I got a quote from the parts dept of my local dealer (1 of 4 in KC) and he quoted me numbers from the powder coater, the seals and gaskets/oil that would need to be replaced, as well as got an estimate from their service dept. for the time to take the parts off/replace them. Initially I was looking at the following.

fork lowers
triple trees
upper rocker box covers
primary
battery box cover
strut covers
foot levers

The estimate was $1300 pre tax, $600 powder coating, $600 labor and $100 misc gaskets/seals/oils/whatever they say thingamajigs.

Somehow the parts guy wasn't available when I went to schedule and a service guy took it over and he is jacking up the price by about 3 hrs of service even though he forgot to include the primary cover in the estimate.

I am a novice to this process, what is a good price for powder coating that list above, and would it be significantly different if I chose to coat my timing cover and trans cover but left the battery cover alone.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Instead of running blind into the whole powder coating thing why don't you tackle removing the parts you know you can and run em down to the coater yourself. Then go from there. At least you'll get your feet wet into the whole process and decide if you want to R/R the lowers etc.

 

i can't really comment on the $$, prices are very different up here in Canadia but I can say that the battery cover is probably the smallest and easiest to remove/replace - I doubt there'd be any significant saving.

 

Are you getting squeezed? That really depends on your other options.
My thought (and I'm not sure I'm going to answer your question) is that the parts and labor for the work involved, given the list you provided, is not out of line. I say this keeping in mind that the HD dealer likely charges more than a local independent shop for labor and for what you can get parts for online.
Regarding the powder, since they are likely subbing that out to another company they will likely tack on a percentage to be able to pass this service on to you. That's normal for a lot of companies, regardless of the industry.
I think that's the clincher though... If you had the ability/desire/time to do all the work yourself and run the parts back and forth to the powder coater yourself, you'd spend less money and be able to get parts for less, labor for less, and powder coating for probably less. However, since you are having the dealer provide that service to you, that's the price of the service they are providing. You drop the bike off and pick it up when it's done.
Not saying it's high or low, just depends on what you feel that service is worth.

Personally, if I didn't have a location/tools/know-how/time to do a job like that myself, but I really wanted it done, I'd say that's a fair deal.

Wouldn't hurt to call the other dealers and see if they are in the same ballpark.

Don't know if that helps.

-G

 

take the parts off the bike and take them in. labor cost and rubbish is gone.

the powder folks here are going to charge me 90 for the sliders, 45 for the trees. so yeah, you bill for coating sounds reasonable.

 

Yeah, if you do the work yourself, the labor is nothing! I just had my inner and outer primary powdered. Was about $70 for both pieces, but it's about $100 in gaskets, seals, bolts and fluids just to open it up and reinstall it. You could always do appliance epoxy on the fork lowers and save $$$ on labor and powder. I'm eventually doing my fork lowers in appliance epoxy, so I don't have to gut the suspension or pay someone to do it. There's a few write ups on it. Pretty simple process.

 

Also, some powder coating places have parts menus so you can get a ballpark of what others charge for just the powder. You really won't get off easy paying someone for the labor of assembly and disassembly.

 

Sounds fairly reasonable to me.My buddy just had his whole front end of his Street Glide done,and some misc. work for around $1400.
Actually,looking back at your post,$600 labor for all those parts doesn't sound bad at all.

 

$600 for powder coating all those parts seems about right, especially considering the dealer will add a bit of markup, and rightfully so. $600 for labor comes out to about 7 hrs, nothing really excessive there.

 

Way too much $$
I just had a bunch of powder done for $250. Is say your in the $400-500 range