Bottom left of my 308….[ATTACH]
Sending a 45 years + old Italian (Or English) vintage car to a paint shop for a full quality repaint is in nine out of ten times asking for serious troubles. Painters are painters and not mechanics. The quote they give is often way below the actual price it cost to do a high quality re-assemble job on a sub quality car. That's why the car is returned with quick fixes and bad craftsmanship's and that's why nearly no paint shops are taking in vintage cars from privates for re-paint - They can't earn their money, and it often ends with jobs that's dragging out for ever and non-satisfied customers. A Ferrari of that era is a nice engine dumped into a perfect aesthetic designed chassis. The assemble quality and assemble methods are questionable at best and requires really detailed, time consuming and competent re-assemble work (Ask Newman). If one don't want to invest what it cost to have the car dismantled at a proper mechanical shop (Do you due diligence!), painted at the paint shop and re-assembled in the mechanical shop, then I would recommend either not to paint the car or to paint it without dismantling it (Wrap maybe?) and save the money until they can afford to do it right. The other alternative is to do the mechanical part of a paint job yourself. It's highly recommended if you master it and it's very rewarding. Also you can only blame yourself if something goes wrong The 308 is increasing in value and deserves properly executed maintenance / repair work. Best, Peter
yeah I get it. You get what you pay for. And if I had lots of money to spend, I might send it back to maranello and have Classiche just do it. But, alas, I don’t . as I stated early on, I am very happy with the quality of the paint. And in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really mind going back through and bringing it back up to snuff. Would I have appreciated a call when they ran into something that was questionable? Absolutely. That would have avoided me re doing a lot of what they did with the doors. The point of this thread was to let people know that there are some talented paint shops out there but to be fore warned about the ability of some of these shops really knowing the ins and outs of a 45 year old hand built car. And when they have the car for so long, it’s difficult to know when they might be in the middle of something that would require a little more attention from the owner to help “guide” them. I contemplated having the car painted at a well known local Ferrari shop, but they proved to me over the years, after bringing some smaller maintenance jobs to them, that I couldn’t trust them to know what the hell they were doing either. Their cost was quoted at over double what I paid but based on my experience, I am sure I would have had more problems with them than I had with my local paint shop. JMHO YMMV here is a pic from this weekend at our local car show. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Mine was the only Ferrari, so it got lots of questions and positive comments. I’m sure if I was at a Ferrari event, I probably would have lots of people rolling their eyes about my 328 wheels and non-original desert red powder coat on my valve covers or my Alacntara dash, or QA-1s, or electromotive…. well you get the idea. yes I believe there are not many of these around anymore and we need to take care of them, and while some People love the NCRS level of anal retentiveness about things, I treat mine more like a gentlemen racer from back in the 60s. If it makes it better, or faster or more user friendly or reliable, put it on.
Which is why I'm not too excited about Ferrari Events. Like you, I'm perfectly happy building my own personal "1 of 1". Beautiful car btw....I think you got a great result at what sounds like a helluva price. - Dave
