We’ve been preparing and repairing McLaren bodywork for near 10 years however its not something we really marketed as for the most part paint defects were fully covered by McLaren for 10 years so if and when we saw issues we simply referred owners to their local dealer for the matter to be rectified under warranty.
However all that changed 2 years ago when McLaren announced that paintwork ‘corrosion’ issues are only covered for 5 years and not the previously understood 10 years. Now we aren’t going to go into the legal and moral arguments as to this change needless to say it suddenly meant that owners were now expected to cover the costs of bubbling paint so we released our paint operation accordingly.
We’ve already done a series of videos on our Youtube channel as regards the cause of the bubbling paint so wont go into it in too much detail here but the issue is different depending on the panel itself. For aluminium the issue is one of the primer reacting with the bare metal, reacting and then causing the paint above to blister therefore any repaint will simply mask the issue as it comes back so the repair is to rub down to bare metal and re-prepare, re-prime and re-paint.
For the composite panels the issue is inside the panel itself where vapour expansion inside the laminate causes simple blistering above so again the panel needs rubbing down to bare material and repreparing, reapplication of primer and then paint. Replacing the panel is a waste of time if you don’t rub down to the bare material as that is where the issue is, that’s why so many people have repeated instances for panels that have previously been replaced. Repair it, its not that hard.
Since then its fair to say we have been somewhat over whelmed with the amount of paint rectification work we are undertaking, we have just completed our 38th car so we thought we would spend a little time promoting what we do which covers everything from localised repair to complete car resprays and what better way to show off the work than to paint our own 570 GT4R.
Now there are two ways to respray an entire car; the right way and the cheap way. The cheap way is to mask everything off, blow over with paint, unmask it, polish it and send it on. The right way is to disassemble the entire car, remove every single item that can be removed so you’re left with the bare tub and subframes and then mask up and paint. As you can imagine we only do it the right way, which does mean its significant amounts of labour, a complete respray takes 6 weeks minimum.
As regards paint, much has been said about McLaren refusing to release the paint to anyone but dealers as I type this this its still the case, dealers still wont sell it to anyone (unlawfully) but the paint trade isn’t one to get pushed about so all the paint codes are readily available and with the proper skill and experience all McLaren paints can be created Worldwide. It would be easier of course if we could just buy the paint from McLaren but that’s the World McLaren like us to live so we do what we need to do. The good news is that with skill and experience McLaren paint is available.
So knowing we can get McLaren paint why did we chose Porsche Viper Green as the colour for our 570 GT4R?
Well, three reasons, firstly we love the colour, always have and we always wanted to have a car in Viper Green, secondly the green matches our Devil logo a brand we are keen to promote and develop Worldwide and finally it just looks awesome, combined with our GT4 carbon fibre bodywork and aero, lowered stance on MSS springs we think its best looking McLaren out there, but course we are biased.
Thus far we’ve now completed three complete McLaren resprays and about to embark on two more, these are for cars with multiple blistering panels so its more cost effective and will give a better end result by respraying the entire car rather than per panel as we need to blend panels anyway.
If you need to get some paintwork done, contact us via our paint enquiry system and we can give you an idea on costs from some images you send, happy to help. Click HERE
In the meantime if you see a Viper Green 570 wave hello, its always nice to share a wave with fellow McLaren owners.