Projects Eight Thousand Dollars for a paint job?

Hardly any fingerprints but what do I know I love black most.

I'll go stand in the corner now. I posted to similar thread on the bird. I guess I dream of skirts on many different cars, my first car had a factory set so that imprint remains. I admit I almost became upset with a jobber on a PPG purchase. It pisses me off when someone trys to sell me crap and charge extra. How many distributors do you allow to rip you off, just because big institutions want to get in your pocket? Stay out of our offices, stay out of our shops. Do need the best stuff because paint companies make lower quality products these days, more so than in the past. It is not all bad, I too have been preparing for conversion to water bourne, but still require oldschool skills in metal fit (or composite if a composite car) undercoat finish blocking clear buff plus plus.

So you guys say it well it is all about the person who is doing the work. I like the 500 hours. For me it is one man one job done right.

Regards,

 

This one made my day...LOL

 

We do every job as if it will be black and shiny. This is before we actually know what color the car will be painted. Works for us. We have 50+ cars in the shop.

 

I can understand the whole "driver" thinking. I never did undestand the contempt for perfection. Left my last gig and went solo over that very discussion. I can't see making a driver out of a car that's valued more than the national average of a house. As far as whether it's right or wrong, that's rhetoric. I've heard for decades that Packard never went to the extremes that restorers go to for perfection. Bullshit. At least through 47, all Packards were painted black for a visual inspection of the panels and their fits before color was applied. All of them. It's usually a discussion the renders my answer back ("Bullshit!"), but then you open the sales handbooks and other literature, if the discussion merits that, and that ends it. Now Packard didn't build a million cars a year like Ford, but even Ford did a cut and buff on every Model A.

 

Back in the day....and yeah, I'm old enough to remember "back in the day", we would either get an Earl Shieb paint job, or if we couldn't afford it, we would go down to English and buy the stuff to do our own paint. It was just considered part of the build, and everybody's cars showed different skill levels on finish.
It was part of what made the cars different. You could see great fabrication with shitty paint on it. Same as now, only most of us are now lulled into paying more for our paint than we did for our cars.
IT'S PART OF THE BUILD !! Do it yourself, learn one more skill as you progress with your project. We have no qualms about learning to weld, but we run in terror from a paint job. WTF!?!
As much talent and skill as these guys have,and no doubt, they earn their money, i'ts not beyond the grasp of the typical hobbyist to do an adequate job on his car. Enamels and acrylics are still available, and relatively inexpensive, learn to shoot them.
If someone at a show belittles your work, ask them if they have the balls to take on their own paint....
I guess bottom line to this rant is; If you want kickass paint, pay for it and don't bitch. If you want a decent driver level paint job, man up and learn how to do it yourself.
OK, I'm OK now......

 

Fifteen years ago when I painted the flames on the front clip of my '40, I found out what it takes to color sand and polish paint. I am not a professional painter but not afraid to learn new things. I also wanted to participate in all facets of the building of my car. I prepped the front clip for a new black paint base. that meant days of filling and sanding. Then I had a professional lay down several coarts of black. After a month of curing, I scuffed the front clip and laid out the flames with thin tape. Being a designer by trade, I thought I would be able to whip this out in no time flat. After about a dozen restarts on the first two flames, I found the rythem of laying down the "natural" type of flames I was looking for. I stayed away from the 96 louvers on my hood as I was told it would be a bitch to polish later. I flowed the flames very nicely over the hood, sides, fenders and cowl. Then I had to do do the opposite side. Since I liked the natural look, I did not want "symetrical" flames, so the opposite side is completly different than the other. The painter said to me, "you can only see one side at a time" so I agreed.
After he painted the flames, I waited another 2 months to make sure of them drying.
Then came the hard job. I color sanded, "just the front clip", for about 4 hours. My hands were wrinkled and raw. Then, under supervisiom of the painter, I proceeded to polish the front clip. Due to to all the curves, nooks and crannys on a 1940 Chevy front end, it was very time consuming. It's an arm aching, sweaty, tedious job that took me about 10 hours to complete. I even did some by hand as I almost burned through the paint. My body ached, and even though I was a wreck, I thanked him for the opportunity to get involved. My appreciation for paint and finishing was widely opened after that experience.

 

This Cadillac would be a real challenge,,not the painting but the prepping to make sure those 25' lines are all straight..The car looks great..Never polished anything myself so I polished the inside of my tailgate, just to see how it would turn out ,i'm tuckered out,,,no freakin' way I would ever polish the whole truck..

 

I can hear myself with these statements, I catch myself looking up and down at the gaps body line whats under the paint edges, etc...am accused of being a critic but really I am just practicing to see all I can and learn from it. Sometimes will try and point things out to people that are easy for me to see and they never find it, which I feel is the difference between us that strive for perfection and others that are just happy with shine and a different color. In the end I really admire the guy that has the feel for the smallest imperfections while sanding and getting the metal right before the actual color is laid and when done even had the lower rockers as nice as the sides.....Al

 

Cut and buff model A's , every model A ? Must be so I read it on da interweb.....

 

As a working body and paint person in a restoration/custom body shop I see this kind of stuff all the time...... A guy comes to our shop and gets an"estimate" ...... Screams because he thinks we are trying to "rape" him...... Tells me that him and his buddy( who works in a factory) are going to paint the car themselves....... Then 3 months late has the guts to come back and see how much it will cost to straighten out the "paint job" that his buddy applied to his car....... I ALWAYS tell them DOUBLE what I quoted the first time...... I have a 33 Ford coupe in my shop right now that someone put new rockers on and then the owner could not get the running boards to fit on...... Cause there was 2 inches of BONDO on the underside of the NEW rockers..... I have a sign in my office that says......" good work is not cheap.... Cheap work is not good"..............

 

im not knocking any painters, i think you guys deserve some serious respect. but i personally would never pay that much for a paint job. id rather give it a try myself. granted it may not be quite as nice as a bitchin 8k flake job, but i did it myself. to each his own though.

 

dont for get you pinstriper !!!!!!! they have familys to

 

God this is a depressing thread. Body works sucks bad enough. I hate the thought of dealing with shiny paint. I'll never have it because, I'll never put that kind of money into paint for my car knowing that I'll just eventually screw it up.

Still love looking at it though and much respect for those of you that do.

 

My dad did paint work in the '40s' on Hudsons...a quart of virgin nitrocellulose lacquer would thin [or whatever the current term is] into enough to paint one of those barges completely. In the early '70's he repainted the butternut yellow on my sister's '68 Camaro convertible [also sprayed the black nose stripe, since he couldn't find a decal then]. That was his first venture into acrylic enamel...when he finished, he was totally pissed off at the orange peel in the driver's door, but it was late, so he closed the shop and went home. [No paint booth; just the same shop where he did his mechanical work...sprayed to keep the dust down, and with a window-sized exhaust fan.] When he came back the next morning, the paint on that door had "flowed out," as he said it, and was as slick as glass.

Not that any of that means anything to today's finishes.

BUT...I'm awfully leery of today's finishes. In the early '80's my uncle had a late '70's Audi that had one of the first clear-coat finishes I can remember. It was less than 10 years old, and the clear was peeling. Fast-forward to the '97 Pontiac Sunfire my wife bought; in less than 10 years, and despite being told how much "better" the materials were, the clearcoat was also peeling.

So why would I want to put a clearcoat finish of ANY kind on my '52 International pickup I'm building? When the materials are as expensive as they are today, and when my truck's not going to be a show vehicle, what's available out there that WILL last for a finish? Obviously, I haven't had any dealings with paint and related materials since the late 1980's, so most of what I know is antique technology these days...but I DO know that I don't want peeling clearcoat on my truck. But my truck WILL be driven...and I'll probably encounter bugs, gravel, and whatnot.

I guess I'm asking: Is there ANY durable finish out there anymore, that won't leave me with peeling clearcoat?

 

I guess I'm asking: Is there ANY durable finish out there anymore, that won't leave me with peeling clearcoat?[/QUOTE]

Don't worry, this is NOT the 80's.
Today's paints are much better, and you usually don't see that sort of clearcoat peeling that you used to, when BC/CC was a new product.
If you don't want clear, get Single Stage Urethane, or acrylic enamel, or lacquer, if you can find it.

But there's nothing inherintly wrong with clear. Most times, now-a-days, it's improper technique, or bad product that give you problems with clear delamination. Not common any more.

 

We're in the middle of this right now with my son's OT '71 truck. He was blown away by the cost of the materials and labor to paint what is a pretty decent truck. I told him this is why you always buy the best vehicle you can afford, these "projects" will cost you more time and money in the long run. He's learning.

 

Why you would be leery of a CC paint job because of something at happened at a manufacturer during the 80s is beyond me. Can you use that analogy on other things in your life?? Seriously its ridiculous. And it wasn't so much the material tghat caused the problems as it was their application technique. Private paint with CC didn't peel as the manufacturers did . . did it??

 

It's a chain, and only as strong as the weakest link.

Clear coat connected to the base coat
Base coat connected to the sealer.
Sealer connected to the primer that better be blocked correctly and flat.
Primer connected to the high build primer.
High build primer connected to the icing.
Icing connected to the body filler.
Body filler connected to the steel.
Steel better be right.

Every step from the steel out costs twice as much and takes twice as long as the one before it and is less forgiveing until you get to the sealer. At that point it speeds up considerably, gets very expensive and every sin prior is magnified 10 fold.

 

This seems like a pretty useful way of thinking. My halting, hack-like attempts at bodywork have proven this to hold true so far!

 

Very true. Good job of illustrating that for people. Most have no idea how hard it is to make sure nothing goes wrong. It's an art.

 

Right on Zeke!! Isn't this the Jalopy Journal? Not the Billet Journal or Barret Jackson Journal or StreetRodder Journal. Went to the LAR Show this past Sat and there were some great jalopies there - lots of 32's and many many others w/o $8K paint jobs!

 

I had no idea my wife's '97 Sunfire was painted in the '80's.

Learn something new every day, I suppose.

It's just that I keep hearing how the base/clear paints of today are SO much better than the "old" base/clear...and yet, the results seem to be the same, even cars built [and painted] 20 years apart. Theoretically, the technology keeps getting better...but the results I've seen don't make me confident in base/clear paint. I'm thinking it's more like the old AAMCO commercials, where the transmission was build 18..no, NINEteen times...and it was "MUCH much better than new"...as they towed the car back to the shop one more time.

I'm 57 years old...and I only want to paint my truck ONCE, whether I live to be 60, or 80, or more...because I doubt I could AFFORD to do it more than once. I'm not with the brush-and-roller crowd, and I'm not with the aerosol "spray bomb" crowd...but I don't want to, essentially, throw away my dollars on a paint job that isn't going to last.

 

I cant put that kind of money in paint. Now before ya go feelin all sorry for me and all, I begrudge no man his worthy due. The good/decent jobs are worth every cent. The poor ones are too. I wanted to play with flames. I've always wanted to do this. I drive the local car paint joint and find the 1/4" masking tape.
No price, by the hook,cant be much, a roll at bigbox is 1.99
$14.00.
I hope I get good quick.

 

Delamination used to be a big problem, but hardly anymore. A good quality base/clear will outlast you, if applied correctly.

If it's a solid color it's not a huge deal, except that clear will help prevent fading. If it's a metallic the clear helps even more, you can buff out that top layer and not screw up your metallics that are of course suspended within your basecoat. Lots of advantages of base-clear. I could go on and on.

 

Totally agree 8flat, part of what makes people worry is that they are not knowledgeable about painting. They see a problem and figure its the paint. Most of the delamination is appllication problems. I have said it before . . you don't see privately painted cars have delamination problems. It was a manufacturing problem to explain it easily.

 

When I hear somebody say 'paint job' I have this vision of a bunch of illegals working in an alley just scuffing and spraying a car for a couple hundred bucks. So I tend to not say 'paint job' so much.

 

ha..good point.

But, I wouldn't really fault a guy to use single stage if he was worried about B/C, (most of these cars will be stored inside anyway). Heck, peace of mind, whether the concern is warranted or not, is worth something.

Well, unless he wanted to do a single stage metallic or pearl job, then I would really really try to talk him into B/C...yikes. I have flashbacks of trying to fog on DuPont Centari metallic trying to get the mottling out....thank God base/clear came along!

 

I still spray single stage urethane ( not AE . if I can help it ). But, it's always a solid color. I have no reason to ever spray a metallic SS anymore . . no reason at all.

 

PS: Chaz, that car is really looking good!

 

The main cause for clearcoat peeling is that the color coat is being destroyed by the ultra violet rays of the sun.

The clearcoat is suposed to absorb the sun's rays. If you use a cheap clear, or put it on too thin, or sand and buff it too much, it does not do it's job.