Hey guys, Chris here again from my classicVWBugs.com and today’s tip; I want to talk to you about how to prepare your bug before you go to get it painted.
I notice a lot of guys, what they will do is they will actually send their bug off to get painted with everything still on it, the windows still in it, the seals are still in it, the interior is still in it, the fender beads, the chrome, the seals and white knot and I see at time and time again where I see a car just getting out of the paint booth and they are so happy that the car has just repainted and they think they had a great deal whatever, and a lot of times, if you are going for a paint job, that is under $2000 depending on how good the guy is at taping up his you know, the moldings, the seals, there is always going to be over spraying and that will actually add the cost of the paint job a lot of times because it is work for them to tape all these areas off. So what I do is before I dump my cars off to get painted, I take the windows out, I take the seals out, I take the fender beads out, all the chrome the moldings off if you could have paint the interior.
A lot of times you can get to change the color, I see this time and time again where the exterior of the car is painted and the interior is not and there are two different colors. I have sent the red bug with a white interior, there is a bug used to be white but they did not have enough money to spent, they had the interior done, please just do not even do that, I mean stick with the original color of the car, if by all means to keep your cost down. But again when I go back and I dump my car off to the paint guy, I will take the seats out, I take the upholstery off, I take the headlamp, take everything out. If you are planning on doing a refinishing, a ground up sort of cosmetic resto on your bug, take the fender beads out because this is suppose to be black. A lot of times you will see them, they are painted over the color of the car, the seals on the tail lights, same thing. I mean people will leave those on and what happens, they are painting them on and the seals are then painted, the red, the blue or the green or whatever the color of the bug is, take those off, they are suppose to be black. Also, the seals for the bumper brackets, the same thing.
The car should be completely gutted. You can pretty much gut a Volkswagen within a day’s time, I have done it before where you take all the seals off and rip everything out of the car. And it is also a good time to inspect and see if anything else is wrong with the car before you get it painted. Of course you know that bugs are rust, they rust a lot so a lot of times you take this seals off, you are going to find areas you did not see. That is the best way to do it and that is the best way to keep your cost down. Just giving them the shell, the paint booth the shell and so they do not have to tape anything off and they are just there to paint the car, that is going to keep your cost down and I have seen most of my paint jobs that come out, they come out much better, then you put the new seals on, the new beads on, the new chrome, the new interior, everything is overlapping correctly, nothing is over sprayed at all, that is the way to do it.
I know it takes sometime to maybe take the you know, you do not want to mess with anything but you know what, you can do it, you live and learn, that is just the way it is going to be so if anything worse case scenario, you know, just try it again, you know, it is not the end of the world. So, anyways, that is another tip for today, have it when to paint your Volkswagen or for any car in general. You want to make sure that you have got your car completely before you take it off to the paint booth and that is it so, anyways, that is another tip, Chris at classicVWBugs.com. Take care.
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