Posted 2007-11-20 9:45 PM (#71574) Subject: Painting an Aluminum tralier??????
New User
Posts: 2
Location: South Central Florida
I am looking at a trailer but it is RED, RED, RED. I really don't like the color, but it has everything I ever wanted, and it is a good price. Just wondering if anyone has ever had a 4H trailer painted, and what it cost? It is a 4H, with a 10'SW. Not tooooo big, but big enough. Also are Hart's heavy?
Posted 2007-11-23 1:57 PM (#71704 - in reply to #71574) Subject: RE: Painting an Aluminum tralier??????
Expert
Posts: 5870
Location: western PA
Two years ago I repainted, inside and out, a steel 3 horse slant load, bp stock trailer. ( 18' box) I had it completely media blasted inside and out, applied a coat of rust converter before it was primed, used epoxy primer and three coats of a single coat colour was applied. Doing the body work and masking it myself and hiring a body shop to apply the finish coats still cost $3000. If I had not done as much work as I did, the cost would have exceeded the value of the trailer, which was about $5000.
With an aluminum trailer you don't need to media blast the rust, but you still have to properly prep the entire surface to be painted. The cost of auto paints are aprox $100 a gallon, and at labor rates of roughly $50+/hr, a 35 foot gn trailer could easily exceed my costs. Any graphics or two or three colour paint schemes would be additional. A two part paint (colour/clear) would be an additional cost.
If you do as much of the labour as possible and find a shop to work with, you can probably lower your costs by almost half. Also if you don't have to include the price of painting the inside as I did, your costs will be less.
There is a lot of surface area to a trailer, and it takes a lot of time and materials to cover it all.