Body Shops in NSW

[Nath 1,975]

I'd at least want a hand from someone who's better than I am... Will make a few calls if it comes to that. I am seriously shit at painting.

 

Booths are like 150-200 for a full day as well...

 

The compressor is like fresh out of 1939 but should do the job. What's the process fixing pitting though, since I know for sure there will be some under the paint (already found some)?

 

Of course I may get lucky and not have it cost an arm and a leg. We'll see tomorrow.

[Stumps 311]

If you've stripped the paint off and found no serious rust issues, you can either sand blast the body if you are going back to bare metal or if not try to remove as much surface rust as possible and treat the rest with a rust converter.

 

For small dents or any pitting left by the rust you can use a filler (bog etc) or a high fill primer surfacer which fills any small imperfections in.

 

Not a hard job to prep a body just very time consuming.

[Nath 1,975]

 

 

That was the pitting in one of the worse areas I had to sort for blue slip. Photo was taken in the process of treating it.

 

Maybe high fill primer would be the go...

 

I'm heading down to the place this afternoon to get a quote.

[SLO247 1,713]

A booth would be worth every dollar. When I sprayed mine in my garage the biggest problem was over spray. Won't be a problem in a booth.

[Stumps 311]

Nath, if that's the worst rust you got, it'll be a fairly easy job to prime and respray your car, a high fill primer will sort that out no worries.

[SLO247 1,713]

Yeah, a few good thick coats of highfill. Let it shrink for a while before rubbing. Maybe a month. Sorted.

 

Unless you spend tens of thousands a paint shop won't even do that.

[Nath 1,975]

Starting to sound like a plan, if I can get assistance from someone who knows spray painting, which I should be able to.

 

Trying to do it myself for the first time is just bad juju.

[Stumps 311]

Hey mate, we all gotta start some where, if you do it yourself and you bugger it up, it might cost you a few hundred bucks for the paint etc and a bit of time, but if a painter/panel beater fucks it up it'll cost a bucket to fix, and not many panel beater are out there willing to admit fuck ups (once again I know from experience), I've seen plenty of blokes cars, some on this forum and others on Xfalcon who have complained about a shit job only to find their car towed out to the street and left unfinished, and have had to finish the job themselves or worse yet strip the car down and start from scratch.

 

It sounds like I have a beef with the Auto paint industry, and I try not to, but my good experiences are few and far between in the last 20 years or so and the problem with dodgy panel beaters seems to be getting worse.

 

I've done a few cars myself and while it hasn't been all fun and games it's has been a whole lot cheaper and satisfying to do myself than to pay some dodgy cunt to fuck me over.

[SLO247 1,713]

Its not so bad. Practice on some scrap. Do LOTS of reading. I'd help but it's a long drive.

[blu xe 825]

Oh how I love reading these threads. Where to start? $5000 paintjobs are long gone and if you find someone that will do one at that price I guarantee that you will be unhappy with the result. If your not when you pick it up you will be when it all starts playing up in 6 months time cause ol mate cut corners and used shit products to try and make a buck out of his tight ass quote. I know your saying that its only going to be a daily but IMO your prep and products need to be of a decent quality and even more meticulous  for this reason. Its being exposed to the elements day in day out. Shit prep and product will f**k out in super quick time when exposed to the elements as opposed to a show car that barely sees the light of day humidity and moisture. Paint and panel rates are pretty cheap really compared to lots of the other trades. Some might argue that 15000 dollars is expensive but even at a conservative $50 dollars an hour its still only 300 hrs work. 7.5 weeks with a 40hr week .Charge it out at $80 and that's only 190ish hrs and that comes in at 4.5 working weeks. Having a car blasted and primed PROPERLY, not by a monkey who will f**k your panels and cause even more damage will cost at least $1800 at a minimum. The shop has overheads and staff to pay out of this too. So really I cant see how a panel shop is any more of a rort than any other business trying to survive. Fuck me I got charged 15000 to have a 7m X 5 M patio extension done and the builder was done in 5 days.

 

I've found that on a good clean rust free car that comes in stripped of everything and sand blasted with no to very minimal rust repairs and not banged up everywhere you need at least 350 - 400 hours to get a job that is done to an exceptional standard. READ covered by a paint lifetime warranty. Gaps that are nice with panels that fit properly and probably better than factory. Painted in and out and the undercarriage finished in a nice durable epoxy texture coat. These cars are the standard we stick to at work. We haven't had any customers that have been unhappy with the end result or the price they paid at the end of the job and many have paid ALOT more than 15000 to have paint and panel only done. That isn't put back together either. That's a rolling shell with hanging panels back on and gapped. I've got a mate who had his mustang painted by us and the paint on its 7+ years old and still looks as good as the day it rolled out of our shop. Its not what we call a show car but has won awards at the local shows it been entered in,  as has any of our other quality jobs. Painting isn't hard but the man hours leading up to the shiny stuff going on is where your dollars will go. Fact of the matter is its a labour intensive trade nothing more nothing less. The only way to reduce costs is in the labour. Which means corner cutting.

 

You have to be upfront and realistic with whoever you get to do your car and everyone needs to be on the same page before a hammer and dolly go anywhere near the car. Give them a realistic budget of what your prepared to spend straight up and they will tell you if they can do anything for that price and what standard of work they will deliver at that price! Have a weekly payment plan in place. Your panel shop will love it and you will too. Call in weekly to see where the hours are going and pay as they go. If your short one week they don't work on it simple as that. If it goes to shit and they fuck you over then you've only paid so much and you can pull the car at a moments notice  cause its all paid up and its not to late that you need to redo everything again. We keep in regular contact and encourage the owner to come in when ever they like to see how its travelling. Also remember a good smash shop doesn't always make for a good resto shop. If they don't do regular resto work and aren't keen on doing it walk away.

If they can't show  you any examples of their work or put you in contact with some of their happy customers to back their claims then they aren't worth dealing with. Again walk away.

 

Not digging at anyone but just trying to explain there is much more to a good paint job than meets the eye.

[Nath 1,975]

Good post - pretty much answered the question and narrowed my options down as well. Never had a reason to get something like this done before, and couldn't really get a straight answer from anywhere else, so thanks for that.

 

Still, it has to be done, body can't stay how it is. But definitely not on that budget. Already been thinking about alternatives.

 

Would be pretty retarded to get a paintjob worth three times as much as the car (probably more), only for some stupid asshat to run his shopping trolley across it a week later in the carpark at the local Woolies don't you think?

 

Personally I think most stuff involving cars in general is bullshit expensive.

 

E.g. Cost a mate of mine 4-500 (can't remember exactly) to get an alternator changed in his Barina. He knows SFA about cars. 200 for the new alternator and another 200 or whatever for a couple of hours labour. I get that the guy has to make a living too, that's fair enough, Not the mobile mechanic's fault. But when it all adds up it's still criminally expensive, no matter who's fault it is.

 

When you add up number of hours you'd spend working to pay some muppet to do it for you, vs hours just learning to do it yourself, 9 times out of 10 you're still better doing it yourself. x10 if it's something you're gonna have to do more than once in a few years.

 

Can already hear the disparaging remarks from here, but hey, when trolley meets car a couple of times. at least it won't end in tears because I'm not 15k in the hole and it wasn't immaculate to begin with. Like Stumps said, gotta learn sometime.

[Stumps 311]

Hey Nath, sure you look at it like that and it does make it hard to justify spending that much money one it but look at it this way XD values are climbing everyday and your car if cleaned up it and put a reasonable paint job on it with a nice set of wheels you could probably ask maybe 6k or 7k with a reasonable chance of getting it, give it a couple of years and a little more work maybe double that.

 

I sold my 78 XC last year for 5K it was a column auto 4.1 with a 2.5in system, 350 holley and pacemakers and bit of a cam, the auto had been rebuilt but other than that the car owed me maybe 3k including buy price, it was straight and the vinyl roof was in good nick but it was full of rust in the lower sill some of it had holed the lower guards and the steering was heavy but sloppy, now i got 5k for this with out too much trouble, the bloke i sold it to, took it back to Albury repaired the rust, resprayed it and redid the interior and suspension (i got lots of pics from him) and then sold it for 15k firm just before christmas and that was with the same old 450k kay 4.1 in it.

 

Imagine what a clean low kay XD will go for in a few years, im sure if i advertised my XD i'd probably get 7k or 8k and it looks pretty rough, but it is straight, with a decent paint job and some bushes replace i could probably go for 17k or 18k.

 

Just a thought....

[NZXD 2,328]

Blu XE hit it straight up. That's really great advice and I wish I had that years ago when mine was painted.

 

My paint looked super mint out of the shop, after a year sitting in a dry shed and not having any nature elements attacking it, I found a few blemishes coming out here and there. They have stopped but I was so farked off it wasn't funny.