KENS78SILVERANNIV

Got a quote today from a local body and paint shop to repaint my two tone silver anniversary. GULP! $10,750.00!
This is a car with very minor body work and never been hit. The owner explained to me that it would take more than a month to fully prep the car and "do it right." I only paid $2,500.00 for the whole car!
He says it's not worth it (labor wise) to take on the job and he's not the first... several other shops have flat refused it saying the time involved is more profitable doing insurance work.
I'm now looking at compressors and spray guns to do it myself. :eek:

QuickVet

i will paint it with a paintball gun :yesnod:

daily_driver

holy #@@!@#@! !!

and i thought i was dumb getting my 300 dollar maaco paintjobs!!

i better count my blessings!!!

:yesnod:

Chris@VetteFinders

Run away. Way too much.

Chris Fowler

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

JB

Those two tone paint jobs are pricey, but shouldn't be that pricey. Also consider that you have to buy the striping kits for the car as well--a couple hundred dollars for that, too, if I remember right.

When I get mine painted, I'm afraid I'm just going to get it painted red. I like the two tone, but for a car with a growing number of non-original sorts of stuff on it (later seats, radio, engine parts, etc.), it doesn't seem worth it to keep it that way.

JB

'78SA

Paul L

Yes, the shop does not want your business. I went through this with the likes of Maaco two years ago. They gave me outrageous quotes to drive me away. Unfortunately this happened five times with various high-volume chains. The fender-bender/get-em-out-of-here-quick business is where the big dollars are. I finally found a shop that appreciated vintage cars and gave me what I wanted: DuPont Chroma Premier base/clear. You really have to find someone who "likes" old cars as prep is so time consuming. If I remember correctly, I paid for almost 60 hours of prep on this job. And no body work involved! They had the car for two weeks but that was fine with me. Check with your local Corvette club. They can steer you in the right and reasonably priced direction. BTW, the price of this job was $2,700US.

Chris@VetteFinders

For comparison, I paid $5,500 to do it right. Mine is a two-tone. I had quite a bit of detail work done and all of the assembly.

Paul L

Rhys,
Just an observation from this and previous posts on paint. Labour rates seem to vary substantially from region to region and indeed from country to country. The rate on my paint job was $45CDN/hr or about $27US. The price of $2,700US included installation of new door panels, new emblems and all weatherstripping. I guess that we in Canada, despite our terribly weak dollar, can count our blessings in this example.

Chris@VetteFinders

Yep, but double the rate from FL to CA is not acceptable.

Neo Fender

The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced that I'm going to respray my car myself. I have a couple of friends who are willing to loan me equipment. My biggest expense will be consumable items. I can't see anything being over $1,000, probably much less. I was quoted by a reputable shop a price of $5,000. 6-7 months, 4-5 months during winter. :bs The guy was just loooking for a project for when business was slow. I can park my car in my own garage for free.

The way I see it, anyone who can turn a wrench on a corvette can probably paint one too.

Paul 75 L82

Check out the pic in my sig and check out the pic's on my web site. To strip and sand yourself is about 100 hours of work. I'm going to seal & prime myself and then it looks like about $1,200 to $1,500 to have BC/CC and buff. If you want any info on stripping email me.

fastback79

The quote you received is absolutely ridiculous. I started fooling around with the rear deck on my 79. First I started at 800 grit wetsanding and worked my way up to 1500. Next I applied a couple light coats of GM Black in a spray can from a company called the MOTOR COMPANY who duplicates original GM colors in spray cans. Cans are about 15$ per. After applying the paint, I used a polisher and the panel came out gorgeous. It is a lot of work, but wil save you money. If you want the phone # of the paint company look in Hemmings or send me an E-mail.

vettfixr

They really don't want to paint your car with a price quote like that. I've painted my 74 twice and spraying the paint isn't that big a deal. All of the work is in the prep and in the final finishing. You can strip your car yourself for about $100. That's about the price of 4 gallons of Capt'n Lee's stripper which I've used twice and highly recommend. Once you've stripped the car you can decide whether you want to tackle the body repairs yourself or farm that work out to someone more skilled. Personally I think fiberglass is a lot easier to repair than metal cars and should be something that most gearheads can perform. I painted my car in lacquer because it's a much safer paint to spray and is more forgiving than urethane. Lacquer can be sprayed with a standard respirator without danger. Urethane must be sprayed with a fresh air respirator in order to be safe. These respirators run around $400-$500 from companies like Hobby Air. If you don't use one of these respirators you risk damage to your lungs, cancer, or death. If you don't believe me go on http://www.autobodystore.com and ask the experts who do it for a living. Urethane is also more expensive for materials. You can paint a car in lacquer for under $500 in materials while urethane, including reducers, hardeners, etc., will run you more than $1000. Once the two paints are sprayed the only difference in finishing them off is time. Lacquer must dry at least a month (and longer is better) before color sanding and buffing. Urethane should be color sanded 24 hours after spraying and then buffed. To do the job right you will need sandpaper in the range of 1000 - 2000 grit, a variable speed buffer, assorted cutting and polishing bonnets, compound and swirl reducer. If you start to total all of this up(not including the cost of a compressor and an amateur grade spray gun) you can see how the cost of a basecoat/clearcoat paint job can rapidly approach the $3000 mark. Of course you will then have the equipment and experience you need to do other paint jobs in the future but the first one will be the most expensive. From what I've heard on other posts like this you can save about half of the cost of a paint job by doing it yourself, you just have to be willing to invest the time to study what must be done and make sure you follow all the safety rules. I have some things on my website under restoration topics on painting if you want to take a look. Sorry to be so longwinded but I hope this helps you understand why the cost of painting your car is so high. Good luck.
:seeya

lars

Hate to tell you this, but $10K is about what you should expect to pay for a nice job out in CA. This is due in part to labor rates out there. Here in CO, our body shop labor rates just went to about $40 per hour. In CA, your shops are running about $75. These rates are set by the insurance industry, and a shop isn't going to discount its rate to do a resto job.

It takes at about 120 hours of hard-core work to prep and paint a C3 (3 weeks full time work for one guy). If you do it in less, you're cutting corners. Material costs to do it right run just over $1,200 (that's my cost, and I don't pay retail). 120 hours times $40 is $4800 just for labor, and that assumes that the car does not need much, if any, body work - that's just prep, disassemble, sand, strip, prime, block-and-re-prime, paint, clearcoat, sand and rub. Add the $1200 in materials, and I quote $6500 as an entry-level price for a C3 paint job in Colorado. Since your labor rates are at $75-80/hour, it puts your base entry-level labor at $9000 (for 120 hours work), and add at least $1200 for materials, and the cost is right up over $10K for something decent. Sounds about right to me. A guy who is good isn't going to work for $20 an hour. Makes doing it yourself seem pretty attractive, eh? Drop me a note if you want a copy of my paper on how to do it yourself.


[Modified by lars, 12:25 PM 10/30/2001]

azvetmn

How close to LA are you? I just put my 69 in a friends paint shop. He does a bunch of Low riders. He has put a few on the Cover of Low Rider Mag. Not that mine is going to come out looking like a bass boat but he is good. I will be using the same paint as they do benz's in and he getting rid of the flared out back fenders, reinforcing the head lights and tail section, 2 gallons of block sand primer, matching all of the lines for me and spraying LeMans blue for around 4K. Let me know if you want his info. I saw some of his projects in the shop and he is capable of doing it right.

Easy Mike

There's a sucker born every minute!! Glad you're not one of them. It's obvious the fellow did not want to paint your car. Just the same, having a $10K figure in the back of your mind sure makes the existing paint look better!!!!
:)

427V8

I think it's easier to sray a car than people think. There is an old tome hod rodder here who has a 9 second '32 Ford, He's done ALL the body work himself. I watched him spray a panel and he does everything wrong. His spray gun pattern is terrible, his application is terrible his prep is terrible and the car looks great.

If you actually READ a book or two ( or take a class <gasp> ) about painting you should be able to spray as good as any of the knuckle dragger spraygun jockies out there...

LAvetteman

I am glad my friends and I did mine my self. Those thousands of dollars not spent on painting sure do come in handy. :yesnod:

Huzker

Send me the phone number of the paint company. I need some Nassau Blue in a can.

Kelvin Ham

kham@plasti-line.com