Caterham R500 build - paintwork test results

[S47zzz]

If you can't see any of them from the driving seat, what's the problem

 

😬

 

[Guest]

Quoting BSA: 

I have only one thing to say : You should have bought a Porsche

got one already.

[Guest]

Mine has only done a thousand miles and looks like it has been sandblasted in a few areas, especially the rear wings. Had I known this I would have put 3m on some of the exposed leading edges. They do wear more than any car I know with use and I can understand how you want to protect something you have spent a lot of money on. Your build looks fantastic.

[ChrisC]

I think from the comments in this thread you can see that most of us think painting your car at this stage is bonkers. Why not wait until after the season, and send the parts to TSK to have then repainted over winter. You will have more stone chips with your first blat / track day than you have shown on your blog, so repainting now is just a waste money. Worse than the waste of money, is the loss of good driving time.

[Guest]

....yes but we have all just paid for our cars to be painted and would like that paint to offer at least acceptable / standard levels of protection against inevitable stones , belt buckles and clumsy bonnet replacement. If it is too soft/lacks top layer protective lacquer then it should be considered substandard to my mind. Not sure I buy the weight saving excuse!!

[oldbutnotslow]

I dont think that anyone is "getting at you" merely telling you what the reality of & ownership or should I say "Ownerchip" is like.

 

At the end of the day would anyone collect a circa £45k car that's got stone chips or scratches on it, just because it'll get them anyway?

 

Quite true. If I had bought a tin top and it was scratched I too would have asked for it to be dealt with.

 

No amount of paint protection is going to stop chips. Indeed you will find chips and dents and wonder how on earth could that have been damaged simply by driving on the road.

 

I did a major conversion for a friend/customer last year that involved the replacement of all external and internal body panels by Arch the replacement of the engine together with gearbox and diff rebuild. The chassis and paneling was painted by a local paint shop that I have used for years. It was a perfect job including stripes that were flat with the paint and not just painted on top of the main paint.

I managed the whole rebuild without so much as a mark or a scuff but I did cover all the eoxpsed paint in wallpaper lining paper (no paste though!)

I have the car back in at the moment for a service and I have to say that the paint is in remarkably good condition. The year has seen the car cover several thousand miles with a number of trackdays thrown in.

 

I think your paranoia is quite understandable at this stage of your ownership but it will pass.

Go enjoy!!!! 😬 😬 😬

 

Edited by - oldbutnotslow on 13 May 2014 07:42:55

[James.S]

I can't see the logic in putting more paint on the car - I can't see it being a bare metal respray - the time in that would be prohibitive. Are you sure they arnt blowing it over - i know some top guys and you would swear that the whole car had been painted.

 

Save your money and time and get CC to comp you a trackday.

 

[nickh7]

Please just drive it and enjoy it. the paint work will get shot to hell the first time you go out on a run and a sticky tyres from the 7 in front picks up the gravel and fires it at you.

 

I know its an expensive car by 7 standards but if you don't drive it soon and enjoy it you'll never be happy with it.

[Gnockoff]

When I first got my 7 I was very conscious of every chip and mark on the thing, it didn't take me long to realise that if you want it to stay pristine, put it away in the garage and have a very expensive ornament. Yes, you have bought an expensive car, just don't expect it to stay looking the same way if you drive it much. These things attract stone chips, star cracks and marks like no other I'm sorry to say.

[myothercarsa2cv]

I've had mine nearly 6 years and have picked up zero paint chips. I have no paint 😬 Agreed that CC should get it looking good out the box, I don't quite get the effort you're going to, but it's not my car

[6speedmanual]

@ grant_7.... You count your stone chips?!?! Wow!

When you touch one is is that deducted from the total or reclassified as an old chip?

 

Not counting my chips but generally have very few noticeable ones. More an erroded surface finish in some areas.

I don't do films as I don't like the look. Also film does not prevent other types of damage eg dents which can come from road debris, especially down the exhaust side.

Car looks good at 9yrs. Would think in another 9 might be considering a repaint...?

 

Peter

[Martin J]

Protective film won't prevent star cracks when your sticky tyres fire stones at the underside of the wings.

AO21's are good at that, I should no.

[SLR No.77]

I would expect a car from new to be as near to perfect as possible and Daniel has every right to be aggrieved at some of the marks that he has found, they just shouldn't feature on any product perceived to be better than the competition and especially at the price level he is purchasing. It's been mentioned before, the purchase of the upper end models should be individually managed and extra layers of quality control should be present, it's the only way Caterham are going to satisfy the discerning customer who can afford to buy in at the price point Caterham are now playing at.

 

To me buying a new Caterham is comparable to buying an expensive new guitar .... it should be spot on perfect when supplied new but from 1 minute on, every ding, scratch and wear mark becomes patina and the character of the instrument, and the first ding always hurts the worst ... the guitar players on here will understand my analogy. But we shouldn't confuse post-purchase wear and tear with what we accept at delivery, it's simply not the same

 

Daniel's car should be corrected, nothing more nothing less. How that is achieved is down to agreement between himself and Caterham and as to which is the best method is not for us to question. Afterwards, it's then Daniel's choice if he wants to polish and cherish it, or rag it and stuff it in the odd gravel trap along the way!

 

Stu.

[Guest]

Stu - bang on

[Guest]

Quoting 6speedmanual: 

@ grant_7.... You count your stone chips?!?! Wow!

When you touch one is is that deducted from the total or reclassified as an old chip?

Peter

 

Yep...I'm a saddo 😬

 

Good question on the classification - I'd not thought of that. Better start a spreadsheet to keep track

[FramerateUK]

Quoting sforshaw: 

I would expect a car from new to be as near to perfect as possible and Daniel has every right to be aggrieved at some of the marks that he has found, they just shouldn't feature on any product perceived to be better than the competition and especially at the price level he is purchasing. It's been mentioned before, the purchase of the upper end models should be individually managed and extra layers of quality control should be present, it's the only way Caterham are going to satisfy the discerning customer who can afford to buy in at the price point Caterham are now playing at.

 

To me buying a new Caterham is comparable to buying an expensive new guitar .... it should be spot on perfect when supplied new but from 1 minute on, every ding, scratch and wear mark becomes patina and the character of the instrument, and the first ding always hurts the worst ... the guitar players on here will understand my analogy. But we shouldn't confuse post-purchase wear and tear with what we accept at delivery, it's simply not the same

 

Daniel's car should be corrected, nothing more nothing less. How that is achieved is down to agreement between himself and Caterham and as to which is the best method is not for us to question. Afterwards, it's then Daniel's choice if he wants to polish and cherish it, or rag it and stuff it in the odd gravel trap along the way!

 

Stu.

 

Totally understand the comparison, but guitars don't pick up chips from normal use, they pick up chips from being accidentally hit (I know all about, my car keys fell out of my shirt pocket onto my very new MusicMan JP6 10 years or so ago and that tiny ding still hurts to this day!), but the car will pick up chips from regular use regardless of how careful you are.

 

I have a mint Musicman JP7 2007 Limited Edition hanging on my wall. It's never been gigged and I don't play it very often. My old chipped JP6 however gets played constantly and I'm not afraid to add to the dings. I'm almost afraid to play the JP7 since I don't want to mark it - you don't want this with a Caterham! It will pick up the marks and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

By all means, get them filled and fixed - they shouldn't be there from new, but be aware that the car will pick up dings very easily. My 7 has 18k on it now, 6k within the last year or so, and the wings are a lot more peppered than they used to be! Still, I'd rather drive it than polish it, so it really doesn't matter in the end.

 

You might find a full respray will bring up more issues than you've got already, and it'll be even longer until you get on the road with it.

[I reply to every thread]

Quoting sforshaw: 

I would expect a car from new to be as near to perfect as possible and Daniel has every right to be aggrieved at some of the marks that he has found, they just shouldn't feature on any product perceived to be better than the competition and especially at the price level he is purchasing. It's been mentioned before, the purchase of the upper end models should be individually managed and extra layers of quality control should be present, it's the only way Caterham are going to satisfy the discerning customer who can afford to buy in at the price point Caterham are now playing at.

 

To me buying a new Caterham is comparable to buying an expensive new guitar .... it should be spot on perfect when supplied new but from 1 minute on, every ding, scratch and wear mark becomes patina and the character of the instrument, and the first ding always hurts the worst ... the guitar players on here will understand my analogy. But we shouldn't confuse post-purchase wear and tear with what we accept at delivery, it's simply not the same

 

Daniel's car should be corrected, nothing more nothing less. How that is achieved is down to agreement between himself and Caterham and as to which is the best method is not for us to question. Afterwards, it's then Daniel's choice if he wants to polish and cherish it, or rag it and stuff it in the odd gravel trap along the way!

 

Stu.

 

Are you not missing the point? He scratched it - ie started the patina ting process

[Guest]

Quoting AVES: 

Are you not missing the point? He scratched it - ie started the patina ting process

I did scratch it on two areas, however, the nosecone was scratched out of the bubble wrap packaging (as in it arrived like that). I thought the paint work seemed soft which is why I queried it... noticeably softer than any other car I've owned in the past.

 

However, the suggestion to re-spray the entire car was put to me - not the other way around.

[I reply to every thread]

The paintwork is as soft as any post production applied finish. Caterhams are not built on a production line by Robots so the paintwork is akin to that you get on an accident repair.

With modern low solvent or water based paints there is only so much that you can achieve even with an oven. I agree that the nose shouldn't be damaged but I bet you 100% that was a factory rather than paintshop issue.

Tony the Brush just wouldn't do that.

[I reply to every thread]

by way of example - on my Elise - the factory paint from 16 years ago on the sills is pretty resilient to scratches - The paint on the recently repainted nose shows micro scratches if you wipe it over with a cotton cloth. Only microfiber cloths leave no mark at all

[SLR No.77]

Quoting AVES: 

The paintwork is as soft as any post production applied finish.

The hardness of Caterham paint varies massively from colour to colour ... I don't mean soft to slightly not so soft, but soft to very hard! In my experience the metallics are softer.

 

Stu.

[Guest]

An R500 is an expensive car and It wouldn't take much thought to improve the resilience of the main wear areas. I take the point about applying films but it would have reduced my dings considerably. Though a sustained spell on an autobahn and German roads last week seemed to add many more chips. The rear wings can be designed better to resist star cracks and pebble dashing etc as the front wheel will always fire stones at them in a car with external wheels.

 

I bought my cheap ish spec 7 instead of a 2nd hand 911 GT3 which wears better but is expensive to put right when something goes wrong or after a track day incident. A 7 is much more resilient in this area even though it wears faster. New wings can always be fitted or re painted when you come to sell the car if needed.

 

I do look at the car sometimes and think how can it be worth what I paid but then remember the feel and handling, I'm not sure anything comes close for the price. If it did I would have bought it.

[Guest]

Turns out the R500 is end of life now... It's been removed from the website as of Monday this week... I have number 175 and apparently the final one will be number 177 which is fairly apt. It's about £15k more to go from R400 to 620R though, so a massive jump in cost, no doubt there'll be something in between to fill that gap. I read somewhere about a lower tuned but still super charged and less hardcore 620R type affair with h pattern box.

 

I'll be using my car, I'm not a polisher, but it will be nice to collect it in pristine order from CC midlands once it's all ready. With the stone chip protection film I'll be doing my best to keep the inevitable road rash at bay, but can (and will) accept the patina as part and parcel of the ownership and history of the vehicle.

 

Once I've got the car no doubt I won't be posting much on here as I'll have all my spare time used driving

 

Edited by - Roadracer1977 on 14 May 2014 11:13:58

[Guest]

Using a bad analogy here, but it feels like buying an expensive watch only to discover it has a flimsy plastic face - probably looks fine when brand new but too easily scratched and just not up to the task ahead

 

I think we should reasonably expect newly painted bodywork to have a finish or hardness on a comparable level to at least average, so say a Ford standard - maybe Porsche levels are a bit optimistic!

 

 

 

 

 

[I reply to every thread]

Quoting rort1: 

I think we should reasonably expect newly painted bodywork to have a finish or hardness on a comparable level to at least average, so say a Ford standard - maybe Porsche levels are a bit optimistic!

 

And how do you suggest they do that bearing in mind production levels?