rmgthatsme Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 New Owner of a 2004 pearl white roadster. I am thinking of getting a respray a little later on due to stone chips and just started asking around on prices for a total body respray in the same colour. Could anyone outline what would constitute a decent respray i.e. how many coats of paint and clear, oven baked etc. How long should all this take? The reason I'm asking is that we have been quoted as long as 2 weeks to 1 month for the work and prices ranging from the equivalent of 1,000 quid to 2.5 times this (OOOh that pearlescent paint's tricky stuff to get right...) so a little confused by the variation in timing and costs. Could I get the benefit of someone's experience what would constitute a decent respray (outside panels only), the process and how long it should take? Have never had any spraying done so a total noob in this area and afraid can be spotted as one a mile off Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Can't imagine you would get a great job paying £1k, £2.5k sounds about right for a total respray. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 It will vary massively. I had my old Prelude resprayed 8 years ago and had the colour changed, it cost £1200 (cash in hand) back then, I did all the stripping and reassembly myself so saved the bodyshop a few days work. If you're staying the same colour then you're really after a blow over if its just stone chips and that. If you want it to be completely redone then you're probably looking at the £2k figures. The only way to know is by asking the body shops exactly what they do. Prep is what takes the time so if you can remove mirrors, bumpers, lights, window seals yourself you'll save a lot! I can't imagine you needing that much prep on the panels if the car is in good condition so I'd think around the £1500 mark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coldel Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I bought my shiney beautiful unmarked black Zed ... three months later scratches and bits appeared. Ran it over to Taras who confirmed a 'blow over' and was less than impressed. Generally they only last a matter of months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabbitstew Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Prices will vary wildly. Paint isnt expensive, its the time and expertise involved in getting a good finish. Do you have to have the whole car done? Usually its just the bumper / bonnet which gets all the marks. I paid £250 for someone to repaint those on one of my previous cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glrnet Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Get it wrapped Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Get it wrapped DJ Papa is now heavily into rapping Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightRacer Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I'd expect anything from about £1000 to £3000 as you have pretty much found out. £1000 doesn't mean you will get a poor job and £3000 doesn't mean you will get a good job. Only advice I can give is to go in and look round at what they are doing and if possible look at something they have done and talk to a previous customer. If you are prepared to do some legwork yourself in removal and refitting of parts you can often save yourself some labour too although if you prep the paintwork yourself and its a crap job they will generally blame you! Modern water based paint is actually quite expensive compared to the old stuff although its still not like gold. as has been mentioned, its the labour generally. If you can find a friendly painter who does work in his spare time you might also save yourself a few bob! If you hunt around the car forums there are usually lots of signs of good body shops listed by happy customers also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmgthatsme Posted November 16, 2011 Author Share Posted November 16, 2011 Prices will vary wildly. Paint isnt expensive, its the time and expertise involved in getting a good finish. Do you have to have the whole car done? Usually its just the bumper / bonnet which gets all the marks. I paid £250 for someone to repaint those on one of my previous cars. Its mainly the bumper/bonnet and leading edge of the side skirt (in the wheel arch). I am concerned that for pearlescent white, I will end up with badly matching panels if I don't do a full respray. I don't intend to do it now as it's not too bad at all but am trying to gain a little knowledge in preparation. Any ideas on how many coats of paint & clear would be involved in a decent respray and the time taken if it is to cure properly with baking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 Try to ignore the coats of paints, I've sprayed a bit myself and it completely depends on what you do. For instance, I've repaired stonechips that have required filler, sanding, two coats from a rattle can and then some lacquer, so quick. I also resprayed the entire front on my old car using a rattle can and it took an age, so I am going to be getting a compressor soon with an air gun if I ever attempt it again. My friend repainted his entire car using two pack which requires no lacquer at all, just hours and hours of compounding. Both cars were done without ovens and 'proper' facilities but we got the finish through hard work and lots and lots of prep (and the cursing of several bugs that made the wet paint their home) However, when my Prelude was resprayed it went to a bodyshop who had a dust free spray room and oven. The actual painting part takes very little time at all, as others have said its the preparation that is the nightmare. A full car can be sprayed in one sitting (1/2 a day) with the correct facilities and then left to 'bake' over night before compounding - getting it to that stage and panel prep can take a week though depending on stone chips, dents and door dings, the latter being the absolute worst to straighten, the compounding also takes time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmgthatsme Posted November 16, 2011 Author Share Posted November 16, 2011 @ds2000 thats really helpful, thanks . I'm wondering why they all seem to say it will take 2 weeks to a month to complete. Guess I will have to go back and ask for more details now that I'm a bit more clued in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 If they are talking about a complete respray then this is probably correct. It took me 3 days to strip my old car, carefully bagging all the nuts and bolts so they weren't lost, ensuring nothing was broke along the way on a car I knew inside out. My doors were absolutely pinged to high hell and as the Prelude was a curvy car the guys at the bodyshop had a time and a half getting them straight but they did and the finish was perfect. My car was in a total of (wait for it), 8 weeks! This also didn't include the 4 days of putting the damn thing back together as I was uber careful to not chip away my lovely new paint! As I say, they did an amazing job and changed the colour so I was obviously a bit more of a challenge than your car will be. What you need to be aware of is that good Bodyshops have contracts with main dealers, your car will not be first of the queue if a dealer needs a car to be sold tidied up that day, this includes brand new cars that have had a delivery 'ping' - the guys I dealt with had a months waiting list for me as they were so busy. I would think your upper figures are to factor in some sort of priority, personally I was happy to wait it out, pay less and have a beautiful finish. (Thankfully back then my mum worked in the same town as me so getting to and from work wasn't horrendous - after 8 weeks of the old girl in my ear I was glad to get the car back) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabbitstew Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 Prices will vary wildly. Paint isnt expensive, its the time and expertise involved in getting a good finish. Do you have to have the whole car done? Usually its just the bumper / bonnet which gets all the marks. I paid £250 for someone to repaint those on one of my previous cars. Its mainly the bumper/bonnet and leading edge of the side skirt (in the wheel arch). I am concerned that for pearlescent white, I will end up with badly matching panels if I don't do a full respray. I don't intend to do it now as it's not too bad at all but am trying to gain a little knowledge in preparation. Any ideas on how many coats of paint & clear would be involved in a decent respray and the time taken if it is to cure properly with baking? Mismatching colours is definately one of the problems you may end up with. The reason being is that if your car is a 2004, then the paint on it is 7 years old or so, and it will have probably faded a bit with sun / weather on it. So if a paint shop gets some brand new paint in from the original paint code, it may end up looking a bit different on the car. The place I use can do that, or will just analyse the paint on the car and produce a match from scratch. Either way, matching the paint exactly can be hard. What some places will do is cut the old paint on the car using heavy duty polishing stuff which will restore it back to some of its original colour so any new paint work wont look different. Painting is a fine art. Ive resprayed more things than I can remember, using rattle cans initially before I finally went out and bought a proper compressor / spray gun and all the gear. The prep work is a royal pain in the backside and can take forever... stripping the car down, sanding all the bits, filling any stone chips, repairing dents, primering, then resanding.. and so on and so forth. Id definitely see if you can checkout some of the places work before you agree to them doing any work as even places which you`d think would be good could be shocking. For example, my missus had a prang in her car and the insurance company sent it off to be repaired to their approved insurance repair bodyshop. When it came back I had to send the car back 3 times for them to do the paintwork properly. The first time it came back the front half of the car was a completely wrong shade of blue. I dont mean a slight bit off, it was a totally different colour. I phoned them up and asked if Stevie Wonder worked for them it was that bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmgthatsme Posted November 16, 2011 Author Share Posted November 16, 2011 thank you very much for the detailed posts about your experiences. Seems to be that unless i can see some of the shop's previous work it may well need a bit of luck to find a decent place. I should plan on 2 to 4 weeks without the car and shouldn't care too much about how many coats etc. Is their having one of those all enclosed paint booths & ovens a must for a good result or would you say this is less important than a good prep? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 You'll find all professional places these days will have a booth; I'd certainly not bother with one that doesn't. I think the only time you need to think about coats is when you're stripping the paint - i.e. my friend had a bare metal respray, we all told him he was going way OTT with it but he didn't listen. Its one of those things with paint, when its covered properly its covered, beit in 3 quite heavy coats or 15 light ones. The process roughly speaking would have the dings repaired and marks/chips filled, then the whole panel would be flattened off, then thoroughly cleaned with a good alcoholic substance. From there, the paint gets applied. Just for your reference when I've done it, I have always started on the awkward edges, giving a couple of coats (10 mins between, depending on how warm it is - booth eliminates this random time), then I've gone left to right in horizontal steady strokes, left to dry bit, then vertical strokes, dry, horizontal, dry, vertical and thats usually been enough, sometimes I'll give one last horizontal stroke though. Once thats done I leave it 24 hours to cure and then lacquer, same method but being extremely careful as the damn stuff runs if you put even a tiny bit too much on, I leave the lacquer to cure and then compound. Others may have better methods but this has always worked for me and I've had factory finish results (in amongst some early lovely balls ups and sanding down sessions ) - you can paint a car with a brush but I'd not like to be the man flattening it off and trying to compound it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabbitstew Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 - you can paint a car with a brush but I'd not like to be the man flattening it off and trying to compound it I remember back in the 80`s paint on car respray kits were advertised in the back of some of the car mags. They boasted that the paint was special so you didnt get brush strokes when you painted your mk2 cortina etc.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmgthatsme Posted November 17, 2011 Author Share Posted November 17, 2011 @ds2000, thanks mate for taking the time to run through the process with me. Will also google around for furhter knowledge. I feel I now at least have a basic enough understanding to enter into a discussion with a bodyshop and not seemng clueless. Thanks man, much appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dblock Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 isnt paint 2k without "proper" facilities dangerous? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightRacer Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 isnt paint 2k without "proper" facilities dangerous? absolutely! it contains cyanide among other nasty things.. thats why its generally not used nowadays. It is however great stuff to paint with, I do all my bikes in 2 pack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 isnt paint 2k without "proper" facilities dangerous? absolutely! it contains cyanide among other nasty things.. thats why its generally not used nowadays. It is however great stuff to paint with, I do all my bikes in 2 pack. Yep, my friend did his whole car in it about 6 years ago, the finish was incredible and its so hard wearing, but nasty is 100% rmgthatsme - no problem, I'm by no means an expert but I've done enough to get a good finish myself. rabbitstew - my dad has told me all about the brush painting, I can remember when I started work at 16, someone had painted their mini with a brush and it looked ruddy awful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabbitstew Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 rabbitstew - my dad has told me all about the brush painting, I can remember when I started work at 16, someone had painted their mini with a brush and it looked ruddy awful When I was at college I had a mate who repainted his car using dulex emulsion. Had a lovely matt finish and that was before matt paintwork was fashionable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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