Reasonable respray costs.

[crankedup]

Perhaps almost impossible to answer, but how much should I budget for a respray to my vintage car. It is an 4 seat open tourer with mudguards. It is a simple design with many straight panels and not much in the way of adorments to get in the way. I think the bodywork is quite sound but will need to be fully prepped and a decent spray job done rather than a quick 'blowover'. I have been told to expect around one to one and half thousand pounds?

[Jay Ayegees]

Cost depends on two factors - cost of labour and cost of materials, mainly paint. If you wish to maintain originality on an old car the labour costs will soar because 'older' paints require more preparation and work.

1000 pounds sounds too cheap - maybe twice that.

Jay

[ELAN+2]

I was quoted £5K +for my lotus, and that was after I had removed all of the old paint. Sounds too cheap to me as well, its fairly easy to work out, ask them how much paint they will use, allow at least £100 per litre not forgetting the primer/base coats, then ask thier labour rate. Allow a couple of hundred for consumables and from that you can work out how much time they intend spending on the job.

hope this helps

Mark

[crankedup]

Thanks for replies, I have now had a second verbal estimate at 3500 pounds. Somewhere inbetween yours and jays guidence remarks.

[jacko lah]

Was talking to a body shop last week and they would FIX all my problems for £700 without a full respray, but they said they charged a bloke £3K last week to respray a merc because "WE never really wanted the job so we tried to price ourselves out of the job"

[crankedup]

jacko lah said:

Was talking to a body shop last week and they would FIX all my problems for £700 without a full respray, but they said they charged a bloke £3K last week to respray a merc because "WE never really wanted the job so we tried to price ourselves out of the job"

All I can do is drive the car to a number of places for estimates then. Have to say that the estimate I was offered was after much sucking in between teeth and pointing out every single defect in the paint/bodywork with explanations as to how to fix. Living in a cynical world it may have been talking the job up or in an honest world perhaps telling me how it really is.