Does anybody know a good place in Southern California to get a set of Wings West ground effects painted? I got a quote from Wings West and they want $425 for prep and paint and then another $100 if they do installation. I'll probably do the installation myself, but I would like a good shop to paint them. If it turns out that Wings West does quality work and the price is about normal, I'll probably do that. That just seems like an awful lot of money for painting 4 pieces of urethane.

 

Oh, I'm in Orange County, forgot to specify where in Southern California! hehehe

 

$100. seems to be very cheap to paint and install groundeffects. We usually order the Wings West kits painted and charge about $100. to install everything.

Tom

 

He didnt say that, he said it would cost 425$ PLUS 100$ to install it.

 

Yeah, it's $425 to paint, $100 to install from Wings West. I actually bought the ground effects from you Tom and picked them up from Wings West directly. They've been sitting on my balcony for the last 7 or 8 months. Finally looking to get them painted now and paint and installation costs more than the parts cost!!

 

3-400 is the going rate to prep and paint a ground effects kit.

Paint and bodywork is expensive, unfortunately.

 

I would seriously paint it myself
just get some good primer and pain and a good paint gun... it shouldnt be hard at all

 

i think i paid around 500 bucks for the paint and install and the guy does really awesome work so i didnt complain at all.

 

How much would it be to buy all of the materials and how hard would it be to paint it? I got quoted 385 and 440 just to get it painted and this seems like a lot more than I expected/can afford. I wish i would have known this before I bought this thing. The man at one of the body shops pointed out that i would have to get some flex additive because the pieces flex a little bit.

 

From what I understand after calling around to several paint shops there is extra prep work that goes into painting urethane. Paint shops will put flex additive on any plastic part for a car, so that will be on pretty much regardless. There are two ways they can put the flex additive on though.. they can spray the part with it, then paint the part or they can mix the flex additive in with the paint which is what the factory does when painting our cars. These pieces are going to be flexing a LOT... especially during installation. I guess there is a special paint that they use for painting urethane, it's slightly rubberized which in combination with the flex additive allows the paint to bend with the part. Standard paint will crack and peel over time due to flexing, something hitting the part (shopping cart, rock, etc), vibrations or bad prep. I'm not sure about painting the part myself... the paint is pretty damn expensive. You also can't run down to the auto parts store and buy the stuff (to the best of my knowledge). Wings West said it was $425 to paint, but they also said they aren't making money off of it... the price includes labor charges, but if that's true it costs a lot to actually do this stuff. Every other paint shop I've talked to said they don't have good luck with urethane. They said it WILL crack over time so they don't warranty the work. I think this is as a result of incorrect prep or paint. Probably as a result of a body shop that doesn't work with urethane very often. The people that do work with the urethane and warranty the work charge in the $400-500 range (assumed from 3 different quotes), the people without warranty's or much urethane work charge in the ballpark of $200-$250.