[TR] Painting a car

[Randall]

> It seemed that the typical paint job with moderate
> bodywork was in the $4,000 - $5,000 dollar range. 

Well, that makes me feel better!

Since TS13571L is to be strictly a driver, never a show car, I took it to
the local Earl Scheib outlet.  With what I would call a moderate amount of
bodywork (including two rust repairs, welding six splits, replacing a
captive nut, filling an antenna hole, several larger dents, mounting the
rear fenders, installing chrome beads and spats); and several add-ons for
the paint job (painting doorjambs; painting underside of hood, trunk, spare
tire lid, vent lid; black racing stripe); and their next-to-highest quality
paint (several coats of integrated clear-coat, no color sanding), the
estimate was $2000.

After the bodyman got started, he pointed out another dozen or so places
that needed attention ... OK, so I assumed he was going to sand off all the
old primer and reskim it with filler but it turns out that is NOT what he
was doing ... they wanted another $700 to fix all the little spots.

Remains to be seen what I will get (yes, I fully expect to find the
trademark overspray on the exhaust <G>), but I remain hopeful.

They are supposed to be finishing off the bodywork today and shooting
tomorrow, so I'll try to visit tomorrow morning and see how it looks.

BTW, I could easily have done at least $1000 of that body work myself.  Kind
of wish I had, now.  OTOH, this way maybe I'll have a running TR3 by the
time the weather warms up next month.  That will be worth it.

Randall