Cost of painting...

[Skeomorph]

Hi All,
I'm curious what people are paying to get their cars painted: I've had a couple of quotes that are considerably higher than I expected and I don't know if they are reasonable or 'I really don't want to do it 'prices...Am I completely out of touch with reality or is 5K+ really the going rate?
Thanks for all thought on this,
Andy.

[Throwley]

In previous ownership, my Triking suffered extensive smoke damage after the owner's (Michael Sharpe) garage, containing his vintage car collection, was consumed by fire.

The red paint was irredeemable, so Michael had the car resprayed in Ferrari Red at a cost of £3000, about fifteen years ago and TBH there are a few paint flaws which I wouldn't have accepted. Michael is a man of many friends, so I would imagine this would have been mates rates too.

I costed out respraying a SWB beach buggy (straight black, gold stripework, lacquer coat) two years ago; with prep materials but without labour time (good job too as I'm very, very expensive ) the cost was also £3000! (paint and materials quotes from Nu-Agane, Bedford)

I think Tony and Richard may be the best people to answer this question, though.

[Weg]

Horrendous prices.
Don't want to get the job.
Perhaps paintshops in Berkshire are assuming car enthusiasts are rich.
May be worth asking around in local car clubs etc.
My own experience with Clarissa, which was a mates rate job done by a semi-retired expert was under 2k. Previous commissions have also been well under that figure, but were several years back.
Are you still at the gelcoat finish stage?
Have you done all the prepping that is within your scope?
Is the car on the road and be driven to the spray shop?
Detrimming and trailering saves a lot of time and hastle at the spray shop.
To make life easier for my 'mate' I detrimmed, exhausts, rear lights, no cockpit roll, before screens fitted, thus minimising amount of masking needed.
I towed her to the shop and then put her up on my wheeled build stand to make moving around shop easy. 5 bits to paint, main body, bonnet, boot and 2 doors.
Insurance work takes up much of the body shop workload, which is quite lucrative.
Tony

[peakrock]

There is also the alternative of doing it yourself via a small paint roller and then “tipping off” with a quality paint brush. I’ve painted both the Trikings I built this way using International Paint which is formulated for fibreglass boat hulls so it’s fine for the Triking body. Total cost around £200 and most people can’t tell it’s not been sprayed. You can tell if you look really closely so it depends on whether you want an immaculate body finish or a pretty good one. Happy to give you more details if you want. As Tony says, you can save a lot of money by doing all the prep yourself before spraying, the Triking is fairly small so it’s not too onerous.

[Alanla]

Painting costs have doubled in the last 4 years.- Russian war -Covid etc, cost of heating a spray oven - petrochemical products and solvent waste disposal blah blah etc etc. Our bodyshop charges us about £2,500 for a T1,2 or 3 in a solid colour and about £3000 for a T4. (+VAT) They assure me repeatedly that it as cheap as is feasible !
Most accident repair type bodyshops don't like fibreglass...................
As we know most of the cost is labour involved in the preparation and that's where the biggest saving can be made. A good way is to do all the prep yourself so all your local painter has to do is put the paint on and then polish it!

[Throwley]

I costed out respraying a SWB beach buggy (straight black, gold stripework, lacquer coat) two years ago; with prep materials but without labour time (good job too as I'm very, very expensive ) the cost was also £3000! (paint and materials quotes from Nu-Agane, Bedford)

I just revisited this quote - it actually included gel coat (with cleaning sundries), gold flake and the extra lacquer needed to spray it. So may be not so relevant, although a flaked Triking may look rather good...

[EricStarmer]

I spray-painted mine using Rustoleum Cobalt Blue "metallic" rattle cans from Walmart - under $100 , then another $100 for 3M's polishing kit. Looked pretty good for several years, but now the sun (strong around here) has started to cause "checking".

[Doverhay]

Mine was painted 11years ago at a “mates rate” price of £600, still looks good today

[Weg]

Andy, I've emailed you.
Tony

[Skeomorph]

Hi Tony,
Thanks for the email, hopefully my reply is in your inbox.
Andy.