RANT!! Outrageous prices to paint my 84 hurst!!

[84hurst]

OK so i've had 2 body shops now tell me around $5500 to paint my car. its an 84 hurst olds with 27,000 miles SOLID thats right SOLID with NO rotted rockers, rear quarters or ANYTHING! The original owner let it sit outside so its got a bit of surface rust on roof and a few other MINOR spots! Im swapping a solid set of doors cause the ones on the car got a bit soft from sitting along the bottoms as usual, but past that MINIMAL body work!!! So heres this: i cant imagine supplies being anything over $1000 espically since im suppling the decals and weatherstrip so SERIOUSLY $4500 in labor to paint a straight and true car???????? ALSO i've detrimed a lot of this car already!! $5500 seems outrageous to me!!!! To me anything higher than $4000 seems too high! only thing im thinking is the small town im in may have something to do with it (only 2 body shops in town) im heading to Lansing monday which is bout an half hour away to see what those places say. I dont want to cheap out, if i did i'd go to macco but i also dont want to get taken for a ride!! what have youguys paid to get your Gbodys repainted???

PS Dont reply if your one of those money is no object people that paid 15k to have your G repainted :lol:

 

[454muscle]

Definitely shop around bro... even if it means going out of town. Make sure you get a good quality paint as well but I'm sure you can find a better price for a good quality paint job.

Here's another option... if you really want to save some money, check out this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=17474&hilit=%24250+paint

 

[84hurst]

Definitely shop around bro... even if it means going out of town. Make sure you get a good quality paint as well but I'm sure you can find a better price for a good quality paint job.

Here's another option... if you really want to save some money, check out this thread:
http://gbodyforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2 ... 4250+paint

Yeah thats what im thinkin i'd like to keep it right around $3500 if possible, yeah i saw that guys thread doesnt look like he did too bad for what he paid!

 

[3XBrownCutty]

My buddy just got a quote from a friend of mine to get his car painted... around 2000 and he's doing everything except spraying the paint. Kinda outrageous if you ask me.

I paid 1000 for mine with body work on the doors and filling the holes from the big chrome rocker trim. I guess you just have to know the right guys.

If all else fails do your own prep work, mask it off, and trailer it to macco, cause those ****ers will get overspray on everything...

 

[FE3X CLONE]

$5500 sounds about average depending on what all they are going to do. It takes a lot of labor to wet sand/color sand a car.

My neighbor builds hot rods in his spare time and is an excellent painter. To these guys a proper paint job doesn't start until the $8000 mark. Heck, he had a some paint for his hot rod that alone cost $1000. Granted it was red which is typically the most expensive of the colors.

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

For quality work, that does not sound out of line to me. Materials have gotten VERY expensive lately, and the amount of work it takes to properly prep even a straight car is shocking. I easily spent north of $2k to do my car, and I did all the prep, spraying, etc. myself. You also have to remember that it is getting rare to find a shop that will do a complete respray nowadays due to ever increasing EPA regs on paint shops. So, you are not just paying for materials and labor. You are also paying for the cost of compliance with the law and running the shop. Also, many shops prefer not to do complete jobs because they can make more money doing quick and dirty repair jobs for insurance companies. Old car people are typically a lot more fussy than customers who dented the fender on their beige Camry, so many shops price the work high to make it go away. Remember that the Camry fender can be bought for $50, scuffed, shot off the car, dried and then installed with maybe 2 hours total in the job. Price charged? $500. Total cost? Maybe $100 in materials.

 

[Blake442]

85CB hit the nail right on the head.

You'd be suprised just how much prep-work goes into even a presumably "straight" car.
It's more than just a quick sand the car and paint it, if you want that, go to Maaco.
To get top quality results, there will be disassembly, body work, panel removal and re-alignment, reassembly, test-fittings, priming, blocking, masking, sanding, buffing, assembly, and detailing. Then there's sand paper, masking paper, tape, primer, paint, clear, more sand paper, not to mention other parts...
All that stuff adds up fast.

For a high-quality job, $5500 doesn't sound unreasonable to me at all.
If they do good work, it actually sounds like a pretty good deal.

Fact of the matter is, you gotta pay to play...

 

[454muscle]

Heck, he had a some paint for his hot rod that alone cost $1000. Granted it was red which is typically the most expensive of the colors.

That's nothing bro. My mechanic has a 9 second Mustang he built and races, the black paint with metal flake that he got it painted -- costs $800/gallon -- just the paint -- and thats Canadian!

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

I will also add something that is not going to make me very popular, but I feel it's the truth. This hobby is getting VERY expensive. It is almost to the point that to build a quality car for a reasonable price, you need to be well connected and either very skilled or willing to learn how to do most of the large, difficult jobs yourself. If you need to farm out everything, you would be money ahead to just buy a brand new performance car or one that is already finished ( if any old car is ever truly finished...). It is all too easy to build a very mediocre car and spend north of $20k-even if you do all the work yourself. Plus, after it is built, you still have to sort the car, which can be anything from some tuneup parts, to changing major components several times until you get the right combination. Plus, the price of parts and specialty labor, like machining and paint, has gone through the roof as people need to earn more to make it nowadays. So, in the long run, to have a nice car you can drive every day, you may end up better off with something like a new Mustang GT, Camaro Z-28, 370Z or WRX. At least then the engineering is done right and you have a warranty. Now, if all you want is to go fast in a straight line, you can still do that reasonably cheap in an ugly car with no interior, stereo, etc. by using used parts and trading for deals. But that's not what I mean by a nice car.


****WARNING! RANT AHEAD!!!****

This is also why my focus has shifted off my cars as of late. I feel I can achieve more improvement to my life right now by fixing up my house than fixing up my car. I will still keep it, and tinker with it from time to time, but I just can't justify the cost of new wheels, brake upgrades, interior upgrades, a manual trans swap, etc. when my house is a wreck and I make as little as I do. My car is fairly basic, but it has still probably cost me north of $12k- and it is not even done yet. It has a variety of major and minor issues (electrical faults, wasted rear suspension, bad transmission, bent wheels, crappy tires, etc.) that keep me from even driving it until I have another $1,000+ to put in it. So, I am parking it for now and waiting until I can finish renovating my modest little house. At least the house does not require me to replace the same part over and over again to get the results I want. If I put in new cabinets, they will pretty much be there doing what they do for 30+ years. I can't say the same for a new transmission or a set of tires. Sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to throw out a little explanation as to why I don't post as much as I used to, and why my Cutlass is not progressing.

 

[Larryg]

They make it look soooo easy on Overhaulin'!! 2 days tops and they're all done. Most reputable painters on the forums I belong to for bikes figure you'll spend $4-500 for just materials! On a gas tank, side panels and fenders! One color!! If you're thinking about spending $3500-4000 I would shop very wisely because you sure dont want to do this twice.