Help!!! Screwed up paint job, what do I do?

[joflaig]

The car is in St. Louis and I am in Milwaukee. I have been dealing with the painter remotely which is not easy when you're getting a highly custom paint job. The problem is they did an otherwise great job, but totally messed up the lettering on my GL. Part of this was due to a bad stencil kit, but I gave them example 8x10s of what it should look like and comparing that to the stencils should have rang alarm bells. Now it's clear coated and to change it means sanding off everything and repainting not just the roof but the rear quarters as well. So they've asked me to get another stencil kit to go off of. Does anybody know of a great GL lettering stencil kit or about painting these letters at all?

[bordin34]

Whats wrong with it?

[joflaig]

The spacing of the letters is way way too tight, the touch when they shouldn't, the ends are not flush on some of the letters, like the Es and the white boarder is too tight, plus all of the letters are too large.

[70charger_boy]

Looks alright to me, but what do I know?  I like to stand out and be different

[Charger-Bodie]

i hate to say it because little things like that bug me too , but i think in this case id let it go cause unless they COMPLETELY strip the entile roof and start over ....wait for the material to dry fully you will have a big mess and other aspects of the job will suffer to a higher degree than the spacing of the letters

[69charger2002]

agreed. if the paint job is sweet do you REALLY care what some fruit at a dukes convention wil say about your letters being a fraction off?? unless of course it makes YOU lose sleep at night. in that case. the paint shop will have a lot of fun ahead of them
trav

[Charger1973]

there are several "styles" of lettering from what i have seen

[joflaig]

Very true, but nothing like this! I feel sick!

[Charger1973]

I agree it does look off to me too.  Whoever put the graphics, even if they know nothing about the General Lee, should have caught the fact that they didnt line up right.  So I would say they are at fault.  If they had any doubts they should have at least asked you if it looked ok before clearcoating it.   

[joflaig]

Yeah, and the truth is the flag stencils were crap, but they caught and fixed it, but then how could you see that text and let it go! These guys have been otherwise good to work with. They put in one of the new repro taillight panels too.

[JimShine]

I don't want to come off rude here, so please do not take this as an attack. You should have hired a sign maker/painter with tons of experience to do the job rather than trust the crap amatures are selling on eBay based off what they think looks correct. A decent sign guy would have got a lot closer than that stencil kit.

[joflaig]

You're right, buyer beware. It's partly my fault.

[TUFCAT]

I think I'd be more pissed that the car appears to be painted red - - rather than Orange!    If you have really have a red general,  then you're already different!

[ck1]

Just jump it and call it good..........................no just kidding, If I was you, I'm just not happy tell its done right, do it right the way you want and you will be allot happier

[hemi-hampton]

Looks fine to me. I bet if you look at 20 GL in a row at a GL Carvention you'd probably see it done 10-15 or 20 different ways. Only thing I would have done was had you inspect it, Crititicize, Scrutinize it, Mic it with the Micrometer before it got cleared. LATER.

[Drache]

I will say that it does look slightly off BUT by what are you comparing it to? I've seen two of the real general lees and probably numerous clones and none of the lettering was the same. Remember WB was making these cars hand over fist and now all the graphics were the same, hell the years of the cars wasn't even same. Sorry you have to go through all the trouble and I hope you get it the way you want since it's YOUR car and no one elses! 

[Daytona R/T SE]

I'd make them fix it...but why do they have to repaint the rear quarters? Is it because they have no place to "break" the paint?  If your car doesn't already have it, I'd put the vinyl top trim on and have them "Break" the paint at the vinyl top trim and leave the rear quarters alone....Most of the cars in the series had the vinyl top trim and to a lot of us General Lee nuts - it's considered more "correct" to leave the trim on....

Just my 

[TUFCAT]

That's a great idea.   

[hemi-hampton]

I wouldn't say they are totally to blame, they didn't make the Stencil did they? If not blame the Stencil Maker, They were just using what they had to work with, Giving them the right Stencil will get you the right results. Giving them the wrong Stencil will give you the wrong results. Seems like common sense to me? LATER.

[Big Lebowski]

Looks ok to me, to tell you the truth 95% of us would probably never have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out. I could live with it unless they want to fix it and work it out.

[volk68]

Call me crazy, but I see nothing wrong with that myself.  I know it is supposed to be messed up, and even still, I see nothing that looks bad in any way.  I'm not going to tell you what to do with it, because I understand the little touches that drive people crazy, but I think the car looks great 

[NYCMille]

Dude, I think it looks great... it may be a little off, but it awesome nontheless.

[ACUDANUT]

 Looks Good, Leave it. There is no such thing as a "PERFECT CAR" anyway.......is the color red or orange ??  Either way I love it.

[PocketThunder]

Looks Good, Leave it. There is no such thing as a "PERFECT CAR" anyway.......is the color red or orange ??  Either way I love it.

I think its 1975 Corvette Flame Red? 

[70charger_boy]

Dude, I think it looks great... it may be a little off, but it awesome nontheless.

See, if Mike says it looks good than it is!!!!!  If you really have a problem with it and don't want to pay to have it done right sell it on ebay and build another one.  You'll probably get 9 million for it, just have John Schneider pose in one of the pics 

[joflaig]

It looks red under that light, but it's not really. This is typical of GLs.

This is a once in a lifetime kind of thing for me so I want it done right. If I left it it would bother me every time I looked at it. I hope people can appreciate that.

I really wish they had communicated to me the fact that the crappy stencils were not right instead of just using them and ignoring the fact that the photos I gave them looked nothing like them. The photo below is roughly what I was looking for.

I'm going to order a decal set, flag and letters, have them place it out on the roof and send me pics before they duplicate it in paint.

They are doing the quarters because there is no perfect way to do the blending otherwise.  Maybe some might find it unnessesary, but you can't argue it would look better done any other way. Yeah, I could put that trim piece in, but It breaks up the lines and is not as sleek. I don't want to make any compromises here.

Thanks everyone for your input!

[Mike DC]

   
Joflaig,
     
I'm in St. Louis.  I've got a tracing of 1982-85-style "GENERAL LEE" lettering that I literally traced by hand off the roof of a real surviving GL.  (Not to mention the rest of that car's correct graphics.) 

Gimme a PM.
I'm one of the totally anal GL fans who has photos & measurements & stuff for just about everything on those cars. 
It wouldn't be a big deal for me to drop off some diagrams/xeroxes/screen-caps to the shop that's doing your car.

 

[Troy]

Honestly, it's obvious to me and if I were spending a lot of money I'd want it right (plus, I had to work next to people in the print business for a while and now my brain is filled with useless information about fonts and spacing). Interestingly enough, I noticed the 'A' overlapped the surrounding letters on yours but looking at the "correct" picture there's no spacing either. The first 'E' in "LEE" is tighter on the "correct" picture as well - not quite like yours but there is a noticeable difference. Looking at several pictures of the early GLs it looks like they were similar. Maybe it's better to just leave it?

Troy

[joflaig]

Well they won't charge me labor for redoing it. I'm glad they seem to be decent people.

I just have to find a good decal set now that they can base the paint off of. Phoenix Grpahics makes a set (used in the movie) and there is another fellow at bugsysjunkers.com who is supposed to do a great job, just waiting to hear back from him now.

BTW, I may have mentioned it before, but they put in one of the new repro taillight panels. I hope to have pics today.

[Charger1973]

   
Joflaig,
     
I'm in St. Louis.  I've got a tracing of the "GENERAL LEE" lettering off a surviving late-series GL. 
(Not to mention the rest of the car's correct graphics.)

Gimme a PM.  It wouldn't be a big deal for me to drop off a Xerox of a real GL's lettering at the shop or something.

 

Thats the way to go right there.       Thats really cool of you to offer to do that too

[Arkgl01]

I think mine came from buildageneralle.com and there suppost to be accuate as can be. Also tells you where to place them.

Mark

[wetfeetmi]

 I would ask them for a  discount because of the error. They should have caught it! Drive it this summer, and if you can't stand it get it redone this winter. That way you can enjoy it and decide of you can live it the way it is.

[JimShine]

Tony's (buildagenerallee) Georgia style are really inaccurate. Espacially the text, which is much large. I just replaced his stuff recently. His California style are realy nice though.

[hemi-hampton]

The biggest problem I see is the White outline/border is to wide. I know of a fast cheap easy way to fix that. LEON.

[GL0169]

The car is in St. Louis and I am in Milwaukee. I have been dealing with the painter remotely which is not easy when you're getting a highly custom paint job. The problem is they did an otherwise great job, but totally messed up the lettering on my GL. Part of this was due to a bad stencil kit, but I gave them example 8x10s of what it should look like and comparing that to the stencils should have rang alarm bells. Now it's clear coated and to change it means sanding off everything and repainting not just the roof but the rear quarters as well. So they've asked me to get another stencil kit to go off of. Does anybody know of a great GL lettering stencil kit or about painting these letters at all?

[GL0169]

The car is in St. Louis and I am in Milwaukee. I have been dealing with the painter remotely which is not easy when you're getting a highly custom paint job. The problem is they did an otherwise great job, but totally messed up the lettering on my GL. Part of this was due to a bad stencil kit, but I gave them example 8x10s of what it should look like and comparing that to the stencils should have rang alarm bells. Now it's clear coated and to change it means sanding off everything and repainting not just the roof but the rear quarters as well. So they've asked me to get another stencil kit to go off of. Does anybody know of a great GL lettering stencil kit or about painting these letters at all?

  I WAS JUST WONDERING ARE YOU A GENERAL LEE FAN OR A DUKES OF HAZZARD FANATIC  -  THE FLAG ON TOP OF YOUR CAR IS BACKWARDS THE POINT OF ALL STARS SHOULD FACE THE BACK OF THE CAR - ITS JUST A MATTER OF HOW CLOSE TO THE ORIGNAL YOU WANT IT TO LOOK- AND WHAT YOU CAN LIVE WITH AND  DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU CALL THE ORIGNAL GENERAL LEE