Full Vehicle Paint, in detail

Two routes lead to a repaint and the price difference between them is enormous. Scuff and shoot means flatting the existing finish to a uniform mechanical key, sealing it, and spraying colour over a sound foundation. Strip means removing the existing coating entirely, chemically or mechanically, back to gelcoat, aluminium or primer, and rebuilding from there. Scuff covers most of the job on a body whose paint is intact and merely dull. Strip becomes unavoidable where the existing film has already started to let go.

Deciding takes an hour and a few test areas. Tape adhesion checks at seams and along the top of the sidewall where UV is worst. A wet sand patch, to see whether the surface flats to an even matt or gums and tears. A look under every fastener and at every panel edge, since film failure begins at edges. Sound paint across most of a body does not overrule one panel that lifts in a strip, so a mixed coach gets the failed areas stripped and the sound areas keyed, and that boundary is feathered rather than left as a step somebody will feel later.

Decal removal is the first physical operation and it is slower than owners believe. A twenty year old vinyl set has hardened, lost its plasticiser and bonded itself to the clear underneath. Heat brings it back far enough to peel, and the working window is narrow: too cool and the film shatters into confetti that has to come off in fragments, too hot and you scorch gelcoat or distort a Filon skin. Then the adhesive remains, and adhesive comes off with solvent, an eraser wheel, or both.

What sits under the decal is the surprise. Vinyl is a very effective UV mask, so paint it covered is often close to original while everything around it has faded. Peel a swoop off a white coach and a visible ghost of the graphic is left behind, sometimes with a raised edge you can feel with a fingertip. That ghost has to be flatted level rather than sealed over, or the new finish shows the outline of the old scheme in raking light. Owners who repaint specifically to delete a dated graphic scheme are paying mostly for this step.

Chalked gelcoat is not dirt and it does not wash off. Ultraviolet breaks the resin at the surface and leaves loose pigment in a porous, powdery layer that no primer will bond to. It has to be cut off. That is a wet sanding operation across the entire body, working through grades until the surface is uniform, closed and matt, and it accounts for a large share of the labour hours on a coach that has spent its life parked outdoors in Southern California.

Two limits govern the work. Gelcoat has finite thickness, and on a coach polished aggressively for years there may be very little left over the laminate. Cut through and you are into the laminate itself, which then needs a filler and primer build rather than a simple seal. Thickness gets checked in the areas that get polished most, the front cap and the upper sidewall, before anything is committed. Where gelcoat is already thin we build with primer rather than sand further, and that decision goes in writing on the estimate.

Masking dominates the calendar on a repaint far more than spraying does. A Class A carries a patio awning and often two or three window awnings, a rooftop with air conditioner shrouds, vents, a satellite dome and a plumbing stack, running lights, mirrors, rub rail, compartment doors, a ladder, and a windshield with a moulded surround. Anything that can come off, comes off, because paint sprayed up to the edge of a masked part leaves a hard line that appears the first time that part is removed.

What stays on gets masked in stages, and the order matters. Glass and lamps go last so the mask is not walked into during sanding. Awning fabric comes off rather than getting wrapped, since solvent through a mask ruins Carefree or Dometic fabric, and a rolled awning sealed in plastic for a week in a warm booth marks. Tires get covered against overspray and against heat during the bake.

• Awnings, mirrors, lamps, badges and rub rail removed rather than masked around
• Rooftop shrouds, vents and the satellite dome unbolted so their edges get painted
• Compartment doors sprayed off the vehicle so jambs and returns are covered
• Fabric removed, never wrapped, because solvent and booth heat both mark it

A slide out turns one paint job into several, and a repaint that ignores this is the commonest way an expensive job ends up looking wrong. The slide face is the panel you see with the coach closed, and most owners assume it is the whole story. Slide box sides, the top, and the trim sealing against the sidewall are visible whenever the room is out, which is most of the time the coach is actually being used. Painting only the face gives you a vehicle that looks correct on the driveway and shows faded original panels the moment you set up.

Sequencing is therefore mechanical. Rooms come out, boxes and the sidewall behind them get prepped and sprayed, seals get replaced rather than painted around, then rooms come in and the closed faces get finished. Wiper and bulb seals are consumables at this point, and replacing them while the room is out costs a fraction of the same job later. Coaches on a Schwintek in wall drive get their rails inspected at the same time, since nothing else in the life of the coach exposes them this cleanly.

Plainly: a carrier pays to restore a vehicle to its pre loss condition, and pre loss condition on a fifteen year old coach includes faded, chalked paint. A repaint improves the vehicle beyond that state, so a full repaint is normally customer pay even when a collision started the conversation. Where a claim does fund large refinish areas, it funds them because damage genuinely spans them, not because the coach would look nicer all one colour.

Two honest exceptions exist. Where a covered event damaged the coating itself across a wide area, hail across a roof and upper sidewall, or a chemical or fire event, refinish area follows the damage and can be very large. And where a repair area cannot be blended invisibly without extending into adjacent panels, those panels are legitimately part of the repair. We write refinish area to what the repair needs, photograph the reason, and let the adjuster read the file. Betterment belongs in that conversation rather than at pickup.

The last quarter of a repaint looks, from outside, like nothing is happening. Clear needs its bake and then its cross link time before anything is torqued into it or sealed against it. Bolting rub rail into fresh clear dimples it. Setting a window into a surface that has not gassed off gives a bond that lets go later. Applying a coating or a graphic too early traps solvent under film.

Reassembly then runs in reverse order of teardown, with new butyl at every window and compartment frame, new slide seals, and a water test before the vehicle is released. At the upper end of the band expect the job to occupy the shop for weeks rather than days, and expect the final week to be reassembly, water test and correction of whatever the daylight walk shows. Look at it outside, in daylight, not under shop lights, before you sign anything.