Thread: whats a good price on a paint job

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Originally Posted by stovens

At the last car show here locally, a guy had a 57 Chevy 2 door in twotone green. He took it to Maaco and provided his own paint. They did a beautiful job and color sanded followed by clear coating. He said it was about 3500.00 Mind you he did all the prep and provided the paint. He said there was still a bit to do for around 1500.00 more. I think the comment of going to the cheap fast paced centers is valid. They may use cheap product, but they do know how to paint! For me I'll never pay 10k for paint, because I have way to many things that need to be done that I can't afford that for a weekend driver. But I can tell you summit is selling paint and clear coat, etc. that one of the hotrod magazines featured a few years ago. The paint isn't expensive, and it's suppose to be good quality. One of the guys at the Nevada store, showed me his car, that he painted with it. It looked fantastic to me. I bought their paint for when I paint my truck, but meanwhile the air quality laws changed in this part of California, to where it would be illegal to spray here. 45 minutes north of here it is still leagal! So I guess when the time comes, I'll go to a Maaco far enough north to get it sprayed!
I'm not advocating buying cheap stuff, or low quality, because in the end you will get what you pay for, but it depends on what you can afford and living within your means. Do the best you can with what you can. Many people on here have built some fine cars for reasonable budgets. Will they be featured in GOODGUYS, probably not, but who cares. As long as your happy with it, then it's good enough. In this economy it's a miracle people have 20k for a paintjob!

This misconception of "cheap paint shop" is that all paint shops are different, in my area I have a top quality HotRod shop that turns out outstanding paint jobs, funny part is, they use the same high line products that I do and there are times where we swap inventory back and forth if one of us is in a pinch. At the same time, I do offer a lower paint line (same manufacturer) for my single stage paint jobs. Two separate racks mixing roughly 68-100+ different toners, binders, etc for each one. Walk into a shop and ask to see what they use for their high end base/clear paint jobs. if they show you Nason, Dimension, or or some no name that you have never heard, walk away. As for PPG vs Dupont, vs Sherwin Williams, I'll let you in on a little secret, there are only two major manufacturing plants for paints sold in the US, one is owned by SW, the other is owned by Dupont.......Think about that one for a while........

Also, look at what the shop is equipped with in regards to spray guns, ask what the painter prefers in regards to this. if you see a pressure pot sitting on the floor with an old Devilbuss paint gun attached, again, walk away. if you see a nice Iwata or Sata gun (actually multiple guns), then perhaps it is worth the time to stick around and ask more questions.........



Bill S.