Bare metal respray

[tomcotez]

Can anyone tell me how much a bare metal respray on a 105 should cost, ideally in £?

The PO spent alot of money having the body structurally sorted, so I'm assuming that little or no metalwork should be needed. I would do the preparation work - removing windows, metalwork etc...

thanks

[Alfajay]

Tom:

I assume you are asking what a shop would charge to buy the materials, shoot the paint, and do all of the metal finishing and sanding involved in preparation and blocking.

While your car is structurally sorted out, how are the door and hood gaps? How well finished are panels - have all waves and imperfections been removed? A lot of time (=money) can be spent in this area, and generally it's money well spent - you can't go back and fix the metal after a car has been painted.

Another factor is the quality level you want to achieve. There is a lot of hand labor involved in producing a great finish.

Here in the States, you can easily get into the $10K range, assuming that some time needs to be spent on metal finishing and blocking. Materials alone are about $1,500 (primer, color, clearcoat, + catalysts and solvents for each).

I know, I know - others on the BB have painted their cars with Rustoleum for $50 bucks, and have been invited to show it at Pebble. Or, Bubbas Body-n-Paint charged just $2K to re-paint your 8C2900 back in '98 . Well, material costs, labor, and environmental fees have gone up astronomically since then. And, if you want quality, it's going to cost.

[lowmileage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alfajay . Materials alone are about $1,500 (primer, color, clearcoat, + catalysts and solvents for each).

[wctouring#7]

Yup, expensive... A car that I sold to a fellow bb'er cost $6k for a bare metal repaint and I took the car apart. Materials alone were $1500.

[tomcotez]

In fact its really just the roof and pillars that are bad as the they were resprayed in the 80's and are a slightly different colour to the rest of the car. Plus there are bubbles of rust coming up along the top of the front and rear screen rubber seals.
The areas that have been done are pretty good, panels, panle gaps etc aren't bad.
I would go with respraying just the roof, but I understand that cellulose paint is no longer available, is it possible to mix paint types on one car?

[daveydog]

I had a couple of tiny paint bubbles on the lower side of my rear window just peeking out from under the rubber seal and when I pulled the glass and seal out this is what I found.



Tom, try to pull the rubber seal back on your car and if you see rust, it would be best to remove the whole windscreen and have the problem attended to before your respray. Those rubber seals are moisture traps and once rust starts there it's just going to eat away at your car until it perforates the metal. Then your roof liner inside the car will start getting discoloured from the water getting in.

[Alfajay]

tomcotez had asked: "I would go with respraying just the roof, but I understand that cellulose paint is no longer available, is it possible to mix paint types on one car?"

Well, sure you CAN - the question is do you want to.

I'm not sure what improvement in the quality of our car's appearance you are shooting for. If you do a partial re-paint, even with the same type of paint that's already on (assuming you know), the seam is going to show. The old paint will have weathered/faded, the new will have a different shade & gloss, etc. So sure, you can always do a partial job, but if you want it to look like it did when it left the factory, it's going to require some metalwork + a full repaint. But, hey, for a driver, maybe you just want to stop the rust, and make it look OK from 10 feet away. I'm not being critical of that approach - it's just a question of what you want to achieve.

"Plus there are bubbles of rust coming up along the top of the front and rear screen rubber seals"

Oh man, that spells trouble. The photos that Daveydog posted are absolutely classic - yea, all that shows when the car is assembled is a few little bubbles - but, pull the glass, scrape off a little paint, and that's what you find.

[daveydog]

Yeah Jay, the rear window didn't look too bad before I pulled it out.



After I pulled it out to fix the little paint bubble I couldn't believe how big the rusted area was.



Small jobs have a habit of becoming big .

[tomcotez]

well thanks for ruining my day guys...

[180OUT]

Tom, I noticed in your first post that you intend to do your own metalwork. As others have noted, rust bubbles at the windshield always pressage more extensive rust problems. If you can do the metalwork, that will make a dramatic difference in the overall cost of painting your car. When you find the rust, however, I'd suggest that you use brass instead of lead as your filler. Despite its popularity, lead contains acid which will eventually leach out and creat more corrosion. Brass is harder to work with than lead so you'll have to do some experimenting but, once you have the drill down, it is manipulated with wooden paddles, very much like lead. I'm hardly an expert on this, I'm just passing on some knowledge picked up from an old friend who was a master at his craft.

I did a cursory check on costs here in Texas. Shop rates are about $90US/hr. which is a bit cheaper than in the UK or California (AKA Peoples's Republic of Califa) where anything related to cars is severely punished. As Jay mentioned earlier, paint and materials costs are going to be horrendous: single-part enamel here costs around $200.00US per. gal. You should have about 2 gallons +/- to paint a GTV. Depending on where you go here in Texas, we can still get OEM quality (not show quality) paint on a GTV for under $5k---less if you are doing the prep work yourself. Costs, however, are highly variable and can be wholy unrelated to the actual quality of the finished work. That just makes the whole project that much more interesting.