I have this morning taken my 4.0 coupe for a quote on a respray. Whilst still very presentable a bit here and a little bit there meant the best way forward would be to paint the complete car. The quote to paint it was in the region of £6000. This would be to paint the complete car to a 1st class Finnish,. Just wondered what people's thoughts are? £6000 sterling.

 

I wouldn't expect any less for a premium grade respray.

But shop around and make sure to ask for specifics regarding what will be done for xxx-money. Some shops just toss out a number and hope it'll stick....without obligating themselves to any other standard than a smooth, glossy result.

Cheers
DD

 

Quite steep, I feel, Brinny. But a GREAT deal depends upon how they are going to prepare the car. For example, is the chrome coming off, the door handles, the lights, the door cards, etc etc. If all this is being done, and you have seen other customers' cars and they are happy and you are impressed, then maybe.


My limited experience with resprays is that the finish is not particularly related to price; more to the talent of the sprayer! I would definitely shop around a bit more.
Greg

 

Will definitely be shopping around.

 

Hmmm. My experience is extensive in the mechanical area and even better in the electrical & electronic field - but strictly amateur when it comes to getting a flawless premium paint finish. I have spray painted everything from garden furniture to car trailers, but have no interest in ruining one of my Jaguars with an obviously amateur repaint.

So, like you, I headed off to the pro's for a quote on full strip, total multi coat paint job, clear top coat, re-application of waistline pinstripes, and full refit of stripped items. Of course. there is no reason your market will mirror mine, but for what it's worth . . .

Quote as above, was AU$10,000 for XJ6 or XJ40 sedans, but would not vary significantly for the XJ-S. What is interesting is the revised quote of AU$6,100 if I were to deliver car already totally stripped and prep ready and then took delivery of painted car to do all reassembly myself.

I think these figures translate to GBP6,000 or US$7,000 for full job and GBP3,700 or US$4,300 for just the prep, paint and finish work. I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Ken

 

It truly is a black art. I think they make it up as they go along price wise. Maybe a detailer might do a decent job and I keep her original? Thank you for your input cat. With that many jags I bet your kept busy. Lucky guy!

 

Too true.

The appearance of the finish is what everyone notices first, obviously.

The sprayer gets all the glory, or all the shame...but so much more does (or doesn't) happen before the car is rolled into the paint booth.

Besides quality and types of paint, and talent of the sprayer, you have a multitude of detail considerations. For just *one* example, how are the door jambs, fuel filler pocket, and hood/trunk shuts handled? A beautiful finish can be very let down but dingy jambs and shuts....but making the jambs and shuts look as good as the exterior finish can add many labor hours to the job. And a half-hearted effort here only makes things worse! If the jambs and shuts are already very nice, will they be very carefully masked to prevent overspray from ruining them?

I think it's essential to be very clear with the shop what your expectations are. Everyone has to be on the same page.

If all you want is shiny paint then it'll be easy for a shop to take you for a ride.

Cheers
DD

 

In my neck o' the woods a $7000 paint job would be considered mid-price. And it's hard finding a shop that's willing to work in that range.

Many shops will do a paint job for much less....with no pretense of offering 'premium' results. Decent quality, shiny finish, the car will look sharp....but virtually no attention to details. And, for a lot of consumers, that's perfectly OK.

At the other end you have shops with a reputation for very high grade work with utterly superb results....with prices starting in the $12,000 range and going up from there. They've built they reputation on very high quality work and will outright refuse to do "a $7000 paint job"....as they'd have to cut corners to meet that price. And cutting corners is the antithesis of their reputation.

Cheers
DD

 

It begins with what you have and the preparation. Crazed and checked paint, many dings, etc Or solid, but faded. The former, only a down to the metal will work. the latter, not so much, a good base to build on.


Preparation and masking is more than 50% of the final product.


I painted a couple of cars/trucks with bade equipment. The first not bad at all. the second, merely passable. And, a work mate, who's equipment, it was, used it to paint his Chev convertible a startling red. In my eyes, as good as I'd seen the pro's do.


In my appraisal role I made friends with two talented painters. Eacxh debunked the "many coats" theory. Merely pumps a lot of thinner in to the atmosphere. lay it on at just the right rate to avoid runs. Keep it wet til done. One believed in heating the thinned enamel and shooting "hot". The other touted his 'baking chamber". Baked enamel...


Carl

 

In my experience the best place to get a good paint job done is a shop that specialises in restorations. My brother spent $30k on the paint for his mustang, so you can spend lots. You need to know how they will prepare the body for painting, is it a bare metal or sand and respray.

 

I painted my first car a few years back, and got a whole new consideration about the costs involved. Sandpaper was mentally in the “misc/neligiable cost” column in my head but ended up costing hundreds right there. Paint was very high... hundreds per gallon for red. Plus I did such a terrible job I had to paint it twice!

In USA these guys are usualling doing crash repair, not whole car paint jobs. While I’m going insane and installing a paint booth in the barn, I think for 99.44% of people would be well served to strip the chrome and lights off to save a few bucks but really leave it at that.

Depending of year of XJS, it may have crazed thermosplatic paint. Wow is that stuff hard to remove.

 

I just had my XJS convertible fully done 6 weeks ago. The body had no rust but there was a dent in the passengers door and I had them remove the belt line moulding which meant welding the holes closed. The shop was a Mustang restoration specialist and I saw a number of Mustangs with nice new paint in his shop. Mostly they do the body off frame thing. He needed some fill in work to keep his crew busy until he got back with another project. I got by for $7000.00 US. I am extremely pleased.

 

Hi Brinny

Instead of having a Re-Spray, have you considered using the Circa $6000 (That a re-spray might cost)

To add to your fleet and buy yourself another XJS

Or even sell your XJS and then add the money you got for it to the $6000 re-spray Money to buy another XJS with the paintwork in better condition than the one you have.

 

This is an interesting topic.


My '96 XJS although fine underneath is suffering on the upper panels.


Slight scuttle rot and small areas of rust along the tops of the doors.


The car was badly keyed about fours times in a month some years ago and due to the cost of paint repairs the insurance company wouldn't pay, they would rather just have the car crushed.


The rest of the paintwork is now starting the craze as well, so a full repaint is required.


I've spoken to KWE Jaguar who admittedly are the main specialists in restoring XJS's.


A full strip down and repaint with minor rust repairs start's from £22,000. Now this is a complete strip down to a bare shell, blasted down, primed, etc. So as mentioned above the majority of the cost is going to be labour.


I was also quoted an additional £1500 to repair the scuttle rot if it's bad. In some cases the panel has to be cut out, fabricated and so on. The panels are not available any more (except from other used cars of course).


I also spoke to another XJS restorer and they've quoted me £15,000 for roughly the same thing, again depending on how much rust work will be required and so on.


So £6,000 is a bargain to me! Care to PM me the details?


I did call into KWE some years ago and there were a few freshly finished cars there. The paintwork on them was flawless. One car had been custom painted in Aston Martin grey, looked stunning. So I guess you kind of get what you pay for but even so that's a huge amount of money.

 

For you guys in the UK is it cheaper for you to get this work done in Eastern Europe? For guys in the USA how about Mexico?

I’m in Venezuela at the moment and restoring US cars and sending them to the USA is a small but profitable business. Labour is a $1 a day and whilst that may seem like taking advantage of people on the flip side it’s giving people jobs in a very nasty economy.

 

An interesting idea, not really suitable for me as I live on an island which makes getting anywhere pretty expensive unfortunately.


I can see it working maybe from a US perspective though.

 

The paintwork I can live with. Rest of car is like brand new. Full front and rear suspension renewal with less than 250 miles since being done . Immaculate interior. 4.0 manual gearbox with only 30 k on clock. I can see me finding one as good without costing me a lot of money. Plus I like it lol!

 

I know people who spent $60,000 on a paint job 20 years ago. Still looks fantastic today. To be honest £6,000 seems cheap. In my part of the world, paint is roughly £200/litre. Figure 3 litres to paint a car and it adds up fast. Labour to prepare the car is 90% of the work, the actual spraying is fast.

If you're going to get it done lay out exactly what the scope of work is. For example will all the chrome/ mirrors/door handles come off along with the front/rear windscreens? New rubbers used to reinstall? Or is it a scuff and splash where things are just masked off?

I've just been through getting some bodywork done and without taking out the front windscreen, the shop would have liked to lift the rubber seal where it meets the cowl and put in a small rod to hold the seal up, that way there is no masking line that will eventually peel. They couldn't get the seal to lift, so advised not painting until I was ready to remove the glass and do everything.

 

To be clear, refinishing a vehicle is not a "Black Art"... Unfortunately my trade has some shady characters in it that are not pillars of integrity. If anyone is giving you an "out the door" price that is not clearly stated as an estimate that can change depending on labor and underlying condition of the metal, etc, then they're guessing about what needs to be done, or they're overbidding to cover their butt. First step = find someone ( preferably in a rural area) that has a great reputation and is willing to give references. Second Step = understand what it is you're asking for... a simple respray is not that labor intensive, but a metal-up paintjob can take a hundred labor hours. the two are very different costs for both materials and labor. THe best techs I know work off an hourly agreement that is mutually agreed upon with full disclosure and weekly check in's that qualify the labor spent on the work. Sometimes it's expensive if the car is a turd, sometimes it's simply a respray and can run in around 3-5K and only take a couple of weeks in and out. my point is that the vehicle will dictate what it costs based on the condition, and an honest technician will give you a fair and reasonable price, but a fixed dollar amount is not an accurate way to gauge what it costs for repainting. JMHO.

 

Or, if working against a fixed price and unexpected problems come up they'll have to cut corners somewhere ....leaving some work undone or poorly done....to stay within the bid.




Problem is, for many people, the notion of dropping a car off for a paint job not knowing if the final bill will be $5000, $10000, or $15000 or more just isn't the cards.

When I've had cars painted I always dropped it off for a few hours to let them spend some time going over it with experienced eyes before giving an estimate, and then later joined the estimator for a walk-around to discuss what he has seen. There's always the chance of uncovering a serious issues that change the entire landscape of the job, yes, but typically a fairly narrow and defined price *range* can be agreed upon where both shop and customer feel comfortable.

Clarity and agreement regarding budget, expectations, what is and isn't included, and quality of the end result, is everything.

Cheers
DD