Socal bodyshop recommendation?

[mutantZ]

Looking for an autobody shop in the area that won't fill my car up with 50 cans of bondo. My car is off to get media blasted and I will be doing most of the metal patching on the car. I just need someone to do the final mile of getting the body straight and panels aligned/gapped. I am not looking for concourse quality but I also don't want it to look like it has more waves than the ocean. Anyone have any recommended places? I've called a few porsche shops but porsche people seem to think 30k is a good starting figure for this sort of thing 😄

[JMortensen]

I paid $2500 for a paint job in the 90s. That's like $60K now.  Actually ~$4600, just looked it up.

From experience, I would suggest that you will do it better than an inexpensive shop will, and a respray on a classic car is going to be the project in the back of the shop that they work on when they don't have fender benders coming through, so you'll be in paint jail for a while. My $2500 job had runs everywhere and crazy amounts of orange peel, you could see the original red creeping out from the silver that it was painted with, etc. I was really unahappy with it.

When I painted my car again after turning it into a race car I did a Rustoleum paint job and shot it with Harbor Freight spray gun. It turned out much better than the $2500 in terms of the paint itself. I didn't try to make it straight, so that did make it quite a bit easier.

Suggestion: do all the prep and then take it to MAACO or someplace like that, preferably with the fenders, cowl, headlight buckets removed. Have them shoot it and then reassemble. 

[Zetsaz]

I paid $6300 for my paint job a couple summers ago. To be honest it may have been low for the level of work done (the $300 over is from triple stage since I chose to go with Lexus "Ultra Sonic Blue Mica 2.0" but slightly adjusted to be a bit darker so it only really POPPED in daylight)

 

I will second @JMortensen, jobs like this are the sort most places will just have in the back while they're working on insurance work. I got mine done by a Mexican guy that used to do customs in California but has basically exclusively done insurance work lately. I was lucky enough that he was up for doing a full car because he hadn't in a very long time, but at less than a month start to finish as that shops only project he probably actually lost a tiny bit of money on the hours.

 

If we had taken more time with it and spent closer to 7k+ it would have been closer to perfect. It's a great job and I'm happy for the price, but certain things just take more time and imperfections on anything done relatively fast start to show. 

 

I saved some helping with assembly, but agree with Jon again. Do all your prep to your standards, take it in taken apart so they know exactly which parts you want apart and what you want sprayed, then assemble yourself slowly.

[mutantZ]

Thanks guys. I do have a bit of a budget to get this done, I just don't want it to turn into a runaway expense. I'm good doing final assembly, metal patching, and drive train, but bodywork is my kryptonite. I just don't have the patience to do it right.

 

14 hours ago, Zetsaz said:

I got mine done by a Mexican guy that used to do customs in California but has basically exclusively done insurance work lately. I was lucky enough that he was up for doing a full car because he hadn't in a very long time, but at less than a month start to finish as that shops only project he probably actually lost a tiny bit of money on the hours.

 

Do you still have the name of the guy or if he still does this? My main goal is to not get ripped off and my car disappearing (happened to me a long time ago when I was doing my first car project).

 

[AydinZ71]

@JMortensen Second everything you said Jon

 

@mutantZ Was in the same boat as you about six months ago. Since I had taken the car down to bare-metal and performed all the welding work, I was ready for refinishing. I quickly realized even a $10k budget was insufficient to get the entire car refinished, inside and out. I joined an auto body and paint forum, and started researching a ton. I got the recommended guns for primer and paint, got my stash of materials together and hit it hard. I painted the whole interior in 1-2 months in stages, so I could get-in and do a decent job. I have been in external body-work hell since then, sealing panels, spreading filler, sanding, etc. 

 

Don't be afraid of filler. If you are doing the metal work yourself, you will be in control of how much filler you ultimately need. Use a straight edge, and make sure none of your low spots are any deeper than 1/4" (much less preferred). No body on an avg. 50-year old car will be straight, and the only option you have is a combo of metal and filler work. 

 

Getting a body straight is mind-numbingly time consuming, and there are no shortcuts. Just a handful of blocks, sandpaper, and filler. 

 

If you change your mind and decide to get some of the body work done yourself, let me know. Happy to share my experiences and learnings. I am just north of Glendale. You can come see my tools and work, and see if you want to do something similar. 

 

Since I don't have a booth, I am considering finding a talented local painter to do the final base/clear on the exterior but have not found someone yet. I should be done with bodywork in about 1-2 months, and it will still likely be too cold/humid to get a decent finish with urethane without a ton of cut/buff. If you find someone you trust, please do let me know!

[Zetsaz]

1 hour ago, mutantZ said:

Thanks guys. I do have a bit of a budget to get this done, I just don't want it to turn into a runaway expense. I'm good doing final assembly, metal patching, and drive train, but bodywork is my kryptonite. I just don't have the patience to do it right.

 

 

Do you still have the name of the guy or if he still does this? My main goal is to not get ripped off and my car disappearing (happened to me a long time ago when I was doing my first car project).

 

Oh sorry, considering your location I should have been more clear haha. My paint job was done in Utah He did more full jobs when he lived in California. Since he hadn't done it in ages he was up for it.

[Dat73z]

From what I've heard and seen from local vintage Porsche guys, if you're going to pay someone it's a lot cheaper to send it out of state. Apparently Idaho has some great body and paint shops.

 

With the way the world has been going this past few years, the discount is probably less but even with transport I wouldn't be surprised if you save more than a few K over paying someone legitimate in SoCal to do it. 

 

On my fairly straight and mostly rust free but tired car I've been quoted 10-20k+ locally in the Bay Area CA with me doing a lot of the disassembly and of course all of the reassembly. Basically scuff and spray with some minor bodywork. 

[mutantZ]

I originally was going to send my car out for dipping, but the quotes I was getting to get the car there and back was 3x's the cost of the dip! 6k round trip per person with 2 cars minimum required. And this was just going to Oregon!

[calZ]

I'm in LA as well and have been thinking for quite a while about taking my car to Metalworks in Eugene. If I get it dipped I'd really like to get it e-coated, though. There used to be a place in Seattle that did it, but they closed down during the pandemic. 

[mutantZ]

3 hours ago, calZ said:

I'm in LA as well and have been thinking for quite a while about taking my car to Metalworks in Eugene. If I get it dipped I'd really like to get it e-coated, though. There used to be a place in Seattle that did it, but they closed down during the pandemic. 

That was the place I called. It's reasonable for the dip: around 1800-2200. Its the transport that was insane. I just sent it to Calblast in san bernadino, I figured they will get most of the rust and I didn't need to scrape the undercoating off before I sent it.

[calZ]

The horror stories I've heard about warping make me uneasy about blasting. What type of media do they use? 

[mutantZ]

Baking soda. Most of the warpage comes from sand heating up the metal from friction. These guys have done datsuns in the past. The ones to watch out for are the dustless blaster guys, I've seen a lot of videos of media being caked up inside frame rails and panels. To be fair, thats not really the purpose of that kind of blasting.

[AydinZ71]

I can give some insight on both topics. I first had my doors (already just the shell, lightened by PO as a race car) media blasted. They definitely warped. I had to do some metal shrinking to get it back to a similar shape. It’s subtle. You can’t see it, but you will scratch your head why it doesn’t quite go ont he same way it did when you pulled it off. Our sheet metal is around 20-gauge for a 240z. Not sure if it’s the same for 260z+, but that’s really thin.

 

After calling many places, I found the ONE guy who seems to still be doing dipping here in the LA area for individual customers (not some big large volume contract). He is this hardcore looking dude covered in tattoos and an old school east LA widows peak. his little shop is in Van Nuys. Most of the dippers have moved out of state or gone out of business because of local OSHA and AQMD regulations. My fenders cost $150 each, and small items (like a valve cover) costed $45. Not cheap.

 

try looking into “vapor blasting”. I believe the water keeps the surface cool while the media still removes the finish. Found a guy in Lancaster who would do a whole car for $850 if you delivered it to him. 
 

my fenders now have a layer of epoxy sealer on them. The wheel well side is finished with a single stage two component black urethane I sprayed, and the outside is waiting for me to scuff the epoxy and get a skim layer of filler. 

[mutantZ]

I'm ok with a tiny amount of warp- heck my panels are a bit warped already i can tell with that popping flex in the roof. Depending on how many holes are revealed in my hood/hatch I may try a remanufactured panel instead of fixing it.  I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

 

Dipping a car is a great option if you can get the car there yourself (though I have read some horror stories of seepage from areas that have seam sealer that bubble paint for years). It would just end up costing me too much lost income/time for it to make sense for me. For blasting, it sounds a lot like it depends on where you go. I usually check and see if they did Datsuns before since our cars are so flimsy in terms of bodywork.

 

In my research for a place, I found it funny that our Datsuns would randomly show up in pics mixed in with a TON of porsches. Thanks BringATrailer! 😂