Prep & respray estimates and final costs - advice please

[parry]

Hi

 

I've been having my TR stripped, prepared and resprayed and I had an estimate which bears no resemblence to the final charge and I want to know if that's normal for this sort of work as I always expected an estimate to be a good guide to the final price subject to any specific additional work that was required.

 

Basically, I had an estimate for 192 hours for all the work associated with the preparation, respray and refitting the body to chassis, and I took everything off the car in advance so that the body could just be lifted off the chassis at the body shop.

 

I have an additional 103 hours for welding and other activity, most of which I agreed to as the work was progressing, so I'm ok with that also.

 

When the car was almost finished I was told that there was 199 hours extra time taken for paint stripping, prep etc., so more than the original time as extra. Is this normal in this type of project?

 

I also have another 116 hours for items I would have expected to be included in the estimate for prep and paint, such as additional finishing and polishing. Again, does anyone know if it's normal that these type of things are not included in the original estimates, or will this likely just be another error in the estimate?

 

While the bodyshop is now saying that as a goodwill gesture they will not ask me to pay the full additional amount they are still asking for significantly more than the original estimate plus the agreed extras. Is my expectation that an estimate, subject to agreed extras, should be relatively close to the final figure resasonable or is the approach of the body shop in this case normal and expected bahaviour?

 

It's the first time I''ve done a project of this cost with a car so I'd like to check my expectations are reasonable as the bodyshop is obviously telling me they are not. If I'm being naive and should pay I'll accept that, but I don't want to be taken advantage of just because I'm new to this.

 

I maybe should have asked this question before I agreed to have this work done, but I assumed estimates for the car would be similar to other things I have done in the past otherwise there seems little point in having an estimate.

 

Thanks for any input you can give me, or anything you can share from past experiences.

 

Parry

[rhino_mac]

Is that 199 hours on top of the 192 hours originally estimated? So 610 total?

 

I'm not one to think a car takes a weekend to paint by any stretch, but 610 hours to paint a car?? (OK, 507 after the welding which was required). That's 13 weeks work solid at 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

 

What's the workshop rate? At £50 per hour that's a £25,000 respray, plus another £5k for the welding.

 

What was the condition of the body to begin with? If it's just been pulled out of a field after 30 years then fair enough, but if it was tidy but tired with some filler hiding the battle scars (hence the 107 hours welding) that sounds insane.

 

Some before and after pictures might help the experts here identify where the time has gone.

[barkerwilliams]

Recently had a quote to sand a car down, to see what lies beneath, prep and get a good surface and respray by a reputable company of £4,500 +VAT. No mention of hours just the figure.

 

The car currently looks pretty good prior to this work, just a couple of small dings and about 4" of a seam that needs digging out and a little treatment. No rot or rust visible anywhere, just tired paintwork. All panel gaps are good and nothing to adjust. So perhaps seems a straightforward job - for a classic car!

 

You mentioned additional finishing and polishing - would that be for items that were not painted, such as bumpers and chrome trim? If it was for painted panels then that finishing and polishing would be correcting blemishes in their paintwork, seems odd that.

 

But really all depends how good the car was to start with, silk purses from sows ears take some time and expense. Also an excellent sprayer can leave a car with little work to do, a sprayer with less skill can leave a panel needing lots of work to leave it half decent.

 

Alan

[parry]

Total time was 586 hours, car was certainly not a wreck and body and chassis would have passed an mot without a problem, but it was looking tired. I've had it 15 years and has always been garaged and it was on the road a couple of years ago but decided to do a full rebuild as it wasn't running well as I hadn't been using it much.

 

Nothing done other than paintwork, I have all the chromework and will be doing that myself. I took everything off the body and will be putting it all on myself.

 

I'll pull out a few pictures to show what it was like and post them up later, but thanks for the initial comments.

 

Parry

[roger murray-evans]

Parry,

I would expect any estimate to clearly state what the estimate covers.

If it says 'to paint car' then I would expect that to cover labour and materials.

If the workshop finds significant additional areas requiring attention, then

I would be expecting to receive, at the very least, regular contact from them to

update the situation and discuss additional costs.

If I were building a house and received an estimate to carry out the work I would not

be expecting to receive additional invoices for bricks, tiles plaster and drains to build the house

from the plans.

Additional 'off plan' expenditure would come under 'extras' requiring your

permission to spend more of your money than was originally agreed and would

usually be in writing.

As much as I hate to say it, you may well have spend a couple of hundred to get an hour

of solicitor opion.You're not talking peanuts here after all

Very best of luck

 

Roger M-E

[Hamish]

Is what we are often warned about.

An estimate. (Significant room for extra charges)

A Quote ( the fixed price for a job)

 

Alan who is doing yours as it seems very fair.

[monty]

I think this is an outrageous price if the car was like you described. Alan's price seems very reasonable. I paid, about a year ago, around £2000 @ a very good body shop (works on Nick Mason's cars for example) for a full strip, treatment, stone chip application & respray of all 4 wheel arches & a little work low down on the rear lower panels. An excellent job & paint match that I was happy to pay for nearly a weeks work including materials. I estimate that a full respray would have cost around £5 to £6k.

[monty]

An additional comment to my previous one. Around 2 years ago a friend with his Sunbeam Tiger was charged around £10k for a complete respray. He stripped the car himself of all the bright work & anything else that did not prevent him driving to the body shop & put it all back after the respray. They needed to replace a couple of small areas of metalwork in addition to the respray. He thought it a bit expensive but they did a superb job so he was pleased.

[Tim D.]

Paid £3500 for TR6 respray last year. Had already done the welding so just needed rubbing down knocking out a few dings and respray. Pretty good finish.

[PGB BME]

I'm paying £6500 for a bare metal respray, doesn't include repairs to metalwork. The guy has already bare metal resprayed 3 of my previous cars. He also did the paintwork on this years IWE winning TR5, think that could have been more though.

 

Phil

[Hawk]

Albeit not a quote but if they estimated 192 and then spent more than double that, I'd want to know why. And why they didn't inform me.

 

Unless there was significant unforeseen work (which seems unlikely given that you believe the body was MOT worthy and, in any event, paid extra for body work) this could be considered misrepresentation by way of deliberation under-estimation / inducement.

 

Personally I'd be going beserk if I was facing a 200 hour labour bill for a paint job (no matter how much prep was needed).

[Waldi]

+1;

I would not accept any exceedence of the estimate, unless you have agreed beforehand.

It is not possible to say from here if the original estimate or final amount claimed are correct, but that does not matter; the exceedence by a factor 2 is just not correct.

Waldi

[parry]

A couple of photos from when I took the car in, hopefully will attach ok. All the welding was to the main body of the car, nothing on things like wings, doors etc which were all ok. Bonnet wasn't great when they stripped it so I had to get another bonnet as they told me it wasn't cost effective to repair the old one due to various knocks and dents in it.

 

It seems like the general view is consistent with mine that an estimate and the final cost should be similar with a rational explanation for movements rather than just a statement that old cars always take longer than expected, so thanks for the comments.

 

Parry

[Tom Boyd]

The estimate can be no where near the final invoice. As long as the customer is fully informed and agreed to the work no problem!

I'm surprised some folk don't realise what actually goes into a full bare metal/gap & paint.

 

200 hours is nothing!!! Thats 5 weeks, no time at all.

 

600 hours is closer the the actual hours probably spent on a body off restoration/welding/paint..

 

When one of our cars goes in it's final coats of primer, we generally see it completed in around 4 weeks....

 

 

This is not a go at anyone, just my thoughts. I wasn't going to reply but everyones opinions/thoughts count.....

 

Parry, sorry to hear of your problems, i hope you can resolve them with the business in question.

 

Tom

[Nigel Triumph]

From experience of having two Triumphs repaired and painted in the past 6-7 years, I have to agree with Tom's comments above.

 

The key is good communication between body shop and customer when inevitably, the scope of work expands during the job.

 

Nigel

[monty]

Tom is correct. People will respond much better if they are kept informed. If a problem crops up then phone the customer to discuss.

We have a well known classic car restorer nearby who has gained a bit of a reputation for overcharging & lack of communication, with the result that I & others go elsewhere. They do a good job but 'take the mickey' @ times so I expect the future is not as secure as they think it might be. A frequent turnover in staff does not help. People do not mind paying for a good honest job that lasts. The annoying bit is to pay more than perhaps is fair & not get what you expected.

Cheers.

[YankeeTR5]

600 hours seem very excessive - had an old Alfa missing floors rockers etc that had to be fabbed and total hours charged was near that for all the repair and paint. 200 hours may be five weeks, which your car may have taken, but dollars to donuts that wasn't 8 hours a day of labor for 5 weeks....Shop rates are supposed to be for work being performed, not also for idle time of car sitting. My Alfa took a lot longer than 600 hours (15 weeks) to get back to me!

[AndyR100]

i haven't had one done for a while, but 600 hours effort seems heavy to me.... based on an 8-hour day, one guy, doing nothing else but work on the car for for 75 days solid!

i find it hard to believe that it would take the best part of 4 man-months effort - i respect the view of Tom and others, but that seems excessive.

 

...... Andy

[Rex Wyer]

i haven't had one done for a while, but 600 hours effort seems heavy to me.... based on an 8-hour day, one guy, doing nothing else but work on the car for for 75 days solid!

i find it hard to believe that it would take the best part of 4 man-months effort - i respect the view of Tom and others, but that seems excessive.

 

...... Andy

+1 At Toms rates that's about £ 39000 plus V.A.T for the labour plus paint. Sounds rather high ? for a respray.

 

Rex

[Hawk]

 

200 hours is nothing!!!

 

600 hours is closer the the actual hours probably spent on a body off restoration/welding/paint..

 

 

 

Hi Tom

 

I have 2 questions / challenges to your reply.

 

1 - if 200 hours is "nothing" then surely you agree that the initial estimate was a gross under representation

 

2 - (as has been said) 600 man working hours (not time elapsed) for paint prep (even if it involves extensive body work) and paint is a hell of a lot - at just £50 an hour plus vat that is the lions share of £40,000!

 

[Hawk]

I've just messaged my mate who has just had his 21 window VW bus painted to ask him how much it cost.

 

he paid just under £12,000 to have it done but that was 2 colours and to a 'perfect finish' - it really is like glass which is a real challenge on such big body panels.

 

my mate has put countless weekends into the bodywork but even so this price included prep and making good .... IMO the pics of the TR6 show the starting condition as being no different to my mates bus.

[Tom Boyd]

+1 At Toms rates that's about £ 39000 plus V.A.T for the labour plus paint. Sounds rather high ? for a respray.

 

Rex

 

 

 

Hi Tom

 

I have 2 questions / challenges to your reply.

 

1 - if 200 hours is "nothing" then surely you agree that the initial estimate was a gross under representation

 

2 - (as has been said) 600 man working hours (not time elapsed) for paint prep (even if it involves extensive body work) and paint is a hell of a lot - at just £50 an hour plus vat that is the lions share of £40,000!

 

 

Hi guys,

 

When the car has the paint on and on a chassis you cannot accurately cost things. Was the 200 hours just for an external paint?

 

600 for metal work, prep, paint, polish is a regular occurrence. I invite anyone to our premises to see what goes into a body restoration.

 

As i'm sure happens in many classic bodyshops you can never charge out the full labour rate... Full body resto's/paints you can about break even cost wise. You can easily lose half the labour.

 

You could spend a week (40 hours) for example getting an outer wing to fit properly to the door/bonnet etc...

 

I did, some time ago a complete breakdown of times/costs for a TR4 body. I will see if i can find it......

 

Tom

[Rodbr]

I am staggered by the amounts being quoted for spraying the car.

Ok, I did all prep work to get the car ready to be worked on. If not able you need to factor in these costs which would rack up serious costs.

When my TR was painted I dismantled the car to a rolling body chassis, stripped back to bare metal bonnet, boot, doors etc and back panel etc.

This was all picked up by the body shop and the dents removed, panels fitted up dress filling and then painted and polished.

I paid less than £3000.

Here is the result before final polishing.

Rgds

Rod

[stillp]

I dismantled the car to a rolling body chassis, stripped back to bare metal bonnet, boot, doors etc and back panel etc.

 

How many hours did that take?

 

Pete

[Waldi]

I think it is very easy to compare appels with pears.

So do not be too hard about other opinions.

The quality of the end result plays a role too.

I can have a car resprayed in Holland for around 1000 euros, but that would be for painting final coats only, nothing else, and just the outside, no sills or body.

The prepping is where the hrs go, we all know that.

 

Regards,

Waldi