FLYNAVY30

Guys, Im new to this side of the house, generally over on the C5 section, but Im giving serious consideration to selling my Z06 to finance the build up of a '68 convertible Ive been looking at locally. The car is actually in pretty good shape... frame is solid with no rust, bird cage is solid, the attachment points look good, no significant fiberglass damage, relatively straight body lines, etc.

Im planning on doing all the mechanical work myself, but farming out the body work and paint. My question is to those of you who have pulled the body off the frame and sent it out to be painted, what kind of expense am I looking at for a good "driver quality" single color paint job? I dont need anything show car, but a nice base/clear coat job that you would find on a daily driver. My area of concern is that: 1. The car has some horrible textured '70s green and purple paint job that is going to need to be removed before it can be repainted, 2. I plan on running side pipes, how much work will be involved with filling the cut outs in the rear valance from the factory exhaust, and 3. there are two repairs in the fiberglass in common areas, the battery well, and the driver footwell both have patches that while not big, were clearly done by an amateur.

Any help you can provide would be much appreciated as I have a good idea of what expenses are going to be involved for all the mechanical aspects of the build, but im not terribly familiar with body work, especially fiberglass.

Thanks for the help

blckslvr79

The cost (and time) is in the prep work.
"Driver" quality means different things to different people.
Are you also planning to strip the trim, interior, and parts from the car yourself?

If you are planning to remove the body for this build, I assume you are expecting a nice paint job, not a cheap spray.
Also-Finding a shop willing to do the job can even be hard to do.

For a shop to strip your old paint, repair all damage (you won't truly know what damage is under the old paint until it is stripped naked), sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, seal, spray color, spray clear, wet sand and polish.....
I'd expect $8-10K minimum.

I paid almost $6K, and I did a lot of the work myself. At what I paid, I still pick apart what was done-not completely happy.

FLYNAVY30

Yes, my plan is to completely disassemble the car in my garage and essentially deliver the fiberglass body to the shop so that they could immediately roll into stripping the old paint, repairing what needs to be fixed and then prepping to spray. My idea of "driver quality" paint job would be a on par with what you would see on a new car coming off the line today...a good quality paint job that wasnt necessarily wet sanded by hand 6 times with 8 coats of clear on top.

Easy Mike

My advice is to paint the car on the frame.

MrJlr

WAY too easy to mess up the new paint when you put the body back on....

Jeff_Keryk

Talk to lots of people in your area first. Find a GOOD Corvette mechanic shop. Ask them if they know anyone. I say get at least 5 quotes. Then, when the paint comes off, be prepared for some surprises. Most of these cars have been repaired wrong in the past... I budgeted $5K and paid $8K (including tip). My paint is; well was, flawless.

69Vett

#1 find the person who will paint the car.
They will determine what you can or should do.
you will find as soon as you say the word "Corvette" the price skyrockets,
to farm out the paint bodywork, Done right your looking @ about 5 -10k.
I did all the prep, stripped, primed and blocked, everyone still wanted big$$.
I finally bit the bullet and Painted myself.
end result very happy, wallet ...Extremely happy !

Dose11

Gorgeous... I love Silver C3's

FLYNAVY30

Im assuming this means you had prior painting/body work experience?

FLYNAVY30

yea I guess that makes sense

gbvette62

As others have said, expect to pay $8,000-$10,000 for the paint job, maybe more, depending on how much work you do. Even a a good "scuff & shoot" can run $5,000. The paint and materials alone, for a full paint job today, amount to $1,000-$1,500!

You say "no significant fiberglass damage", but you really won't know for sure, until you remove the "horrible textured '70's green and purple paint job". You might be surprised to find evidence of old, poorly repaired damage, under that 70's paint job! This happens to a lot of people and it can increase the cost of that paint job pretty quickly.

With today's base coat/clear coat paints, you really don't need 8 coats of clear. The days of 20 coats of hand rubbed lacquer, are way behind us. Actually, I never believed in using that much paint anyway, it just increased the likely hood that it would crack.

I don't think that I would be comfortable with a shop that was willing to give you a "driver quality" paint job. Any shop content to turn out work that was less than what they were capable of, would worry me. It's one thing for a shop to give you a quality paint job, and only 1000 sand and buff it (as opposed to taking it to 2000), it's a whole other thing to be willing to give you a lesser quality job. Most NCRS type paint jobs, are never taken past a 1000 grit sand, because the NCRS wants to see a factory like surface. Show finishes are usually taken further.

The cut outs for the rear exhaust are an easy fix. You can buy after market filler panels, with the openings filled in, for a few hundred dollars, or any good Corvette shop can glass them up.

The damage to the floorboard and battery box, are no big deal to fix. They really don't have to be perfect, because they aren't readily seen. Based on this though, I would be more concerned about what kind of "amateur" repairs may be under that 70's paint. If they did a poor job of repairing those areas, odds are pretty good that they did poor repairs to any other damage, the car may have suffered.

77custom

FLYNAVY... I do all my own work as well.. including paint. Here is my latest : FULL TILT



Several suggestions for you:

1) I totally agree that you should paint the car ON THE FRAME. Make it so much easier and you don't run the risk of screwing up your "new paint" when re-assembling the car.
2) You may want to strip the car yourself. This is a very time consuming process, that, while being very easy to do, can eat up a huge amount of $$$ in body shop labor.
3) You may find that fiberglass work is not that difficult, and decide to do that yourself as well. There are hundreds of threads on this forum to guide you through it! If you don't feel comfortable with that, then please follow suggestion 4:
4) When you find a person whose paint work you like... ask for references! Call the people who own the cars that "your guy" has done in the past... go look at their cars, talk to them, etc etc before you commit! This is also true for fiberglass work... bad work WILL show through even the finest paint!
5) Don't skimp on cheap paint or sealers/primers!!! Even the most experienced "artist" is only as good as his tools. Good paint is expensive, but well worth the investment!

Good Luck to you!

Robert

gbvette62

Some people are comfortable putting the body on a dolly and having a shop paint it. This allows them to do the frame while the shop has the body, speeding up the whole process. You always run the risk of damaging the fresh paint job this way, but thousands of us have done this, and not hurt anything.

The other option is to give the shop the partially assembled car, to prep the body for paint. Once the body is in primer, pull the body and do the frame. When the frame is done, it can be masked and wrapped in plastic, the body dropped and the paint work completed. No mater how well you mask the frame, you'll still end up with a lot of clean up, but you've reduced the likely hood of damaging your new paint...slightly. Remember, you can still just as easily damage the paint hanging doors, hood, installing emblems, bumpers, the interior and so on!

RobbSalzmann

FlyNAVY,

First of all, welcome to the C3 section, the best side of the house!

I'd never done body work or paint prior to my C3. If you have the time you can do alot of the work and yeild top quality results. Since you're also a member of the world's finest military organization, you know what "Attention to Detail" is all about. That is 95% of body work. The rest is understanding the proper use of quality products.

Oh, and don't let a family member spray your car - even if that's what he does for a living.

RMVette

Mine was painted on the frame with new weather stripping, new windshield and new door glass installed. Doors and hood were painted off the car, 3 coats color and 4 coats clear. Total cost for paint and labor on mine was $7,500 10 years ago!

One word of advice…. I wasn’t planning on doing interior work but after paint there was so much dust in the gages that I had to restore the interior which I had not planned. So if you intend to restore the interior, do it after the car is painted because no matter how much you try to keep the dust out, it finds a way in. Plus, make sure the paint shop tapes from the car to the floor (not just over the tires) eliminating all possible overspray on the underside of the car. I replace my springs and had front end work done before paint and when I got the car back there was overspray on the new components which I had to painstaking remove with thinner. Little things I didn’t think about prior to having the car prepped and painted.





Good luck!

69 Chevy

For the life of me I don't know why CorvetteForum has http://forums.corvetteforum.com/paint-body-138/ when so few ask their paint/body questions there??? Are there more paint/body experts in the C3 General forum than the more correct paint/body forum? Must be.

But while I'm typing, what does the average mechanic know about the ins and outs of fibreglas bodywork and painting that you would steer someone their way? Beats me! My suggestion would be towards the local autobody paint store. They sell paint products to all the shops. Certainly their delivery guys see the finished product. If I wasn't in the business myself, that's where I would ask for opinions on who does good paintjobs, and who to stay away from.

Alan 71

Hi,
I'll only offer 2 thoughts.
1. The painter has to understand what your expectations are.
2. There's no way he can give you a price, (just a ballpark), until all the paint is off the car and he can see what he's facing.
If you're budgeting, I think it needs to be $10k.
Regards,
Alan

PS: Your rear valance panel question needs some clarification... do you want it to look like it did in 69, or some other appearance; like no seam at all?

tekvette

My C3 was painted 8 years ago and cost 8k.
Body off as well.
Convertable has no roof to prep and paint so tell them to knock a grand off.

Jeff_Keryk

But while I'm typing, what does the average mechanic know about the ins and outs of fibreglas bodywork and painting that you would steer someone their way?

We have a legendary Corvette mechanic in the San Jose, CA area, Kevin Ireland. I have asked Kevin's advice many times over the years on a wide variety of Corvette issues. He recommended a young man who only did Vettes. I could not be happier with the quality of his work, and the final price. I gave him a $1,000 tip. I hope this answers your question.

69 Chevy

Would you put him in the 'average mechanic' class like I stated? Since you said legendary, the answer should be NO. So now the OP has to go on a wild goose chase for a 'legendary' Vette mechanic even before he starts his hunt for a painter. Not the way I'd go about it.