Questions about painting exterior

[Chris J]

We are in the process of purchasing a '77 beachcomber. The interior has been mostly fixed up but the exterior is pretty sad looking. The front bottom 1/3 was damaged by kicked up gravel and repaired long ago. The repair is solid but pretty rough. The paint is peeling in a couple of spots (I don't believe fiberglass peels so this means it was repainted at some time, right?), the window caulk is dirty and looks a little dried out but no cracks and where the two halves of the shell come together, the gasket rubber is old, dried out and some of it is missing. The camper is currently white but where the paint peeled I can see darker tan/brown.

We had a auto-body shop look at it. They said the fiberglass looks solid all over with no weak spots and gave an estimate of 2K to make it pretty once again: sand/fix up the old rough repair, remove and replace the old caulk and gaskets and finally sand, prime and repaint the exterior (probably two toned: green on bottom, white on top).

Are there any cautions or comments about having an auto-body shop do this work? Does $2K sound reasonable? I'm worried about the paint job and it's durability. And I'm also wondering about if we need to do any repairs or modifications and have to try and match colors.

As well I'm thinking about the front where it's likely to be hit and damaged once again by gravel kicked up from the road. Would it make sense to have some other kind of product applied there? I'm worried that we'll get that part fixed just for it to be messed up again.

I will asked the guy at the auto-body shop but I thought it would be helpful to get advice & guidance from all you experienced folks here.

Thanks a million,
Chris

[Kevin K]

Read this information http://www.fiberglassrv.com/board/index.ph...amp;hl=poliglow VERY GOOD STUFF

[Ron N]

Chris,

I am in the process of trying to get two areas of my 2007 Bigfoot repaired under warranty. There is spider cracking occuring around the front and rear awning mounts. Spider cracking, as described by the body shop where I got the repair estimate, only affects the gel coat layer, not the fiberglass. Often, during trailer construction, a builder will hit the shell from the inside of the trailer and cracking on the outside will later occur. Sometimes a builder will run a screw in too far while attaching an interior cabinet and that will be the cause a stress crack that doesn't show up right away. Anyway, the repair consists of removing the awning completely, sanding out the gel coat to the depth of the cracks, re-applying the gel coat, painting. The estimate was $2,325.00 (West coast dollars). To give you an idea of how long the cracks are...the rear one is about two inches long and one of the five "spider" arms in the front is about three inches long. You can see, those are not large areas to repair and yet the estimate is still above $2,000.00. From the sounds of the amount of work you need done, your estimate sounds very reasonable.

Ron

[steven jones]

my trailer is also in rough exterior shape as well...
i this the estimate sounds about right for the work they will do...
you might be able get the painter to get you some of your paint in spray cans to touch up anything later...
when i paint my trailer, i'mna paint the front lower corner with a truck bedliner material to protect it...
--- steven