PAINT

I’m scarred for life when it comes to the paint. After much deliberation I thought I’d commissioned one of the best painters in the country to paint my 57. Despite my unswerving patience and diplomacy, three re-negotiations on price, multiple promises of completion dates he persistently failed to do anything to time frames and agreed budgets. Thinking back he only phoned me twice in all the time he had the car. In the end I cut my losses, went up there with a trailer and a couple of mates and took him by surprise and got my car back unfinished. All in all a painfull experience I’ve only just touched on here. Having owned classic cars over 25 years I though I could weed out the bad guys but clearly not, time to move on. If it is of any help to others to avoid making the same mistake I made his name is Ashley J Markham from Doncaster. Beware.

Another body shop kindly took it on at very short notice which was good of them. They put paint on the rest of the car but failed to know how to get a panel straight and also didn’t appear to know how to flat and polish a car properly so I did it myself.

I finally found a paint shop to finish the front end properly. I wish I’d found these guy’s earlier as they were only a couple of miles down the road in Hornsey N8. In my experience Vale Cottage Motors have been the only people that have done exactly what they said they would do to a very high standard, excellent work and a family owned business. Their spray booth isn’t big enough to take a complete 57 but if you have a smaller car or just panels to paint I highly recommend them.

Body only painted at this stage, at the time of this photograph I was guaranteed that the car would be finished within 2 months, not surprisingly it wasn’t.

More of the car now painted at the second paint shop and on its way home.

Finally home after SIX years!

I set about flatting the paint with 2000 wet and dry, what a tedious job.

Buffed up a treat, happier days…

I’ve since managed to put a couple of scratches in this whilst putting the glass in.

The finish on the dash was rubbish so that needed doing again.

All the bolt on red stuff took ages, especially restoring the steering wheel which took about 4 days. Picked a hot sunny day to do these but had a job of keeping the wasps away.

More of the car now painted at the second paint shop and on its way home.