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Walter D’Andrea -Prevost Collision Repair Magician
I’m embarrassed to report that an “altercation” with an electric gate and concrete stanchion at the storage lot near our Woodstock, GA home basically destroyed my Prevost XLV Vantare conversion’s curb side bay doors, rub rails, and more. After much agony and gnashing of teeth, I filed a claim with my insurance company and began to research the best companies to restore our beloved coach “Evangeline” to her former beauty.
I began by taking pictures of the extensive damage and sending them to Steve Kolb at International Bus Parts. I asked Steve to put together a list with pricing of all the panels, and associated parts that he thought needed to be replaced. I also asked him to forward a list of collision repair specialists that he had dealt with through IBP. After a significant amount of investigative research, perusing websites, reading reviews and studying photos of work performed by the various companies, I reached out by phone to Walter D’Andrea of WD Bodyworks, LLC in Debary, FL. My conversation with Walter gave me confidence that he was the right man to do justice to the daunting task of re-beautifying Evangeline.
We made arrangements to drive our now ugly XLV the 500 miles from our Woodstock, GA home to our Clermont, FL home – getting several shocked stares and honked horns along the way. Once we arrived in Clermont, we delivered Evangeline to Walter D’Andrea Bodyworks facility in Debary, FL – about an hour from our FL house.
Upon our arrival, Walter completed a thorough inspection and showed me additional damage that the first insurance adjuster overlooked. A subsequent Florida based adjuster examined our coach, agreed with Walter’s assessment and amended our claim accordingly.
To make a long story shorter, Walter and his team replaced all damaged bay doors, rub rails, docking lights, rekeyed the bay door locks and straightened the bent bay floors. He matched and repainted the graphics that were lost with the replacement of the damaged bay doors. Walter went well above and beyond what was required in the insurance claim!
In addition to the work outlined above, he removed the badly cracked “Diamond Shield” protective coating from the front, touched up the damaged graphics, and reapplied an upgraded new protective coating.
Walter did even more, including repainting the peeling front cap, repairing the passenger door seal – that was incorrectly attached previously by an independent Prevost repair “poser”, repairing/replacing our non-working dash gauge lights, replacing the faded & peeling Evangeline name and home base lettering, repainted the roof, repaired our roof leak, and applied 3 coats of sealant.
We picked up our bus from Walter D’Andrea Bodyworks on Tuesday, 12/05/2018 and were stunned at the transformation that Walter masterfully accomplished on our coach, making her look like she just rolled out of the converter’s shop 22 years ago! We were literally speechless as we walked around our bus discovering detail after detail that Walter had returned to pristine appearance!
Finally, Vita and I enthusiastically endorse and recommend Walter D’Andrea Bodyworks in Debary, FL (Orlando area) to anyone with any type of collision, repair, paint, graphics issue on their RV, motorhome, Prevost, MCI, Van Hool, Setra, Eagle, or any brand/vintage coach! We cannot thank Walter and his team enough for their kindness, diligence, attention to detail, and expert workmanship applied to the rehabilitation of our beloved Prevost.
Check out http://wdbodyworks.com to see some of Walter’s work!
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5 Replies
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Hi Michael, Delighted to hear your experience was such a good one. I kept thinking another shoe was going to drop and you’d say some terrible thing happened. But it was all good and that is superb news indeed!
Can you post a “before” picture showing the damage? Would love to see the before and after.
Harry
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Walter is the best…unfortunately I’ll be seeing him this winter. Geo.
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Ok George, give it up… Did you run into that tree again?
Harry
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A before repair pics would be nice to see.
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Harry, no tree jumping out….had 2 of the thin body panels (top & mid) travel and the slide bit ’em off. Geo.
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