Full respray

[bobbin1982]

I got a quote for a full respray of my e30 touring and it was £400 with me doing the prep..........Is this an average price and when he says we can tape the handles and windscreen is this cowboy stuff?..I want a nice finish will this be the right way to go?

[E30A30]

Hi Bobbin sounds like a Very Fair price to me! I have a 4dr/Touring kit Gebuine M-Tech 2 recently resprayed in Diamond Schwartz Black (not been fitted) £399 standard front bumper located in Cornwall E30A30 also got 7j Borbet A's (no tyres) if you are interested PM me

[bramley]

I'm halfway through painting my E30, should be done for £60 ;)

Mind you, the roller approach isn't for everyone

[Falkster]

£400 quid seems very cheap. If you're doing all the prep work then you dont want to cut corners.....its pointless doing it unless you do it right.....windows out, lamps out....basically anything that can come off, take off!!

For the 400 quid will he be finishing the car....meaning other than putting back together will the paint be done?? He doesnt expect you to get the G3 and portercable out does he?

Just make sure you clarify with him what he will be doing. If he thinks he's just gonna be slinging a couple of coats of paint on then charging you 400 quid you need to know. What about sorting out little dings etc??

[bobbin1982]

well i cant afford new bits with the respray and a full service at the moment
and im not sure i said i would do the prep thats all...i might have to phone back and ask him what that will include.I have never had a car painted before and my limit is £500 is this a reasonable price for a re paint?

I would of done it myself but i dont have equitment or anywhere to paint it

I would absolutly love an mtech kit tho..But man they cost a fortune and im not a high earner lol

[suchy]

Well to give you an idea my proposed paintjob will be about £3k for a proper job. And that is with me stripping it and putting it back together. Could be more if the kit removal reveals horrors. But that is a PROPER paintjob. £400 is cheap!!

Just need to find £3k now........

[Falkster]

I got my M3 done using 'mates rates' and it cost me £1600, I helped taking lamps out and had to pay another ton to get windscreen out then in!

If the car will do as it is then leave it til you can afford to do it right.....you'll only kick yourself when its not the paint job you expected or wanted....waste of 500 quid and then have to do it again!!

[capri_rob]

£400 sounds very cheap to me too - would have thought the paint cost would be a big chunk of that depending on what he's intending to use. For a respray to be worthwhile surely you've got to be stripping as much of the car as possible rather than just masking stuff up which bumps up the time required for both the strip and refit and also the prep work.

I thought about £1k was the starting point for a bit of a blow-over, and £2k upwards for a really good finish ?

[daimlerman]

The real work on a respray is the preparation,the hours spent removing all those little carpark dents and scratches.
For £400 you wil get a £400 result.
Seem to remember that my local body man charges £200 per panel...but the finish is superb...

[Grrrmachine]

For 400quid he'll be blasting each surface with a few layers of paint and clearcoat, and nothing else. It'll be your job to go over the car first to fill and flat all the dents and chips; THATS what they mean by prep, and that takes days and sometimes weeks to over the whole surface of the car with a spotlight looking for scratches and dings and chips, plus, as others have said, removing as much as possible and masking up the rest.

It's a good learning experience, but your hands will ache like buggery after the hours of hand-sanding...

[bobbin1982]

you lot have put me right off the respray idea
Guess ill have to wait for the lottery win.actually ill probably buy an e30 m3 then

[Nay]

A guy local to me is relatively cheap, and someone I know used his sprayshop through an insurance claim or something, dont know the story. Although it was a cheapy mk4 fiesta, I think the bill was somewhat near £500-£600 for panels all down one side. He did all the work and it was tbh, a bad finish. It wasn't soo bad that you go back and force him to do it again, but you could see the lack of care in the finish.

Maybe it depends on the person/car/job as well. If the person really wants to see that car look great afterwards, they might pay more attention whereas if they dont give a sh*t then it may be rushed and tatty at the edges one would say.

Luckly I have an old college mate who may do mine for me when the times right. Used to work at a bodyshop that done all the barryboy cars (and lots and lots of money gets spent there!) and they do great jobs, and he got fully qualified there and done great jobs in the past. But mates price for a full job (not just exterior) will still be a couple of G's.

[bobbin1982]

or i could save up 2 maybe 2 and a half grand and but one that got great paint
or get someone to smash into the side of me and claim

[bobbin1982]

but seriously can i get good finishes from a rattle can?..I have to have the paint specially mixed but if i do it right will i get a mirror effect?

[Falkster]

No doubting you but how can you get a finish like that out of a can??

I used to paint all my cars when I had the space and equipment and there is nothing like a proper paint job. You can get an ok finish on small areas using cans but you try and paint a full panel and its never gonna be the same even if you chuck gallons on then flat it forever and a day.

Might aswell get out the roller!!

[corkie]

i was quoted £400 for the bonnet alone,i also paid the guy £6oo to strip and spray my mtec2 kit, he is very good though

[Grrrmachine]

rattle cans use copious amounts of thinner to get the paint to atomise under the relatively low can pressure. That means that the amount of paint coming out is thin as hell, massively prone to runs and sags , and will result in a microscopically thin layer of paint across the shell which will chip and flake if it's even looked at too aggressively. To use cans to get as thick and glossy a paint coat as a proper spray job, you'd be spending about seven times as much on the rattle cans as you would do just going to a body shop in the first place.

[bobbin1982]

so if i bought a paint gun is there any possibility of me painting it myself outdoors panel by panel?...OR should i get loads of cans of matt black

[penton08]

£400 is to cheap!! its gonna be a rushed bodge imo! proper paint and materials would be well over £200. i had a 2 door with a tec 2 kit painted a few years ago, i done all the strip and fit and most of the graft involved in the prep. and it still cost £2k, but it was a pukka job. at the end of the day, you get what you pay for!!

[fuzzy]

you can get a good finish with rattle cans but doing a car would be a bit much. £400 for a respray is going to be a poor job and no mistake.

[bobbin1982]

Im fed up of rusty arches and mismatching paint where other people had tried with cans........
i have never had a rust free car

[fuzzy]

ive painted panels with bmw rattle cans and got a finish as good as the panels next to it but white is an easy colour to get right.
get your cans from bmw for perfect colour match if your doing small areas.

[Chris]

Simple answer? Painting it yourself with no experience(?) and outside. It will never look as good as what is on there now. You really want to save up as much as possible, strip the car yourself flat everything back yourself and get it sprayed and finished by a shop. It will certainly cost more than £400 but you should get a nice result.

Are you going for a change of colour then? What you going for?

Chris

[bobbin1982]

nah i just want a fresh coat of the orignal colour but minus the shopping trolley dents rust and endless amounts of scratches
and the paint looks so bloody dull whatever i do to it

[wixer]

I'm halfway through painting my E30, should be done for £60 ;)

Mind you, the roller approach isn't for everyone

I'm thinking of going down the roller route aswell. How have you got on with it ?

[TheHeap]

you've got RUST. that has to be gone and i mean GONE otherwise painting it is pointless because it will be back and make the paint job pointless.

from the picture the car doesn't look bad. can you not just have the rust treated and painted.

if the dings are'nt that bad keep 'em or ring dent master.

i used these to do 5 stalito dents on my c70 and it was only £100. and a perfect job.

for £400 i think your gonna get a quick blow-over.

[bobbin1982]

yeh suppose i could get the arches sorted and try and buff the rest of the car up...........
doesnt seem to want to buff up nice like glass tho

[madaboutthe30]

Why dont you go over the car in G4 compound i think its called??

The paint on the bonnet of my coupe wouldnt match with the rest of the car, we thought it was a lost cause until we went over it with the compound. Its as if it gave the paint new life.

[bramley]

I'm halfway through painting my E30, should be done for £60 ;)

Mind you, the roller approach isn't for everyone

I'm thinking of going down the roller route aswell. How have you got on with it ?

Well, I had quite a lot of rust to contend with first so the prep work has taken forever. Actually applying the paint with a roller is quick and easy. The paint needs to be pretty thin, and you need to be on standby to go back over any runs that appear, and as I was painting it in my garage late at night I woke up to find a few runs.

In short, it's not a particularly quick way of getting a new paintjob, it all needs flatting back and then another coat, then flatting, then a coat etc.

I'm confident the finish I've got even before flatting back is better than I would have got with rattle cans, but that's not to say it looks perfect by any means - it's patchy and looks decidedly amateurish. The more I do, the better I get at doing it, and the bonus is of course that I don't have to mask much off, I don't get overspray or fumes and I can paint it at my leisure.

Once it's flattened and repainted, then flattened again I'm confident it will look reasonably good.

Trust you've seen this:
http://wiki.80-90.co.uk/index.php/Body_ ... r_painting

[harry_p]

imho, masking up doorhandles and windows is a cheap bodge.

it all depends what sort of result you're happy with. someone who knows what theyre doing, and with the proper tools could have a standard e30 screen out in 10 mins, and back in in 15.

if you have access to a trailer you could remove most things yourself and just deliver it to them, otherwise you're going to have to remove as much as you can yet still leave the car driveable and safe.

for £400 just to shoot some paint on an already stripped and prepped car i would expect a reasonable paint finish, but expect to have to polish it up afterwards myself. £400 doesnt by much bodyshop time though, so if that £400 covers stripping / masking and rubbing down, plus some paint, i wouldnt expect much in the way of quality. for a cheap job theyre not going to want to do any more than the bare minimum. i've even seen a 'full' respray where they masked around the siderepeaters and numberplates! it must have taken longer to mask them up that it would have to take them out. madness.

as for rattle cans, it's perfectly possible to get a finish every bit as flat and glossy as the factory finish. it takes time, practise and patience but it is possible.

unfortunately it's only really a temporary repair as the paint just isnt as durable and dulls and needs repolishing fairly regularly, which will soon wear through the paint as you'll never get the thickness of paint from cans that you would from proper respraying.

[madaboutthe30]

Once it's flattened and repainted, then flattened again I'm confident it will look reasonably good.

What do you mean by flattening?

[mattblacktouring]

hi, my mate runs a paint shop, and a full respray will cost 2-3k and thats a proper job with taking everything that can be taken off,taken off, and all of the inside behind/under interior (almost everything except engine out, but i havent checked this, i imagine on some the engine will be out) and fully prepped too as in all dents gone,will be perfect finish
for 400 quid it will be an outside only spray,not taking anything off (so will be masking at the very edge of all rubbers/lights e.t.c, and no dents taken out before

[beemerbird]

Once it's flattened and repainted, then flattened again I'm confident it will look reasonably good.

What do you mean by flattening?

I believe he means sanding down with fine grade wet and dry to allow the new paint to adhere, then secondly to smooth any rough patches.

[wixer]

I'm halfway through painting my E30, should be done for £60 ;)

Mind you, the roller approach isn't for everyone

I'm thinking of going down the roller route aswell. How have you got on with it ?

Well, I had quite a lot of rust to contend with first so the prep work has taken forever. Actually applying the paint with a roller is quick and easy. The paint needs to be pretty thin, and you need to be on standby to go back over any runs that appear, and as I was painting it in my garage late at night I woke up to find a few runs.

In short, it's not a particularly quick way of getting a new paintjob, it all needs flatting back and then another coat, then flatting, then a coat etc.

I'm confident the finish I've got even before flatting back is better than I would have got with rattle cans, but that's not to say it looks perfect by any means - it's patchy and looks decidedly amateurish. The more I do, the better I get at doing it, and the bonus is of course that I don't have to mask much off, I don't get overspray or fumes and I can paint it at my leisure.

Once it's flattened and repainted, then flattened again I'm confident it will look reasonably good.

Trust you've seen this:
http://wiki.80-90.co.uk/index.php/Body_ ... r_painting

Yeh I've seen that link, I've got a VW Camper aswell, which is where I've got the idea from. Gonna give it a go next month.

[bramley]

Once it's flattened and repainted, then flattened again I'm confident it will look reasonably good.

What do you mean by flattening?

I believe he means sanding down with fine grade wet and dry to allow the new paint to adhere, then secondly to smooth any rough patches.

Correct

I'll be sanding all the new paint once it's fully hardened to get it nice and smooth ready for the next coat.