The clear coat is starting to peal under my door handles so I'm looking at doing a <FONT COLOR="blue">show-quality color change</FONT> ( from silver to blue ) within 2 yrs and I wanted to figure out how much $$$ its going to cost ( a.k.a. how much OT I'm going to have to work in advance ). Btw, I'm a painting noob.

I'm willing to sand off the old paint, strip the car to a shell, lay down the primer and even paint the inside/engine bay myself ( since those don't really have to be that great ). I had a couple of questions for you guys:

1) How much would it cost for me to do everything except the outside myself and what would I have to buy? Any recommendations on type of paint, paint gun, etc would be great.

2) I know that the best way to get this answer is to call the shops themselves, but I thought I'd at least find out what the range is before I do ( Kinda like going on Kbb.com or Cars.com before you go car shopping )

Anyways, what should the price run for the bodyshop painting just the outside of the car?

3) Is there any way that I can mess up the primer coat of the car or any other part I might be able to mess up doing this?


Recommendations are welcome and yes I did search.

 

bump

 

I just finished painting my car in the garage, so Im going to try to answer your questions. I wasn't shooting for a show job, but rivaling OEM. Let me say first, this turned out to me much more involved than I thought, and I would probably never invest that much time again. I didn't realize how many coats of stuff needs to go on. For example:

1. sand off original paint to primer
2. Body work
3. 3 coats of primer surfacer
4. Guide coat
5. coat of sealer
6. 3 coats of base
7. 3 coats of clear

and a lot more problem solving, redoing things, in between...

1) It costed me about 1500 for materials (paint/guns/sandpaper/sand blocks/ much more little stuff). I would suggest just doing primer yourself and leave all the BC/CC stuff to the pros. That way, you'll probably spend around $600. I bought Dupont Chromabase stuff and it worked great. Paint was $300 a gallon though

2) Problem is shops don't like it when you do your own body/primer work, because your paint is only as strong as its weakest coat. But you may get lucky. A decent shop should charge you around $800-$1000 to spray base+clear (paint+labor).

3) It's pretty hard to mess up primer if you are good at reading directions and have a steady hand. But I would find a shop to take over first before you jump into it.

Lastly, get old fenders and hood to practice. You NEED to get a feel for how the gun sprays before you go to your own expensive stuff. Also you'll need a big compressor, like 40-60gal. If you don't have access to that, buy one or I would just do the body work and have the shop do the rest.

Also spend a month reading this website before you do anything. autobody101.com/forums

Hope that answers your questions. BTW, I have 3 nice paint guns left over from my job, only used for 1 job. If you are interested, hit me up.



Modified by Propulsion at 11:43 AM 8/7/2006

 

Damn, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time to answer all those questions!

I think I wouldn't mind taking one of those paint guns off your hands. I'll pm you on that.

<FONT COLOR="blue">My air compressor is an I-R 5 gal, so should I not even bother with doing the primer and inside coat? </FONT>Maybe by the time I'm ready to do all this, I can invest in a bigger compressor....

 

propulsion hit the nail on the head. im in the same boat as him (check sig). its alot of work. at least 4 times as much as i expected when i first started my project. and ive spent twice as much as i expected. mostly cause i had to redo alot of stuff as i made mistakes.

autobody101 is awesome. if you havent found what you are looking for on there, you havent been reading long enough.

and i agree, if you have no idea what you are doing and want show quality, id definately get a pro to spray it. spraying clearcoat requires ALOT of skill.

 

Yeah, I don't anticipate ever trying to spray the outside of the car, but I thought that If it was easy enough, I'd hit the inside/trunk/engine bay so as to lessen the blow to my wallet. I'd like it show quality but its not going to be a show car so It doesn't have to be 100% perfect. I would deal with imperfections on the inside.