Budget paint job (250.00)

[88MONTESS]

Here are some pics of my budget paint job project. The budget was 500.00 and I came out a bit over 400. Myself and a friend did all the body work. I spent roughly 150 bucks in tools/materials and 250.00+tax at Maaco for the paint job :shock: Let me know what you think

 

[88MONTESS]

A few more

Here it is the day before paint. I didnt plan on doing that much body work but the more I sanded the more issues I found. Everywhere the primer is there was some type of damage. For a minute I thought about priming the whole car

After paint before eibach fronts

After eibach fronts

Ive got plenty of progress pics but wanted to kind of keep it short and to the point. Hope you guys like it. Its not a show car but I thinks its pretty good for a $500 budget paint build

 

[Doober]

Not too shabby 😀 It's all in the prep from what I understand. I'm always leary of having a place like that spray my car though, because I've heard numerous times they don't care what the paint gets on.

 

[carmangary]

Looks good from here. How does it look up close? What kind of paint did they use? Any orange peel or runs? I am thinking of doing the same to my wagon. Did you have to use their "bulk" colors or did you get to pick what you wanted? Details, details. 🙂

 

[azmalibuwagon]

Looks good! The most important thing is the prep work, looks like you did a good job there. For $250, no shop is going to do much of anything besides spraying the paint on, so it's all up to you.

And of course it's a good idea to check out some of the finished work at whatever paint shop you choose before you take your car in. Every shop is different, some good, some bad, depends on the guys doing the work.

 

[Larryg]

I'm all the way in Massachusetts and it looks good to me! I spend that taking the family out to dinner four times so its money well spent in my book! Did you do the masking as well? Did they get paint on the rubber trim and stuff? How about door jambs, is that extra? I like it.

 

[454muscle]

Nicely done, it turned out nice! What a great idea. Get the tools and do the bodywork yourself, get it painted at Maaco. Well done bro.

I had a budget paint job too once. It also turned out nice. Problem was after a week, the paint faded, and in the next few weeks I had tons of stone chips all over. The quality of the paint was horrible. I learned about paint qualities after that. Acrylic enable, base clear, are good choices. Urethane = No. Not sure what Maaco uses.

 

[88MONTESS]

It looks decent to me up close. I can see the spots where I may have had one icehouse too many :wink: but overall not bad. I'll post some up close pics of the car. I got the Presidential one so there is only one stage of paint with clear nixed into it. As far as color I just told the I wanted it as close to factory as possible. Its a little of but I can get use to it.

It is true after a week you see a little more imperfection but before I wnet to work on the body there ws rust on the hood trunk and roof. So as long as I got that taken care of for now I can line with it. As far as Maaco I would suggest to not just go to the close one but to venture out to different ones and check out the work they do. I passed about five Maacos before I chose the one that painted my car.

Thanks for all the comments

 

[FE3X CLONE]

Looks good.

The true test will be what it looks like after a year. I've heard from multiple people that did what you did and said a year later the paint was starting to fade.

You have to go into it realizing it may not last. I mean I just priced the base coat paint for my '87 at the paint store it alone was $300. So for them to do it for $250 you know they're not using quality paint.

 

[Bonnewagon]

I think it looks awesome. I need to do that too. As you said, the more you look, the more you find to do. A friend did like you on his lunch hour for a whole year. Every day he would find more spots and do them up. When thought he was done he told Macco, "Do the bodywork and paint it". They found more stuff he missed and it turned out great, like yours.