Painting…

Painting due to accident…April 2019

Here’s a link to my blog article with many pictures of the accident damage plus instructions on how to remove this basement door: Body Work…

And here’s how the basement door looked prior to replacing it with a painted salvage door. I drove with it like this from Aug. 2018 until Apr. 2019. It was not damaged badly enough to prevent it from opening or closing tightly so that was good. The latches still worked and I was able to harvest the lock assembly and handle from the bent surround to put in the new door. That way I could use the same basement lock key on the new door…

It was damaged enough that it didn’t look very good and it was bent. You can see from the picture it wasn’t very attractive, not something I wanted to drive around with. I had a choice to either have it worked on by a body shop or just order a replacement door from a salvage yard. I chose the salvage yard after talking to a couple body shops about it.

The door I bought is a salvage yard item and cost me $825 of which $125 was shipping. It came ready to install with the appropriate hinges and the gas strut, including that black grillwork that attached to the water heater door there in the middle that was damaged on mine. Then it cost another $102 for paint, and finally, $200 for the paint job that I got done when I went to Yuma. At the RV park I stayed at in Yuma, it’s only 5 miles to the Mexican border and there’s a town there full of dentists and drug stores and also a body shop. When I received the door from the salvage yard it was the wrong color, blue, so I needed to get it painted to match the RV. When I got it I was up in Pahrump and I stored it behind the living room couch so it wouldn’t get damaged. Transferred it to the back seat of the car and drove over to Mexico, where they painted it nice and pretty with the paint I bought at a automotive paint shop in Yuma. The paint shop had to match it by eye since the color and the metal flakes were proprietary so I had to drive the RV up to their shop. Kind of a hassle.

It took several trips to the paint shop and to Mexico to get everything sorted out but it was fun hanging around Mexico so I don’t regret it one bit. All together it came to $1127 for the entire job..that is buying the salvage door, and having it repainted. I’d gotten $4830 insurance payment but now I know that if I had every door fixed in the US that that might have been short a couple thousand. I know that for a fact because I had a US shop quote just painting the one door and they wanted $1000. The other basement doors weren’t in as bad of shape though but they gave me another quote later that was again $1,000 per door. Of course I did all the work removing and reinstalling the door myself so saved some labor costs. I would have come down to Yuma anyway even if I’d not gotten the door painted so the expenses for that are not part of the overall cost.

I did my best to protect the freshly painted door with cardboard and cushioning material and put it behind the couch again. Then I carried it in my RV behind the couch for 2-3 weeks before I did the installation and Kwan the Kat hated it there because it interfered with her access to her favorite corner behind the couch when she is hiding. Which she does whenever the engine is running. And here’s how the repainted door looked when I finally got ’round2it. I’m sorry now that I didn’t get any before pictures of the salvage basement door before painting as the colors were rather bold, but, well, can’t always get everything done right I guess. Looked pretty darn good after painting.

Looks even better when compared to the damaged one it replaced. Pretty close match to the RV paint color. I’m going to need to get the RV washed and waxed to match the new door.

So now that the basement door is all installed and painted, I’ll wait until I make another trip to Mexico to have the long scratch repainted.

Trip to Mazatlan…February to March 2020

Haven’t been to Maz in a few years but it is one of my favorite cities here in Mexico. So within a couple days of arriving I asked the owner to call his favorite painter guy. And when he showed up, I pointed out the long scratch on the passenger side and a few minor scratches and asked for a quote: $6,000 pesos was the quote and at that time was around $324 US. Not bad. So instead of $4,000 up in the US, only $324 here in Mexico. Good. In fact good enough that I agreed to the price for the job. And the day after that, he set up and went to work.

See the scratch? It’s both in the middle of the doors and another scratch down near the bottom. And there’s a slight indentation in the metal too. Goes all the way from the front to the rear. And that’s what I’m having worked on in Mexico.

And there’s some damage on the rear part of the body. At least the nice louvered grill pieces weren’t damaged. The plastic vortex device will need to be replaced but I have spares so not a problem. Now I could have just lived with it…really don’t think a new buyer would have a problem with it if I sell it, but I just didn’t like the looks of it. It’s a cosmetic thing only, but I wanted it repainted.

So that’s what I got the quote on. Could I have haggled the price? You bet. But come on, these guys have families to support and I’m saving $3676 US so really no need to be greedy. They do the painting at your site, no need to drive to a shop. They’re experts at this and when I’ve had painting done down in Mexico I’ve never seen any over spray even though there’s always wind.

Anyway, here’s some shots of them doing the work:

And after it was all painted, look how shiny! I have no idea how they do that. And no more scratch! Yea!

March 2020 – More painting in Mazatlan…

I liked the work these guys did for that scratch and the excellent pricing so a couple days after they finished, I called them back for more paint. And this time, I had them quote removing the vinyl swooshes and paint where they used to be. The red vinyl was starting to show it’s age. Plus I wanted them to do the mirrors and the wipers. New black paint always brightens them up. So the quote was for another $305 US or $6000 pesos. It’s lower US this time because the peso dropped compared to the USD early this week. So I’m saving $20.

This is an example of the red vinyl showing how it’s faded and started to crack. There are several places around the RV where this is happening. Most of the other vinyl stick on things are still in good condition. There were several scratches too as this is the lower section of the side walls.

.The first thing they do is peel the red vinyl off, starting it by using a painters razor. Once started, it often comes off in long strips, saving time. Then they use some fine sandpaper to buff the surface so it’ll hold paint, then wipe it down with a clean cloth to remove fiberglass dust.
Meanwhile, the other worker is taping up the mirrors, and the door handle. That takes quite a bit of time and hand work. I can see why he quoted $5500 pesos for the mirrors and door handle alone. Then when I added the wiper assemblies, we agreed on $500 pesos more. So $6000 pesos. It might seem like a lot for such a trivial job, but check out the coverings below. The mirrors especially take a lot of tape up…all those nooks and crannies. What I’ve done in the past is just smear the mirrors with Vaseline and then spray paint everywhere…but my jobs never looked as good as when these guys finished.

  Meanwhile, on the drivers side of the RV…
You can see in the above pictures where they scraped the old vinyl off with an old fashioned razor blade painters use then used a narrow tape for the fine edges, then the blue painters tape to finish off the masking, finally adding some newsprint covering. Once the vinyl is scraped off, it’s obvious where the masking tape needs to go because the paint underneath looks brighter then the weathered paint around it.

There was some pretty steady wind during the entire job so they had to do extra covering, but since the wind wasn’t swirling and not picking up dust, they were able to paint. This painter uses a spray gun for the course work and one of those tiny airbrush devices for fine finish work. The painting itself doesn’t take long, it’s the prep that takes all the time. And then after the paint has dried, all the tear off of the covers. Up in the US, it’s the hourly rate that makes it so damned expensive. Down here, not so much.

And here’s how it looked…

Looks like new. I’m pleased.