Why Does Fitting And Painting A Bodykit Take So Long?

[Iron Mike]

I recently dropped my car off at a bodyshop to have a set of nismo skirts and spats fitted along with the z-tune front bar. When I was calling around for quotes, most shops told me that they'd need my car for at least 10 businss days (ie. 2 weeks including weekends). So my question is why does it take so damn long? I don't work in the auto panel/painting industry but it doesn't make any sense to me. If the workshop if full/busy then ok, just tell the customer to bring the car back in a few days when they can start work on the car immediately. The way I see it is, 1 day test fitting all parts, maybe 2 if theyre FRP replicas, 1 day prepping panels including priming, then 1 day painting, 1 day to set, and a final day to clear coat (perhaps an additional day for polishing??). That's 5-6 working days. Does anyone have some inside experience that can alleviate my impatience??

Edited November 30, 2012 by Iron Mike

[Iron Mike]

All of them also said something along the lines of "don't rush me if you want a good job", implying that a good job cant be done faster. Whats up with that?? Does, or can, it really take that long??

[xntrq]

It is true that it takes time. I don't deal with body works but recently I've been doing alot of spraying by myself and yes it takes a f**k load of time to get it done properly.

My process is:

- Masking

- Stripping existing paint

- Standing back to bare

- Spray at least 3 coats of primer (each coat needs to dry and cure properly and can take between 5 minutes to 6 hours depending on what kind of primer is used)

- Spray at least 3 coats of desired colour (as again, depending on either acrylic or enamel paint, it can vary between 30 minutes to 16 hours with enamel)

- Then paint has to be cured until it is hard, after the clear coat goes on again, minimum 3 coats as well.

- Then the clear has to cure over a few days to reach the maximum hardness so it doesn't dent or move if you bump it or scratch it

Spray painters may use a similar process or I may be overdoing it, but it is fair to say it takes more than a week to get something done. Given that spray painters won't be just dealing with one car, they have a production line and would be doing probably 10 cars at once. Currently I'm spraying my interior dash bits to a piano black and it has taken me a whole week and still going. Need to sand any imperfections back to flush and respray again and again to get the mirror finish.

You could just have them spray it for you and fit the body kit yourself to save some downtime on the car. It's not too hard to fit.

[Greekos]

2 weeks aint that long to do the work, body work cant be rushed if you want a good job, painting and fitting wont work unless they are factory parts that wont require mods to fit, i'v done a bit body work and painting on cars and truth is its an insane amount of work for not much money, dont forget they will be doing other cars at the same time so 2 weeks aint that long.

[mawzy]

A professional body shop wouldn't take anywhere near that time frame to actually do the work, keeping in mind they have spray booths and bake the items. When we sprayed my car through a friends buisness we were in at 7am, and done by 12. Takes 30min to bake, and we buffed it 3-4days later.

It'd be more about workloads, As a buisness you'd want to have work booked up for a good 2-4 weeks, if not longer, especially having a few workers. Ya don't make money having workers do nothing.

Another option in your case if the items are genuine parts is just dropping them off to paint without the car. Being genuine they won't need additional work to fit the parts. Or you could just line the parts up yourself. Skirts will be easy to check (just make sure you have them on the right sides of the car very similar both sides but definately only one correect fitment ) And with a bitta diy knowledge testing the front bumper isn't the hardest job. Imitation parts, depending on your experience, it would pay to have the final installers do the test fitting.

[trustr32]

It takes time because like you've said in your estimations each part of the process has to be done step by step. Having said that they wont have one person working on your car all day every day for 10 days they'll get someone to remove your original kit, test fit the new kit, make any alterations if they need to, send it to the painters to prep ready for priming, they'll have to sand it all down, fill in any pinholes if it's a fiberglass kit, wait for that to dry, sand them off, prime it, leave that for a day or two to dry, sand the peel out of the primer, give it a second sand (wet or dry rub depending on how they do things) to get it smooth enough for paint, match the colour, set it up in an oven, prepsol each part, tackrag then paint, each coat of basecoat takes 5-10 minutes to dry, if they're fussy they'll denib the basecoat before the last coat, then apply 2 coats of clearcoat (with flash off time in between), then they will need to leave it 2-3 days to set because you cant bake fiberglass and if you've ever handled freshly painted parts that haven't been baked they're soft as shit and scratch really easily, then the panelbeater will fit the car up once they're dry enough, then the painters will check the job over and denib any imperfections in the clearcoat and polish them, then the detailer will give the whole car a clean for you. They're also gonna allow themselves a day or two for any problems that may come up so they don't have to call you and say actually it's gonna take another few days.

As you can see there is a fair bit involved in the whole process and while yes there are some body shops that could get it done quicker/ cheaper if I had an R34 GTR id let them take all the time they need to get the job done right.

[r31slpr]

^^What this guy said is spot on..

10 days turn around is pretty quick for a panel shop too

[mad082]

as has been said, it's all about fitting the work into their schedule. if it was actually going to take 10 days to do the work, it would be costing you thousands of dollars in labour alone.

[1300]

I'm in the trade (painter) all I can say is it's almost christmas, everyone whats there car fixed.

[TM7GTR]

Lol you should go through the drama of fitting and spraying a wide body. Took 2 months

[Iron Mike]

Fair enough guys didnt

It takes time because like you've said in your estimations each part of the process has to be done step by step. Having said that they wont have one person working on your car all day every day for 10 days they'll get someone to remove your original kit, test fit the new kit, make any alterations if they need to, send it to the painters to prep ready for priming, they'll have to sand it all down, fill in any pinholes if it's a fiberglass kit, wait for that to dry, sand them off, prime it, leave that for a day or two to dry, sand the peel out of the primer, give it a second sand (wet or dry rub depending on how they do things) to get it smooth enough for paint, match the colour, set it up in an oven, prepsol each part, tackrag then paint, each coat of basecoat takes 5-10 minutes to dry, if they're fussy they'll denib the basecoat before the last coat, then apply 2 coats of clearcoat (with flash off time in between), then they will need to leave it 2-3 days to set because you cant bake fiberglass and if you've ever handled freshly painted parts that haven't been baked they're soft as shit and scratch really easily, then the panelbeater will fit the car up once they're dry enough, then the painters will check the job over and denib any imperfections in the clearcoat and polish them, then the detailer will give the whole car a clean for you. They're also gonna allow themselves a day or two for any problems that may come up so they don't have to call you and say actually it's gonna take another few days.

As you can see there is a fair bit involved in the whole process and while yes there are some body shops that could get it done quicker/ cheaper if I had an R34 GTR id let them take all the time they need to get the job done right.

Fair enough didn't realise that this much work was involved Out of curiosity, what sort of modification can be done to make an immitation fibreglass front bar that doesnt line up fit? In my humble knowledge, if something doesn't fit then it simply doesn't fit, but I've heard od people "spending hours" making them fit. What exactly can be done?

[mawzy]

Fair enough guys didnt

Fair enough didn't realise that this much work was involved Out of curiosity, what sort of modification can be done to make an immitation fibreglass front bar that doesnt line up fit? In my humble knowledge, if something doesn't fit then it simply doesn't fit, but I've heard od people "spending hours" making them fit. What exactly can be done?

Depending on what doesn't fit'line up it might be as simple as trimming exta material off, or cutting and reglassing sections together. One comment I will disagree with is baking fibreglass. Yes this can be done, and I'd assume most places would do this way, but yes it can cause issues, esp with cheaper stuff. Opening air pockets in the gelcoat that aren't seen before the bake.

[trustr32]

Depending on what doesn't fit'line up it might be as simple as trimming exta material off, or cutting and reglassing sections together. One comment I will disagree with is baking fibreglass. Yes this can be done, and I'd assume most places would do this way, but yes it can cause issues, esp with cheaper stuff. Opening air pockets in the gelcoat that aren't seen before the bake.

Yeah I shouldnt say it CAN'T be baked just not the best idea if the quality of the fiberglass isn't too good. Nothing is as dissapointing as leaving a freshly painted bumper in an oven and finding that airpockets have blown out cause you've baked it.

Fair enough guys didnt

Fair enough didn't realise that this much work was involved Out of curiosity, what sort of modification can be done to make an immitation fibreglass front bar that doesnt line up fit? In my humble knowledge, if something doesn't fit then it simply doesn't fit, but I've heard od people "spending hours" making them fit. What exactly can be done?

Depending on how bad it is you can trim extra material or add some if it's too low in area's or in some cases (like my little brothers front bumper) where it simply just doesn't fit I had to cut both sides just below the indicators almost all the way down and fit the bar to the car where it needed to go then glass it back together while it was on the car. Also removed two raised sections below the intercooler to give it a better look.

[sydking]

2 weeks haha, My cars been in the workshop for nearly 7 months now i think, Could actually be more.....And that's not even touching the body work......