Paint Job

[Skillet]

The peeling clearcoat and condition of the paint on my rig has been bothering me since I got it. But it's been one of those projects that because of the expense, I've had to shelve it to the back burner. A standard rv painter wants over $10k to do it. On the Yahoo forum a guy found someone in Indiana who did a great job and I contacted him. He quoted me $6200 based on several pics I sent him. I was planning on going with him until someone told me about a local shop that does cars and trucks. Based on 1 pic he quoted me $4200. I might drive over there tomorrow for a hard estimate. If it still holds to that price range, I might get this done much sooner than later.

[1998chinook]

Keep us posted on your decision. I'd like to do the same over the next couple years.

[Skillet]

I will. I decided to wait until next Thursday or Friday because of work and other things going on. We've been emailing back and forth and said he even has a designer for anything I want to do on the sides of it. Great price, responsive, and local, so I can't beat that.

[Blue~Go]

Will be fun to see what you find out, and ultimately do.

[HoosierB]

Having mine done now. Full roof "peel & seal", plus a base coat/clear coat paint job with new graphics. Got two quotes from the best RV shops in Elkhart, IN... $11,000 and $6500. The shop offering the $6k paint job looked more professional and cleaner. They're very busy, doing most of the country's insurance repair work for larger motorhomes. I'll try to update later.

[rmasontaylor]

Subscribed..was just about to post on this topic would love to see some pics.

[Skillet]

I'm waiting on verification on what we spoke about last week, but here's what I was told:

Repaint the roof
Fix cracks, etc in the fiberglass all over
Using existing strip pattern, repaint to a color scheme I want (thin blue line since I'm a cop)
I'm keeping the white body so all sides sanded/buffed to get rid of oxidation and the clear-coated

$3500 and will have it back within 2 weeks. 1/2 down and 1/2 on pickup.

It sounds cheap enough to me, but I have no clue since I'm not getting the tub repainted. Just the stripes and roof. I've seen the work he's done on custom cars and it's good. If someone thinks it's too much or something, please let me know. I'm not committed at this point.

[rmasontaylor]

If the place is able to produce some good work, I don't think their price is all that bad. I haven't considered just repainting the graphics but after going outside and checking; my tub is actually fine, it's actually the clear coat on the graphics that's bothering me. Don't know about you but i'll probably let the letterings "CHINOOK" go and paint over it but to each his own. Thanks for sharing and can't wait to see the results.

[Blue~Go]

Just a couple of things stood out to me (from fiberglass boat/gelcoat/painting background). Maybe they are just misunderstandings of terms or whatever though.

Repaint the roof

Unless your roof has already been modified, it's not painted at all (so you'd be "painting", not "re-painting"). That said, painting with a two part paint is something that is done to deal with chalking and the subsequent white streaks that can run down the side, so I'm not saying painting is a bad thing. Just that "repaint" caught my eye since all Chinooks came with a gelcoated roof (gelcoat being a shiny molded outside layer of polyester resin -- it's molded in as part of the initial layup).

I'm keeping the white body so all sides sanded/buffed to get rid of oxidation and the clear-coated

I get the concept of keeping the white gelcoat. And I myself would sand/compound/buff/wax as a part of re-conditioning and maintaining it. But I have never heard of clearcoating gelcoat. That's like painting it, essentially, which.... well, then there would be no reason to buff/compound/get rid of oxidation, because then you'd normally be sanding it all down and painting it with a shiny two-part colored paint, such as Awlgrip or similar. I'd want to know more about that, as it sounds sort of odd (in my experience anyway; maybe things have changed in the past few years).

I'm not saying this is not top notch work; just that I'd want to clarify those points if it were me, to make sure about what was going to happen.

[1998chinook]

BG, how did you get so friggen' smart. Your depth and broad knowledge is amazing. Thanks for you consistent contribution.