[Oops, Seems I've written a mini-book here, sorry 'bout that]
I had the local body shop guy come out and look at the B. Some of his
advice is against what some of you have said, so I thought I'd run it by you
all and see what you thought.
He started out on the assumption that I just wanted a quick, make the car
look reasonable paint job, but after spending 40 minutes or so looking over
the car with me, he basically said, you seem to want the car to look really
good when its done, and honestly, I think your doing any of the body prep
will detract from that. He said this after I admitted to having no body
work experience.
On stripping the old paint myself, he said sandblasting would warp the
panels if I wasn't careful. Chemical primer, he claimed, would get down into
all the crevices between the panels and said he didn't ever recommend it.
On all the dents and bangs, he said it was really easy for him to pull
them out, and that I could try to do it myself but it wouldn't really save
me any money since they wouldn't be much more labor if he was stripping the
car anyway.
About priming, he claimed he could do a better job using a
polyurithane(sp?) based primer, and that type wasn't really usable by a
do-it-yourselfer. He said on top of that, that he'd probably spend as much
time fixing up my priming job as he would priming it himself.
He did say I could do a good job sandblasting the floorpans, and that it'd
save me a lot of money over his doing it, because it would take a long time.
He suggested that I don't try to strip the underside, but rather he'd weld
in new metal wherever there was rust, and leave the good metal alone, but I
should put a good fresh undercoating on it. He was pretty down on
undercoats that didn't dry, but I couldn't really get him to say why.
Like I said, he suggested I let him do most of the body work if I wanted
to get a good, lasting finish. He's a been a pretty honest guy in my past
dealings, so I don't think he's just saying that to get more money out of
me. I've also seen several examples of his work (including a repaired fender
he did on my "other" car), and it looks fantastic. He said if I wanted to
strip and prime it myself, that he didn't want to get involved.
He gave me a ballpark estimate of two weeks labor ($2000) and all the
paint and materials ($700). This is assuming I strip the car completely
down to the bodyshell and sandblast the floorplans. He added that he'd pick
the car up and deliver it back to my door. It seems to me that <$3000 isn't
bad for all that he'd do. With the initial purchase price of $2400, that
still gives me ~$3000 to put into the mechanics and stuff before I hit the
top value of the car.
Comments, anybody?
(I showed him the spit, which I foolishly had painted at the first place I
found a few years ago. I wanted to see his reaction. He started talking
paint-ese and I totally lost him. He didn't seem to think it was too
terrible, but thought they'd done a quick and dirty job)
Jeremy DuBois
Programmer/System Administrator
Thermalogic Corporation
'74 MGB, '76 Spit
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