so what does a paint job go for these days?

Damn, I was thinking that I got hosed on my paint job and was sorta peeved about it, but I guess not. I just had my Ranchero painted for $2000.00. I had already done all the heavy body work (quarter panels, bottom side of fenders, the usual rust stuff) and I had already done the inside (door jams, under the hood, etc). The body dhop did the final blck sandy, some light body work and sprayed her. The job came out I would say an good 8.5 on a 10 scale. No "show quality", but pretty darn good.

 

as far as bodywork and paint, you get what you pay for. you want a $200.00 maaco job, don't expect much. you want it done right, spend the extra coin for a good job. do it once, do it right, or don't do it at all!

 

Do the body work yourself, take it to Earl Schieb or Macco and have them spray it... Wait about a week then color sand and buff it yourself. You'll get something decent for a low price.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how people will sink a gazillion dollars into a motor, or tires and wheels,chrome and uhpolstery, and then scrimp on the paint and bodywork. Some guys think they can do the bodywork themselves, and that everything is straight when they get it in primer, cause it "looks" straight. Kinda like the guy who posted this thread, the car is already in primer, but the gaps aren't tuned. The project has already been started ass backwards, and now he expects to get a dealeo on the paint job because he's already "done all the bodywork." Some poor guy somwhere, is gonna have to starighten out all the shit that some car owner has tried to do himself to save money. What it all boils down to in the end, is that the paint and bodywork, is the presentation of the car. In effect, it IS the car. It is what makes yo either walk on up and take a look, or just walk on by. Some guys get away with doing a decent do-it-yourselfer,and that's great, if you can pull it off and live with the outcome. There's not a painter out there worth his salt that didn't started off by saying, "I can do this." But it is the years spent fixing fuckups that separates the men from the boys. If you want a cheap paint job, there is one out there. If you want a great paint job, they cost money...

 

i dont know what kind of paint you guys are buying!!!!you can buy a gallon of base for about $200.00 clear for $90.00.yes you can buy some paint from HOC for $500.00 a pint but why?if you use a basecoat/clearcoat,why spend the money on color?spend it on clear!!i just painted my car for $75.00.the clear is napa's crossfire.i got two gallons for free because they were "old".pint of black enamel $10.00 flake!$13.00 $50.00 for new actavater and reduser.if i would have bought the clear it would have cost me $275.00.forgot to ad primer,$50.00

 

btw for 10/12 grand you can paint it,find the flaws that you didnt see and reshoot it{which i have seen many body shops do}about 15 times.i guess that if i build a car,i want to take all of the credit for it.i dont want to say{ this guy built the motor,this guy built the chassi,this guy put the motor and body together,this guy put the rearend and brakes in it and this guy painted it.}!!!!!if you have to say more than one of these than you didnt build it someone else did,you just payed for it.

 

This is the only show quality paint job I've ever had done so far.
Greg Anderson in Princeton, Mn. He did a phenominal job.
The body work was done but he brought it up to his standards. Had to do some fiberglass repair. Monkey around with the gold powder for the skunk stripes and getting the stripe dimensions to Shelby spec. His wife said he spent a lot of time getting it "just right".
The old Rent a Racer was a thing of beauty. So smooth you could save in the reflection. All that in black for 6 grand. I'd go to Greg for paint in a heartbeat.

 

good , fast , cheap, pick one

 

Dam..prices are all over the board.

Ive been told between 6 and 10G's to do my A Tudor

Guess I'll be doing it myself with what I have, when Or if I get to that point.
unless i run into some one willing to give me a bargain..
I know you "get what you pay for" and all
but i have seen some really nice work that was done very in-expensively, so it makes me wonder when i see two cars that have about the same quality paint job done for 2 very different prices..even years and years later (when all the trouble should show up) but they both still look great..
humm?

 

I think Vintage Color's jobs start at $40,000

 

Is that Darryl Hollenbeck's shop?

 

Yep, I usually won't even take one in that someone else did the bodywork. I have never seen one show up at a shop "ready for paint"...

Your prices are all over the board, and for the record just bought a gallon of HOK base and it was $200. HOK is not that expensive to use, it's usually cheaper for me to use than PPG. And primer for $50, how do you do a whole car with a quart?

Not likely. Reality please. If a shop has reshot the car 15 times they lost money. After all the work and the 100's of hours it takes to get a car straight, the final blocking before base should have taken care of any imperfections. I'll say that there are times where something happens and you sand and reshoot, and a lot of times you color sand in between coats. But 15 times, not with decent paint, that'll kill your bottom line.

 

Yep. His work is absolutely flawless though.

 

I have seen a few of his paint jobs and they look like you could fall right into them. Doesn't surprise me that they go for that much.

 

I guess I have low standards because I only spent $300 on paint and supplies and had my truck sanded, rust bondoed and painted in 3 days and I think it looks damn good. Although, I didn't get it sanded good in some places and would like to redo it eventually. What should I expect for a quickie paint job.

 

i had a deuce highboy painted by a small one man shop. the estimate was $6720.00, in the end it cost me over $15,000.00 and took one year-eleven and a half months to complete. NEVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! body shops are worst than used car salesmen and remodeling contractors.IMHO

 

I know good painters that drool at the opportunity to paint a car for a thousand, not counting the body work and prep.
I'm a man of modest means, so paying them is out of the question. I would suggest that anybody that don't like my paint job can go for a long walk off a short pier, because if I'm happy with it, it don't matter what anybody else thinks. In '05 we did the Chivvy Custom with Imron(polyure...), at that time it was $100 for 4/5 of a gallon, with room for reducer and activator, no buffing, no clear coat, and when people ask me what I polish it with thay look at me like I'm lyin' when I tell them "nothing, I wash it with mild soap and water and rinse it with clear water, then dry it off with a chammi", which ain't no lie. It still continually gets good reviews from almost everybody, and I drive it 3 or 4 times a week.
Two years ago I bought a gallon of Acrylic Enamel for touchup, $85 , and you can't tell what part I redid with the Acrylic from the Polyurethane.

If a paint job cost me more than $250 for the paint and supplies, then I'd have to find an alternative. So sad, I'm destined to do all the dirty prep work myself, UH!

Cost of outside Labor? A good prep man can do a pretty bad car in about 40 hours, getting it ready for first primer coat. Figure that out, depending on what labor is worth. Most shops I know don't use employees to do the dirty prep work, they hire "private contractors" off the street for a couple of bucks above minimum.

A good painter is worth every penny of $40 to $60 an hour, but it's my opinion that a good painter is one that can shoot most paints without needing to buff afterwards, and with a (one color) job should be able to do the under the hood/trunk/inside doors in a half a day, and after it's prepped again finish off the outside of a car in a day.

So, since I can rent a booth for a hundred a day, I think I would also drool if I was able to get a grand per (one color, one step) job, with over half of that going to somebody that wasn't afraid of work doing my dirty work for me.........

But, I'm retired, and will leave that to the young and the enterprising.

 

First off, they were two different cars, no two are alike, and each has it's own amount of work to be done before it's sprayed.
Second, I would question if you even know what you are looking at in the first place?...

 

Got to agree with this man. The last quote I got was for $3500 to shoot my A coupe with no hood sides, no running boards and cycle fenders. That was two years ago and I put it on hold. I have no doubt that there are 10, 20 and 100K paint jobs-reflecting the materials,time and expertise of the painter.

However, this is a traditional hotrod site and I would bet most rodders from the 40's and 50's weren't paying 25-100+% of their annual incomes to paint their cars.

Paint your car as you'd like, but don't call it "traditional".

 

This is an age old question.

You can paint a car yourself or have it squirted for less than $500 and then have a 'less than $500 paint job' looking car (ok for some, including one of my drivers...)

If you know what you are doing, then you can make a car look pretty decent for cheap yourself, but if you really add up EVERYTHING, you will be surprised how much it really costs.

If you want it done right, and you are going to pay someone else to do it, you have no choice but to order up at least 50-100 hours of labor at $50 plus an hour, probably more... That is $2,500-5,000 MINIMUM in labor alone, no materials yet...

Then again, if you want killer show quality, consider adding a zero (really...) I have spoken with owners who have paid $50,000 to $100,000 and even much more for the high end paint jobs.

This is one of the more debatable questions in the hobby, probably not unlike the difference between a $100 junkyard sbc and a $50,000 custom billet aluminum blown and injected Hemi. Both get you down the road, albeit at different prices and quality levels...

 

I got my shoebox totally redone,blocked aligned,sanded,all trim off .trunk worked on,roof flaked and some expensive new euro clear coat,it was gone for 4 months and it cost me $4,500 and thats with a friend hook up..this shit is expensive.It can come down to"looks good from far, but its far from good".

 

i paid a unreasonable amount for metallic pearl on my bike frame tank and forks its perty and i love it but i will never have someone paint my shit again im a one man rattle can band !

 

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm betting a custom Barris or Bertolucci paint job would've cost a pretty penny back in the forties or fifties. I wouldn't be surprised if flashy paint jobs cost a significant percentage of the owner's annual income even back then.

 

i remember back in 72 or so the shop i worked in got 150-200 for regular enamel jobs , and laquer was in the 400 range.
i recall talking with the owner and bodyman one night with a customer, and we were all amazed that a guy had just paid junior 1000.00 to paint his car.
i think the percentages are still pretty close, maybe just fewer went for the big dollar jobs back when.
nowdays seems like every kid has tens of thousands to pour into his truck, or car



skull

 

yep, not to mention Watson or any of the others. This whole "it's only traditional if you do it yourself" is a bunch of bullshit posturing. All the shit flinging over gold chainers is bullshit as well. You wouldn't have any cars from the famous builders then if someone wasn't footing the bill.

 

i said that for 10/20 grand YOU can repaint it more than 15 times!there was a body shop next to my old shop and i would see him spray a car black just to find the miner imperfections.then he would address them and reshoot it.

 

if it aint right..paint it white..lol

 

also if people have 20/100 grand just to paint there car thats sick.thats more than i have in my house!!!what kind of car would take 2500 hours to paint{titanic maybe}i just dont get why people are so affraid to paint there car.my first paintjob came out pretty good but i was affraid to wetsand and rub it out so i want to a auto detail shop started to talk to the guy that did it and for $50.00 and some beer he came over and helped me sand it and he buffed it.he was glad to do it because that was more than double what he would have made at work.

 

if your time is worth nothing and you're using cheap ass paint maybe. Don't forget consumables. Paper, tape, cleaner, abrasives, etc. This is the stuff that will blow out a budget in a heart beat. I regularly see well above $1500 in supplies and materials for a paint job.

 

Yeah, so you can see how bad the panel alignment is. The two most unforgiving colors are white and black. Each for their own reasons...