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Paint it myself or $600 maaco paint job?


72_NorCal_240z

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I'm faced with a dilemma. I have a 72 240z that I'm in the process of painting. I've done about 90% if the prep myself, spending an hour here and an hour there over the last 8 months getting it to this point. but also juggling my Job, my house, my 7 month old baby boy, and all the other things that are involved in adult life, I can't decide which way I should go with this project.

 

I've never painted anything of this nature. I have a garage that I could paint in, but it is rather small. I have most of the tools to paint already, and even some PPG primer to start with. I know this car isn't going to be a show car. It has the usual z car rust spots, the worst of which I've patched, but it does have a couple spots on the body by the doors that I just don't have a desire to fix properly right now. Other than that the body has straight lines and is in very good condition. I'm a very DIY kinda guy, I love home projects, but its been almost a year since I drove my Z, and I want to get it on the road badly!

 

With that being said, my other option is to take it to Maaco, and have them spray the car. I've already talked to the owner and for 600 he'd paint it with their 3rd tier paint 'single stage poly' but since the car is in peices he said its acutally more labor to paint that way cause it takes up more space and they have to paint items (fenders, hood, lights buckets etc) individually. I know 600 isn't much for a paint job, and I don't expect it to be that much better than what I could do, but they do spray cars every day and I'm sure they have the techniques down, and so the quality of their job would be in the quality of my prep work. This is obviously a much quicker way of getting the car done, but at the expense of several hundred dollars compared to painting it myself were all I'd need is paint.

 

Sorry guys just using this as a sounding board to sway me in one direction. maybe some of you have had similar paths and would like to share some advice. any thing is appreciated!

 

Thanks

 

oh and here's a picture of my garage with the project in question

zproject_thumb.jpg

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dont do maaco

single stage means no clearcoat

single stage also fades faster and limits polishing out the scratches regular washing causes

the reason why they want the car together is cus they dont do jams under hood inside ect.

They also dont care about dust

If the car is together and not masked properly dust will ruin all your nice prep work

Nobody likes pimpled paint.

Paint it yourself if you know how to work your gun and have access to the materials if not save your money and pay a better shop 90% of the shops out there are better and your baby deserves them

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The quality of Maaco jobs varies from shop to shop. Take a look at the finished paint jobs at the Maaco you got a quote from. If you are happy with the quality, I'd say go for it. As you said, your car isn't perfect, and you want it back on the road. I think the "single stage is bad" argument is invalid, since your car came with single stage from the factory. Cared for properly, single stage paint jobs can last decades.

 

I went through the trouble of doing it myself ( here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=104557 and here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=105466 ), but I can tell you that it cost way more than $600 in the end, just for supplies. And that's not counting the number of hours pre AND post paint that was required (after all, time is money).

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Check out some of the small paint shops in the area, some of them are in the same ballpark on price. I had mine done in a small shop in AZ and got it painted with the stripes cheaper than maaco. It not a show quality job but sure looks good driving down the road.

Prep is everything. Take off anything that needs masked off if possible. That is where most flaws are. It really depends on what you want.

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The quality of Maaco jobs varies from shop to shop. Take a look at the finished paint jobs at the Maaco you got a quote from. If you are happy with the quality, I'd say go for it. As you said, your car isn't perfect, and you want it back on the road. I think the "single stage is bad" argument is invalid, since your car came with single stage from the factory. Cared for properly, single stage paint jobs can last decades.

 

I went through the trouble of doing it myself ( here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=104557 and here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=105466 ), but I can tell you that it cost way more than $600 in the end, just for supplies. And that's not counting the number of hours pre AND post paint that was required (after all, time is money).

 

I agree, it does vary from shop to shop. There's a local Maaco here that a friend of mine took his Eclipse to afew years back and had it done for 1000$. That was all the door jams, engine bay and clearcoat. It came out really nice, I was surprised. I'll probably take the Z there when it needs a spray.

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I've seen some pretty good Maaco jobs.

 

I'd say before you start thinking about spraying it yourself, look into the expenses in creating your own paint booth. You want to make sure you have a proper space to spray it safely and correctly. It can be quite a hefty sum of money just to set up the booth. Do some google searches on home paint booths and get some ideas. Lots of people use wood framing and vinyl sheeting with good fans, etc.

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