Thread: Cut & buff price????

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I am having my 30 roadster painted and clear coated. For just the cut & buff of this roadster which has metal fenders the price is $2250. Is this way out of line or am I mistaking? This $2250 DOES NOT include the price to shoot the clear or the cost of the clear it simply is the fee for strictly the cutting and buffing! Your opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Check around, seems very high to me. maybe ST will chime in.

Lets stretch it and say there is $150 in materials. That leaves $2100 in labor. Divide by $50 per hour, which is not uncommon for a storefront operation, and that's 42 hours of labor, or 5+ days. Early cars with fenders are about equal to doing the same thing on two modern cars. I would have estimated at least 4 days to do it.

I don't know what the total job is costing, but on early cars, I would start at $7500 for a total repaint, with typical body work, cut and buff, and reassembly.....but that is a very reasonable price nowdays.

An hour away, in phoenix, I imagine you could expect to pay 50% more for a similar job. Of course there is always cheaper, but I'm talking about comparable work.

Although nothing related to paint work surprises me any more ( ) that seems really expensive. We had a girl at the body shop who would do that to save some screwed up paint jobs, especially dark colors, and she got no where near that kind of money. She was a sub contractor, was really good, and saved a lot of cars that should have been repainted. If and when I get my T painted, I am going to use her to buff the h*** out of it.

I would get some second opinions for sure before I laid out that kind of money.

Don

I am having PPG basecoat clear coat done on my 30 roadster which happens to be a Brookville body & fenders. The painter is shocked at how flat 90% of the roadster is. This painter will do the base coat & clear coat. Then I will take the roadster to a high end graphic airbrush specialist who does all the motorcycles around here on this coast & seems to win most of the shows. He is doing true fire/realistic flames on the 32 hood and an area coming out of my Hagan side panels which have two recessed scoops (these will be removed & custom vents will be installed) which will have some minimal flames coming out of each vent drifting back. So I am getting charged to do the custom air brush work, then another fee to clear coat the whole vehicle again (this will be one closed PPG painting system with another system done on top of it with these flames), and the fee was going to be $2250 for me to have this custom air brush painter to have him cut & buff his clear coating which will be above the first closed painting system. I was just wondering if this was out of line or realistic. Maybe this will clarify more of what I am attempting to do. Thanks for your thoughts & advice!!!

I don't know. For a guy who does custom air brush work I would imagine his hourly rate is probably $60.00 or higher per hour. Figure 40 hours to do a cut and buff on the complete car...... When you get into the high dollar custom paint and graphics it's probably not ridiculously out of line.... High by what a lot of shops charge, but based on your information on the work being done it's right in there with the rate for that kind of high end work.....

seems cheap to me for a cut and buff of a quality paint job , now if its just a run of the mill cruze nite paint job then its standard price .

I'm confused. Is the art work included in that $2200 fee?

I am wet sanding and buffing a '48 chevy truck this week. I am into it on my 3rd day now and might be able to finish late today so I will have 30-35 hours in it plus $200.00 in materials.
Bill will be around $1600.00 for the customer.
If you are getting the art work included in your price I think that is a great price.
I am on the east coast....I am sure the West coast is higher

The $2250 price is STRICTLY for the cut and buff alone no air brush work or clear coating or materials is included. Hope mine turns out half as nice as Iceburgh's 32 three window. Yes Denny, I am getting all three of those things, but the aforementioned price covers just the final stage.

For that level of quality on a custom paint job, I just don't think it's really all that bad. I can't even imagine what a money losing project it would be for the shop doing the final cut and buff to goof up and make a sand thru or two on the car!!!!! With all those corners and edges, it sure wouldn't be hard to do!!!! With the level of paint and body work on the car, sure wouldn't want the final cut and buff just going to the lowest bidder.....

There's the difference Davey. You've learned enough to know how to place a value on it.

Originally Posted by stylingZ

I am having my 30 roadster painted and clear coated. For just the cut & buff of this roadster which has metal fenders the price is $2250. Is this way out of line or am I mistaking? This $2250 DOES NOT include the price to shoot the clear or the cost of the clear it simply is the fee for strictly the cutting and buffing! Your opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Sounds a bit high as I paid $4,000.00 total to do the 34.I did help in removing the fenders ,running bds,and etc.It is a show and go type job with little to question. Being on the west coast might be a factor in the cost.I used Dupont paints.


Don In Austin

Originally Posted by Don Dalton

Sounds a bit high as I paid $4,000.00 total to do the 34.I did help in removing the fenders ,running bds,and etc.It is a show and go type job with little to question. Being on the west coast might be a factor in the cost.I used Dupont paints.


Don In Austin

Can't really compare a solid, one color paint job price to one with a lot of graphics that is also using a couple different shops for the total paint job. I would say that for the price, you're car looks great!!! From experience, I'll also say that all the shops involved have a bit of $$$ built in to the price to cover the eventuality of things going wrong, and having to redo some of the car.... Maybe it's not right, but it's the way things are done. When a car goes from shop to shop for different parts of the paint job, you can expect it will cost extra....Both shops are going to be doing their best work possible to prevent the other shop from picking apart their work and having someone to blame if their part of the work goes bad.....

Initially it sounded high, but I think Dave's right. If the work prior to the cutting and buffing is from high class operations, then the detail needed in the final stage may actually be in line with the price.