Bodywork, Metalwork and Paint
Does your classic need a little helping hand? Is there an ever so slight bubbling on the paint? Or maybe there's more rust than paint? Or what if your car is having a complete mid-life crisis and wants to change its paint colour?
Well, dearest pals and amigos, you've stumbled onto the right website. Step 1 is done and dusted and you get full marks for getting this far.
Welcome to the world of cutting out rusty metal, fabricating new panels, welding, sanding, paint and polishing here at Lyons Garages!
The above photo of a 1962 MGA might be a bit extreme, but you get the idea of what we can do with our array of metal shaping tools and talented classic car people that work in the garage.
Ok, let's get started and tell you what we can do:
Full Restorations (and not so full restorations)
We specialise in full restorations, and our aim is to complete all work to the highest possible standard. Or 'The Lyons Garage' standard as it's now known. All our work is fully documented and photographed for your future viewing and reminiscing. And for our showing off. Because if you can't show it off what's the point? That's completely different to wearing brightly coloured boxers by the way, but that's a story for another time.
Metalwork and Welding
As mentioned above, we do have an array of metal shaping equipment, from an English wheel, shrinker, stretcher... there's a lot of tools at our disposal. Then there's our spot welders, TIG, MIG, PIG... Ok, PIG isn't real I just made that up, but we have everything we need to replace every and all pieces of rust in your car.
Replacement Panels
We like to use genuine heritage panels where possible as these provide a better fit than spurious panels. They're also of a much higher quality which benefits the longevity of your car, so win-win really. We won't be just patching over a rusty spot! We'll cut out the corroded panel and replace it. If rusty metal is just plated over, the corrosion will only begin to spread. I must tell you about the time we found black silicone to hide a hole in a chassis.
Paint and Re-Sprays
Once we have the metalwork sorted, it's time to get the body ready for paint. You can find a full run-through of what a typical restoration looks like by clicking here, but this is just a brief low down on what we cover. Rub, rub, rub, into primer and then into paint. There's actually a whole list of stages and various primers, protectors and paints used by us just to get it into paint. We use specially devised paint for classic cars with around 11 stages... But can we really be giving away all of our trade secrets here?
Colour Sanding, Polishing and Detailing
So once the car has had its umpteenth coat of lacquer, it's time to... Sand it all over again! Madness we know, but it's how you get that flat shiny look, or 'show finish' as they call it. There's about 7 stages to this, and each panel will take a few hours... imagine the size of your arms after this. Wax on, wax off. Mr Miyagi would be proud of us.
Rust Protection
Using our turner/rotisserie, we can give that show finish to the underneath of your car too. But because we live in Ireland and it's wet for approximately 452 days a year, we'll make sure the under-body and sills are protected from the elements.
The Rebuild
Then it's everyone's favourite time, rebuilding the freshly painted shell. Everything is so clean and shiny, it's actually very easy to get distracted by the chrome. I see my reflection and I'm just mesmerised. I've got great hair...
Sorry, distracted again there.
Whether you're rebuilding the car yourself, or whether it's us, it's important to replace all rubbers and seals on the car. That's the very minimum that you should do. To make it perfect, you look at the chrome, glass, lights, suspension, brakes, engine bay... but that probably brings us nicely to our Mechanical Services section, so you can hop on over there to read more.
If you have a classic car and would like to talk to us about pricing or need some more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Try and give as much detail about your car as possible and include photos - the more we know about your car, the better our estimate will be.