What would be a reasonable price for a bare metal respray on a 2003 SL 500?

[pioneercollector]

Hi All,

I am on the finishing leg of my SL500 journey, there are a couple of starfish paint defects on my car ( Roof, Boot, and one small bubble at the bottom of the front wing ) as well as some stone chips etc - My question? as per the title, what would you count as a fair price for a bare metal respray in Obsidian Black ( the existing colour ) ?

Paint went up at least 10% on the first on this month ....Sigh

The spray shop i was thinking of using is well known to me as they are opposite my place of work. The do lots of vintage cars and lorries as well as brand new coaches etc ( and some very odd museum projects such as Stanley Steamer cars! ) The owner did my brothers VW Camper van and it still looks like new 5 years later.

As the panels are aluminium and Chris the owner ensures that any imperfections will not come back, he was suggesting £5k , Is this a fair price? I know that the work they do is top notch, which is half the battle.....

 

[tonysmb]

When I saw the thread title, I thought £5,000 or more, based purely on what I've read elsewhere, not recent experience.

Others wil lbe better placed to advise but the difficulty is knowing the quality of the end product with varying quotes.

 

[DSM10000]

For the work involved that seems to be a reasonable price

 

[Smart320]

Better the devil you know , even if he’s a bit on the expensive side . Actually I’ve no real idea of what the cost should be. However I expect with aluminium panels and a guarantee that you can trust to be honoured , then £5k with peace of mind feels better than say
£3.5 k at somewhere unknown ,except for some good online reviews, which are might or might not turn out well.

 

[ALFAitalia]

You can pay way more so it depends on your standards. That sounds fair for an exterior paint to something like Mercedes (usually fairly orange peely!) standard finish. Does it include the door jams?...I assume the engine is staying in. As a side note you can pay way more. A classic car friend had his 70 Dodge Charger shell done.....cost over thirty grand before COVID and they had no stripping to do as they were delivered a bare shell. But so far he has one two or three "Best Paint" awards at shows and it looks like his car is covered in swimming pool deep bright red glass.....amazing finish!! However the paint itself was nearly £800 per litre...specially imported for the job! He could have spent $2000 per litre (about £1650 at todays rates) for the best of the best in paint!!! Gulp.

 

[ChipChop]

Why back to bare metal on a car that is only 20 years old is the question i would ask the bodyshop. On the face of it that seems to be an awful lot of extra work that may reveal issues that could be costly to rectify.

 

[alabbasi]

5k is cheap. That's a hell of a car to disassemble.

 

[ALFAitalia]

I cant imagine there will be much disassembly for £5000.....just a lot of masking!!

 

[pioneercollector]

OK Thanks all,

I wasn't sure as i have not ventured down the respray road for decades!

And i seem to recall that i had my Datsun 240K GT ( 1980 Model ) resprayed at Bristol Bus depot on a Sunday ( The site was closed on a Sunday apart from a friends friend who 'moonlighted' ) and my choices of colour were Bus Blue, Badgerline green, Bus yellow or Red ..... I opted for Red. I had to do all the prep and drive the car 32 miles from my home to the centre of Bristol with NO GLASS ...... Those were the days, and the cost was £100....

Moving on nearly 40 years....

The car is going to be masked up, no engine out as i am keeping to the stock colour ( Obsidian Black ), Knowing the vehicles i have seen in the prep shop across the road it will be rubber off and all those bits and pieces.... But no serious disassembly !!

And he is giving me mates rates apparently

I will book it in, just needed reassurance as £5k is a chunk of change!

Also i mentioned the 'back to metal' and Chris informed me that only the sections that need sorting will be back to metal, but he will have to do the entire panel - the other areas will just be prepped ready for the paint.

 

[pioneercollector]

You can pay way more so it depends on your standards. That sounds fair for an exterior paint to something like Mercedes (usually fairly orange peely!) standard finish. Does it include the door jams?...I assume the engine is staying in. As a side note you can pay way more. A classic car friend had his 70 Dodge Charger shell done.....cost over thirty grand before COVID and they had no stripping to do as they were delivered a bare shell. But so far he has one two or three "Best Paint" awards at shows and it looks like his car is covered in swimming pool deep bright red glass.....amazing finish!! However the paint itself was nearly £800 per litre...specially imported for the job! He could have spent $2000 per litre (about £1650 at todays rates) for the best of the best in paint!!! Gulp.

That sounds like an amazing paint job!! My standards are high, but i am going for the stock and original colour scheme, not award stuff - And at those prices i couldn't even entertain it .....

My chopper did win some awards including the custom paintwork - This wasn't my handiwork though !!

 

[BTB 500]

A classic car friend had his 70 Dodge Charger shell done.....cost over thirty grand before COVID and they had no stripping to do as they were delivered a bare shell.

Retropower in Hinckley are doing a '69 Charger bodyshell at the moment. It's a huge car by modern standards, and they've had to do much of the bodywork (including the spraying) on a 'rotisserie' because it's too wide to reach across! They mentioned that the material cost for just the basecoat on the upper part of the shell was around £1000 because of the amount of paint required. It's just a basic dark green metallic (a current Ford colour).

 

[alabbasi]

The problem with masking is that where it buts up against the trim pieces that are being masked, it will eventually start flaking away. I don't even know how it's possible to keep the trim and have a bare metal respray. Something to think about.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Better the devil you know , even if he’s a bit on the expensive side . Actually I’ve no real idea of what the cost should be. However I expect with aluminium panels and a guarantee that you can trust to be honoured , then £5k with peace of mind feels better than say
£3.5 k at somewhere unknown ,except for some good online reviews, which are might or might not turn out well.

Good advice. I would rather pay a little more for someone I trust to do a good job than take a chance on someone who may be less expensive but unknown to me.

 

[oldguy57]

I think £5k is expensive, particularly if it's not a full back to metal respray. After all 230's are a small car. Having said that I'm used to North West prices where costs appear to be considerably lower than in other areas. An example friend's 200 SX was done at a body shop who do classic stuff when not much going on. Bare metalled and photo record of it including welding in new panels. £3k and an absolute detailed immaculate finish.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

OK Thanks all,

I wasn't sure as i have not ventured down the respray road for decades!

And i seem to recall that i had my Datsun 240K GT ( 1980 Model ) resprayed at Bristol Bus depot on a Sunday ( The site was closed on a Sunday apart from a friends friend who 'moonlighted' ) and my choices of colour were Bus Blue, Badgerline green, Bus yellow or Red ..... I opted for Red. I had to do all the prep and drive the car 32 miles from my home to the centre of Bristol with NO GLASS ...... Those were the days, and the cost was £100....

Moving on nearly 40 years....

The car is going to be masked up, no engine out as i am keeping to the stock colour ( Obsidian Black ), Knowing the vehicles i have seen in the prep shop across the road it will be rubber off and all those bits and pieces.... But no serious disassembly !!

And he is giving me mates rates apparently

I will book it in, just needed reassurance as £5k is a chunk of change!

Also i mentioned the 'back to metal' and Chris informed me that only the sections that need sorting will be back to metal, but he will have to do the entire panel - the other areas will just be prepped ready for the paint.

All sounds good and, yes, that sounds like the right level of prep for a car like this: full bare metal is unnecessary.

Two points:

Worth it on a car that's worth less than £5k?
(Answer: yes but only if you love the car, it's reliable and you'll keep it for y years. Not in addition to resale value)

Cheaper to find a guy in rural Wales? Probably, but is it worth the faff and risk? Only if you need to save a grand or two.

 

[pioneercollector]

Hi MikeInWimbledon - Yes this car is intended to be one that i will keep for years, I tend to keep my vehicles for quite some time ( I still have the Yamaha XJR 1300 i purchased new in 2000! ) It is a lot of money but i have already had quite a lot of mechanical preventative work done this year, i was surprised at the price although i did hear on the news that car insurance is due to rise around 10% across the industry mainly because the cost of car paint has risen by at least £10 per litre as of the 1st Feb... sigh

Rust is the only thing that causes me to sell on a vehicle, this particular SL is now 20 years old and is in good order and i was rather hoping to keep it that way! I purchased this car to use and enjoy

 

[BlackC55]

£5k is very reasonable. Especially if you factor new roof seals in that as re-using them is no do-able.

I'd expect to be more like 7-10k done to bare metal. Its a shed load of work.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Hi MikeInWimbledon - Yes this car is intended to be one that i will keep for years, I tend to keep my vehicles for quite some time ( I still have the Yamaha XJR 1300 i purchased new in 2000! ) It is a lot of money but i have already had quite a lot of mechanical preventative work done this year, i was surprised at the price although i did hear on the news that car insurance is due to rise around 10% across the industry mainly because the cost of car paint has risen by at least £10 per litre as of the 1st Feb... sigh

Rust is the only thing that causes me to sell on a vehicle, this particular SL is now 20 years old and is in good order and i was rather hoping to keep it that way! I purchased this car to use and enjoy

Then absolutely the right thing to do. My point was only that it doesn’t wash its face if your intention is to immediately sell.

What a great car that 2003 SL500 is. I loved mine. They still look a million dollars to this day, even though they don’t actually cost that much!

Inflation?! Pah !! Your car has benefitted substantially from an increase in value thanks to that same inflation.

 

[AFalco]

I have a CLK 3.2 W29 it has the rusty rear arch common to early models and I've been quoted £1000 to £1200 to repair and spray.

 

[markjay]

£5k is very reasonable. Especially if you factor new roof seals in that as re-using them is no do-able.

I'd expect to be more like 7-10k done to bare metal. Its a shed load of work.

I think the issue here is that 'bare metal' is a very broad term.

It's not only about the level of dismantling in terms of trim, bumpers, windows, door handles, headlamps, grille, rear lights, badges, etc, it's also down to the number of panels and the actual work that each one will need, E.g.:

"..Also i mentioned the 'back to metal' and Chris informed me that only the sections that need sorting will be back to metal, but he will have to do the entire panel - the other areas will just be prepped ready for the paint"

I don't think we can actually say if £5,000 is reasonable or not given that it's not clear what work was actually being quoted for.