paint - advice please!

[Kevin Collins <kevinc@flashcom.net>]

I finally got off my ass today and got serious about getting my car painted.
I had to go by and see Ron Wood at VW Specialties to make an appointment for
suspension installation on my GTI, and I knew he had a buddy with a body
shop.. a very high-end shop that paints a lot of Porsches and charges TOP
dollar.  He recommended another guy who he thinks highly of that works a
lot cheaper - like $1500 - $2500 for a quality job, vs. $4k or so for
the Porsche dude.  So I went by and talked to the <cheaper> guy.  Here's 
where I need some advice..

He does work for the local VW dealer and has for years, so he's familiar
with our cars - cool.  He's also familiar with dealing with the body kits,
and says that they are virtually impossible to get off w/o damaging, then
hard to get back on right again too.  He advises leaving it on to do the
paint.  Couple of problems I see here - one, paint in the gaps between
plastic and body, which will then of course crack and look like shit,
also the issue of using a flex agent in the body kit paint, he wants
to spray the whole thing at once, so this would not be practical.  He
says that when the cars were new that nobody was even using flex agents
on plastic parts yet (sounds questionable?) and he thinks the thing is
hard enough to do ok without it.  Other than those things, he seemed
like he ran a quality operation and was cool to rap with about the 
whole thing.  And he didn't look down his nose at it, like the one
other German shop I took it to months back to discuss painting.

Any comments on this anybody will be most appreciated.. the bottom line is
that I want to get it done right - I mean show quality - and will pay
to get it a quality job.  But if I can get it done at $1k+ cheaper than
the ultra-anal place, naturally I'd rather do that.  If it takes $4k
to *really* do it right, so be it, I'll do it.  

Oh yeah - the other thing is that this guy is so busy, the soonest he
can start on it is a month from now, and that's not even definite - 
- paint-only work has to take a back seat to collision work.  And
I'd rather start sooner than later if possible.

Help Mr. Wizard!

--
Kevin Collins
'86.5 Scirocco 16V 2.0
'99 GTI GLX
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Factory/1780

--
Email problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org  To unsubscibe send
"unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org