Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello all, my plus 2 had been stripped but not to a very high standard. I wondered if anyone knew how much it would cost to get it professionally stripped, cleaned, repaired and then undercoated? I had thought of boss motors but I would imagine they are very expensive!
Any advice would be gratefully received.
Best regards, Peter

Hi Peter

I would have thought it wouldn't be much less than a full respray as the work (and thus money) is all in the preparation. A good quality respray from a reputable paint shop like Option One would run you about ?10k. That is supposedly the very best, of course.

Just be careful who you chose. And the car must not be painted and put in a "low bake" oven to set the paint as the fibreglass body can start melting and sagging (so I read). Air dry only at room temperature (but still in the paint booth to keep dust away).

There are wiser heads than mine who will be along shortly...

Jon, I value your comment. I think it is a very good insight into the sheer quantity of money I need compared to what I budgeted. I think the best think I can do is ask the painter who will shortly be doing our Elan 26R replica. They are very good but slightly less than A1 (thank God).
Best regards, Peter

Peter, the cost is nearly all in the manhours for the prep. Once you?re into top coats then I think it won?t be much more different than a regular paint job.

Ok, thank you Richard.
Best regards, Peter

To remove the (two coats) of paint (dry sanding) and repair the bodywork ready to go to the paint shop took me 350 hours of hard toil. The only enjoyable bit was the glassing.





It's costing me ?3500 for a respray

Ok, thank you for the advice, I'll probably have to do it myself.
Best regards, Peter

My car was painted by a pal from work ? our business was collision repair estimating. He did a top notch job at his house so no overhead markup.

It was original factory paint to start and we repainted in Carnival Red using DuPont Imron.

However, it was still $3000 for the prep and $1500 for the paint and materials. Twenty years ago!

Mike in SoCal

When tou say prep Mike do you mean take it back to gell coat?

Bits wrote:To remove the (two coats) of paint (dry sanding) and repair the bodywork ready to go to the paint shop took me 350 hours of hard toil. The only enjoyable bit was the glassing.

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It's costing me ?3500 for a respray

Of the 350, what do you estimate was stripping and what was down to repairs?

prep starts with estimating the ENTIRE job: the (visibles) are doors, bonnet and boot PLUS how "true" is the body-work (all perfect surfaces; inaccuracies, dents and all of the "spiders" need real investigation (down to the roots!) - even small areas need proper sanding, maybe grinding, and laminating (as dry as possible) - once the body is ready for paint (surfacer and paintjob) you can call your preps finished: 20 - 200 hrs! (uncrashed!!) sandy

Well thank you very much everyone who has helped. Starting to worry me now as I don't really have the funds to do it at the moment We will just have to see what 2020...
Best regards, Peter

300 paint/bodged repair strip,
50 proper glass repairs.





All good fun.

Elan Peter wrote:Well thank you very much everyone who has helped. Starting to worry me now as I don't really have the funds to do it at the moment We will just have to see what 2020...
Best regards, Peter

If I were you I'd get some wet & dry and get sanding, assuming you have the time. Sand it dry by hand. You'll soon find out if the body is nasty or nice. Having read the book by Miles Wilkins (sadly out of print, and changing hands for big money, inexplicably), it doesn't look all that hard to repair and prepare a fibreglass body for the paint shop, just time consuming. There are quite a few videos on YouToooob that show how it is done. You might consider building a rotisserie to mount the body to; then you can have unfettered access to every nook and cranny.

In case you don't know, this is a frame the body is mounted on that rotates along the longitudinal axis of the body like a rotisserie. Like this: viewtopic.php?t=32173&p=215655

Just had my TVR Griffith repaired and a full respray by Option1. A very good job but Frank said the car had been in the oven 5 or 6 times during the process. [maybe a very low temp. bake]