Luxury Class A Motorhome Repair and Full Body Paint

A mass market coach is gel coat with a decal package. A luxury coach is painted, and it is painted in layers: a base, one or more mid coats carrying mica or pearl, sometimes a candy or tinted clear, and then clear on top. Each layer changes how the finish reads at a different viewing angle. That is the point of the scheme, and it is also exactly why a repair is difficult.

Match a single stage colour and you can compare a card to a panel under one light. Match a six stage scheme and you have to match it at every angle, which means spraying test panels that step through the same layer sequence and viewing them against the coach outdoors as well as under booth light. Get one mid coat film build slightly heavy and the repaired area flops to a different tone as you walk past it.

Then there is geometry. These schemes are usually swoops and sweeps that run the length of the coach and cross panel joints deliberately. A repair in the middle of a sweep cannot stop at a body line, because there is no body line there. The blend has to be carried out into the surrounding colour until the eye cannot find the transition, and on a 45 foot coach that can mean blending across most of a side.

Posted numbers: color match paint blending is $500 to $5,000 across 4 to 25 hours, full paint refinish is $5,000 to $35,000 across 40 to 250 hours, and paint supplies calculate at $55 per paint hour. All on the prices page.

Weight and materials. These interiors carry real tile or stone flooring, solid surface and stone countertops, hardwood cabinetry with a finished lacquer, residential appliances and, on some coaches, in floor hydronic heat running under all of it. That changes the interior repair picture completely.

• Tile over a coach subfloor cracks along a grout line when the floor flexes, which is a structure signal rather than a tile problem.
• Hydronic in floor heat means you cannot open a floor without knowing where the loops run. AquaHot and hydronic heat system service is posted at $750 to $8,500 across 3 to 35 hours.
• Stone countertops chip at the edge and are repairable, but a replacement is a template and fabrication job. Countertop repair and replacement is $500 to $7,500 across 4 to 35 hours.
• Hardwood cabinetry is refinishable rather than replaceable, which is usually the better answer. Cabinetry repair, refacing and custom build is $500 to $7,500 across 4 to 35 hours.
• Theater seating and residential sofas are heavy and anchored into the floor structure. Furniture replacement is $750 to $8,500 across 4 to 25 hours.

Full interior remodel, when an owner wants the coach brought forward rather than patched, is posted at $1,500 to $50,000 across 20 to 250 hours. See interior remodeling.

Luxury coaches run more slides and longer slides than anything else on the road, sometimes a full wall room carrying cabinetry, a sofa and a section of tile floor. That mass is the whole issue. A long heavy room sags at the outboard end over time, and once it sags it drags the seal, wears the wiper, and then leaks.

Diagnosis order matters. A room that leaks is checked for sag and alignment before anyone replaces a seal, because a new seal on a misaligned room fails again quickly. Slide out seal replacement covering wiper, bulb and D seal is $400 to $3,000 across 2 to 14 hours. Slide room rebuild and structural repair is $1,500 to $7,500 across 10 to 35 hours. Slide out mechanism service across Schwintek, Lippert In Wall, Power Gear and BAL Accu Slide is $500 to $8,500 across 3 to 35 hours.

Slide toppers from Carefree or Solera are consumable and worth replacing before they shred, at $450 to $1,800 across 3 to 8 hours, because a failed topper drops debris and water onto the roof of the room and starts the next problem.

Because they are coach specific. A mass produced Class A shares a lot of hardware across brands. A luxury coach uses converter specific caps, converter specific trim, converter specific interior components, and often a paint scheme that was applied in small numbers. Those parts are not sitting on a shelf, and several of them are made to order.

The practical consequences are two. First, parts are identified and ordered before teardown wherever the damage allows it, so the coach is not open in a bay waiting. Second, special order parts require a deposit at order, because a made to order coach cap cannot be returned to stock. Jobs over $2,000 take a 50 percent deposit at authorization, with a further 25 percent when parts arrive on anything over $10,000.

The honest test is the booth and the bench. A full body paint job on a 45 foot coach has to be shot in one continuous pass, and a booth that cannot take the coach whole forces sectioning, which shows. This building is 35,000 square feet and the booth is sized for coach work rather than adapted to it.

The second test is whether the shop will tell you what it does not do. Engine and drive system work is not performed here. Everything else on the coach, body, structure, paint, interior, slides, roof, electrical, hydronic heat, generator and leveling, is. We stand behind our work. Bring the coach in from Tustin on the 91 or the 57 and let an estimator walk it with you.