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The time has come to get vikki some warpaint. Without prying too much, can you guys that have painted your Sportsters give a rough indication of cost?
Also - How much prep did you do yourselves? I know I have some spidering cracking in the gel coat on the nose cone and in some places on the scuttle... Should I try and get those out, or will a good body shop know what they're doing with these?
Finally - sugestions as to where to get it done. I'm in Northampton, so somewhere close if you know of a reputable place. IIRC, Simon got his cabrio sprayed to a very high standard somewhere arounf here, but I can't remember where.
I paid about 2K. The job isn't brilliant but I did NO preparation myself. The problem if you do your own prep and the paint job goes wrong they can always blame it on you.
A couple of hints.
1. Make sure they paint the insides of the doors!
2. The company that did mine put all the f-glass panels in the oven before they were painted. This reveals all the little air pockets that could otherwise cause blisters at a later stage.
3. Think about how you are going to protect the front face of the rear wheel arches post painting. Mine already have several stone chips.
4. Unless you take some time off work it will take you at least a month to re-assemble it all!
I used Normandale in Daventry (so quite close to you) and they did an absolutely brilliant job. The contact at Normandale is a chap called Phil Ducker.
They do alot of motorsport work and are therefore very used to spraying glassfibre and aluminium vehicles. They did exactly what I wanted and even sprayed the inside of wheel arches and door pillars black for me.
I didn't do any prep work whatsoever other than stripping the car down and rebuilding after spraying. This helped keep the cost down (I can't remember the exact figure I paid but it was less than £2k).
I can't fault the work they did and they also offer a vehicle collect and return service (handy if the car is stripped down!). The sprayed panels were even returned wrapped in bubble wrap to avoid any damage!
I paid about £1800 and like the others left all the prep work, including the doors to the painter.
Simon's recommendation sounds really good.
Like Robin, make sure they understand which bits need painting and show after assembly, like inside the 'A' panels and inside the bonnet sides, doors, etc.
Are you going to tell us what colour or keep it a surprise??
And I second Robin saying it takes a long time to to re-assemble as fear of scratching slows you down.
My Cabrio cost £2.6k, but there is more to paint. The guys who did mine made a super job, and they did all the prep too.
It took me a day to strip the car doawn and a month to re-assemble it.
