bus painting

[chev49]

I repaing heavy equipment, have painted hundreds of bobcats, etc, and have painted 8 coaches. andyg was right when he stated that you can go to the farm stores or equipment dealers and sometimes the paint is a lot cheaper, but it's a premix of course. Last coach i painted i used industrial enamel which was cheap, had it blended to right color, and clear coated it. That was 8 yrs ago and it still looks very good.

I would be interested in finding out which companies sell the full graphic wraps. I assume the instillation would be about the same as the huge decals on some of the larger equipment... has to be done exactly right ... mostly because they are expensive...not to mention refinishing the paint if you screw one up...

[Jeremy]

I would be interested in finding out which companies sell the full graphic wraps. I assume the instillation would be about the same as the huge decals on some of the larger equipment... has to be done exactly right ... mostly because they are expensive...not to mention refinishing the paint if you screw one up...

I've had full-colour graphics printed on adhesive vinyl several times - there's plenty of places that have the large-format printers to do it nowadays, and it's not particularly expensive. The difficulty is not the printing as such, but creating the source artwork for the design you want printed. Theoretically it's no different to producing artwork for (say) regular printed leaflets, which you can do on any PC with Photoshop or whatever. But things get much more tricky when the artwork is to be blown-up to very large sizes - as you can imagine this really means that all the source artwork needs to be in vector format for a start, and also I think just the planning how everything is going to work and how all the panels are going to line-up etc would become very difficult.

I haven't made any decisions about my bus yet, but if I wanted vinyl graphics I would probably plan a graphic scheme that could be done with cut vinyl (ie. solid colours) combined with discrete area of printed vinyl (ie. full colour), with the printed bits being done at the same vinyl poster / exhibition-stand printing place I have used before. With this approach and some intelligent planning I think you could have a very impressive - and very expensive-looking - 'all over' graphic scheme. But a true 'all over' scheme - where the whole bus is covered in printed panels, which all join together precisely so the design continues across all of them - should probably be left to the professional vehicle wrappers, with their expertise and specialist software.

Jeremy

[BRUISER]

as for quality paint versus not.. that is very true.

I am in the middle of painting my bus.. I have only painted the back of bus with solid black and the paint alone just for that area is $200.. I still need to paint the front and the sides.. so if you use a good quality painter they will have over $1000 in paint and if you do more then one color the paint cost will probably go up and the prep time will also.. there is a lot of taping involved when doing more then one color

took me 2 days of sanding to get the rear ready for paint, and about 1hr just in taping it off.

here is the back

before


after

[Skykingrob]

I just had my coach painted by the Chrome Mofia shop in Joplin, MO. The paint alone for 6 colors was $2200. The labor to do the prep, painting, etc was another $15K. The coach looks very nice but not outstanding. Joe, the shop manager said , if "you want manufacture quality, I get $25K". I didn't pony up for $25K. The paint he got was all Dupont, custom mixed in O'Reilly's shop there in Joplin, so not some high powered paint store. All the paint is metal flake as well. I had the design already planned and designed by my son on autocad software so there was no expense for that. I had already picked out all the colors from looking at paint swatches online and getting car/pickup brochures from local dealers. I had gotten a quote from Xtreme of $17-25K, so I didn't see the need to drive all the way there when I was 1 hour away from the Mafia shop.

Rob
91 Prevost LeMirage XL40
Missouri

[luvrbus]

I saw a few paint jobs from Marathons Prevost paint dept for 50 grand I thought 8 grand would have been a good price lol

[Sebulba]

Is there a chance you could put a pic up so we can see the paint job?

Thanks

Sab

I just had my coach painted by the Chrome Mofia shop in Joplin, MO. The paint alone for 6 colors was $2200. The labor to do the prep, painting, etc was another $15K. The coach looks very nice but not outstanding. Joe, the shop manager said , if "you want manufacture quality, I get $25K". I didn't pony up for $25K. The paint he got was all Dupont, custom mixed in O'Reilly's shop there in Joplin, so not some high powered paint store. All the paint is metal flake as well. I had the design already planned and designed by my son on autocad software so there was no expense for that. I had already picked out all the colors from looking at paint swatches online and getting car/pickup brochures from local dealers. I had gotten a quote from Xtreme of $17-25K, so I didn't see the need to drive all the way there when I was 1 hour away from the Mafia shop.

Rob
91 Prevost LeMirage XL40
Missouri

[eagle19952]

Is there a chance you could put a pic up so we can see the paint job?

Thanks

Sab

Post is 8 years old.