour and say paint materials add up to ?500.00 the calculation would suggest around 100 hours - thats around 2.5 weeks for one man so what is taking that amount of time?

The work included would be to refit the doors - (already removed), painting the engine bay in mat black, the headlamp pods are removed also to fit the Elan sprint decals

The shell is a dhc sprint and the colour lotus yellow over white...

[bcmc33]

Richard,

We all know who charges ?10k as a set charge. The Options 1 quote does not seem unreasonable for the work they do. People like Options and SMS will only do a complete job and will quote 12 weeks to complete the work - but I wouldn't expect it back in less than 16 weeks.

Before any paint process can begin, preparation work will involve stripping back to the gell coat, repair all suspect damage, fit doors, boot and pods to the correct alignments, tissue the complete body, set the door, boot and pod gaps.

All this preparation work is done by hand - so at ?40 an hour it sounds like a 3 week job. (Ha, Ha)

You will get what you pay for, Richard.

[Pastapesto]

Brian

Enlighten me please, who charges 10K as a set charge?. I for one have no idea who you are talking about.
If you do not want to say the name then just say the nearest large town & I should be able to work it out.

By the way, I agree with all the other points you raised.

Regards

Adam

[Spyder fan]

Adam,

I have basically resigned myself to higher prices for anything that can have a 'specialist' tag applied and as GRP cars make up much less than 1% of cars, we are definitely looking at 'specialist' for the paintwork. I think the reason that you are not getting a much lower price if you remove the paint yourself is that the people you are going to are either thinking 'Result' here's one we can make a bit extra on. Or it may be that they have dealt with people before who say they will remove all the paint and they still have to spend 50 hours getting the shell up to standard.

The best way as you know is to get down to the gel coat, then tissue, then block sanding before applying the paint, there's no getting away from the fact that this is time consuming and therefore expensive. Spyder quoted me ?6000 for my +2 (via SMS) I'm still slightly in shock as the last car I had professionally sprayed was a Mini 5 years ago and that cost me ?2400, but it only need 10 hours preparation before going into the spray booth.

Regards

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Preparing & painting glassfibre is full of pitfalls & I have read with great interest on here about all of the problems that occur.
During the rebuild of my S4 I took the body to a highly recommended man here.
A year after the job was done the body showed all of the mistakes that can be made in various degrees.
What can you do, not a lot!
A long time ago a competent friend repainted my Mk14 Elite & after the job was done he told me,
"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, come back next year & we'll do it again.
After the 2nd repaint all of the faults were gone & the car looked great.
Now that was a competent "friend" & I did a lot of the hard graft so the price was cheap.
I think that the big boys, with reputations to guard, go the extra mile.
They insist on an all over back to gel coat etc. etc. whether it is necessary or not just to find faults tha may or may not be present.
To them reputation is everything & customers returning with complaints & spreading the evil word is the last thing they want.
The prices that are charged are hefty, to say the least & I suspect that there is more than sufficient margin in there to cover a no quibble warranty on problems that know could well occur.

Whilst on the subject of painting; a fair bit has been written here about how good "Soda blasting" is.
Until recently I thought I understood the process & could recognise it's suitability.
However recently someone mentioned that the Soda residue needs to be neutralised with Vinegar (mild acetic acid).
Surely that means "wetting" the surface as would rubbing down with "wet & dry", the caause of future blistering.
So where's the advantage apart from eliminating the hard work of scraping/sanding the paint off?

Cheers
John

[Bruce Crowthorne]

Sounds like you are being price conscious - a bit like me - my excuse is that it was built into my "Scottishness"!

Removing the paint is a looong job. I did it as the first part of my rebuild and it took me months. Actually it took 8 months but very part time - odd evenings, bear in mind I am easily ditracted and was doing other bits at the same time.

Sue Miller reckoned she could do a car in a week - but that must have been hard going!

I stripped mine and gave it to a lotus specialist for paint, he did me a good deal and I am very happy with the result - the paint is now two years old with very few blemishes.

You pays your money .......

[Elanintheforest]

John, there is a residue and it does have to be washed off, a process that takes an hour or so. After that you have a body stripped of paint but it has been wet, so it does need to dry before any repairs are done or further prep is completed. A good paint shop will put the body in an oven for a day or so (on low temperature!!) or the shell can be put in the sun for a couple of days, or under lamps in the garage, or in a carcoon for a week. This is part of the preparation for a fibreglass shell whether you have soaked the shell or think it's dry....it gets rid of any moisture that may be in the cracks and crevices of the gelcoat.

Each gelcoat crack is going to be ground out anyway, and I use a heatlamp or hot air gun on each before tissuing the repair.

It's little bits like this that make the difference between a lasting paint job and one that reacts within months. Any painter can prepare and paint an Elan so long as he knows about this stuff. Most importantly, they must leave the shell for a few weeks after the last fibreglass repair and before primer to let the resin fully cure, and apply one coat at a time and leave to dry before the next coat.

It's all in Miles Wilkin's excellent books on Fibreglass repair and Paint systems, and armed with this info, an idiot like me can do it. The issue with taking the car to a 'metal car' bodyshop is that they may not know about the drying process and 'wait' times required, and commercial pressures may make them rush the job. But Richard, if you know a good painter, make sure that he understands this stuff and use him.

Mark

[richard sprint]

Mark

Thanks for the clarity in reply - my usual paint guy wont get involved with glass fibre which is fair enough.

I spoke with another paintshop this morning and the price is 6k so it seems to go up by the month!

Seems like you have a few months work ahead on the three projects - would love to see some pics of the Elite - such a good proportion used in the design, the dashboard a masterpiece.

Richard

[martinbrowning]

Interested in this since my car is currently stripped ready for respray-had considered buying a compressor and doing it all myself. One thought though-might it be cheaper to buy a brand new shell(no real prep needed) and have it sprayed?
Any thoughts?Are new shells available?

Martin B

[Jolly Jumper]

Interested in this since my car is currently stripped ready for respray-had considered buying a compressor and doing it all myself. One thought though-might it be cheaper to buy a brand new shell(no real prep needed) and have it sprayed?
Any thoughts?Are new shells available?

Martin B

The cost in the preparation, repairing cracks, lining up panels, building up gel coat etc, not the actual spraying....
New shells are available, but they are very far from being "ready to accept paint".

there is no way around it, a proper respray on an Elan is the single most expensive item on the list and best left to the experts.
On the plus side, restoring and repainting a steel bodied shell like an old Porsche or Jag E is still even more expensive!

[JJDraper]

Having recently coughed up the eyewatering price for a bare shell refurb on my +2 at Options1, I have to say I was impressed with their care and dedication to supplying what the customer wants (apart from a cheap job). The quoted price was an all in price, including fibreglass repairs, regardless of what they found under the paint. On my shell, the story was pretty good, as they found no old accident damage and very few stress cracks - so he was probably up at this point, however, getting the metalflake roof the way I wanted it has been a problem (now solved by doing test panels and agreeing a finish, which I should have asked for in the first place). Frank dealt with this problem with total professionalism and I would expect no less. I am of course referring to a 'write a cheque' process, which I have had to follow. This is not because I can't be bothered to do the job myself or have unlimited funds, but I am realistic as to what I can achieve with nil workshop facilities, so I am devoting my time to other areas of my life where I can save the requisite cash (home building work!) to pay for a specialist.

Justifying the high price is easy; as a medium, I believe it is much harder to get a level finish on fibreglass, requiring high build primer, tell tale coats etc. A cheap job will have a wavy surface and without care in the sanding process you may loose definition of the sharp lines at the top of the wings etc (especially on a +2). Metal cars have a much more stable finish, however, if you have to start doing lots of lead loading etc, it will get expensive very quickly - E-Type body tubs as quoted previously.

By paying top dollar you expect a top job, and this is what I believe you would get at any of the reputable glass specialists. They survive by their reputations.

Jeremy

[stugilmour]

I will just throw in that I paid another installment on my on-going body work today. Total hours in to date are 125, and I am not yet ready for paint.

Body repairs are completed (rough guess of about 15 hours on my car). Getting a sunroof installed, which I figure will add 10 hours or so, but will save on roof repair; I can see large deep spider cracks in the roof area that will be cut out now.

Figure if you are thinking 120 to 150 hours plus materials on these cars you are in range. Rest depends on hourly rate in one's area I guess. I am getting a break because the shop has put their rate up about 8% since I booked the job last year, but the job has been ongoing for so l_o_n_g that I am staying at the original rate.

Cheers!

[65 Lotus]

Beautiful pro job all over, engine bay and boot with some repair work to the rhs rocker cost me $8000 USD a couple of years ago.