So, it's time for my car to be repainted and I'm sure as hell not looking for spend three grand to paint it. I'm looking to hopfully spend no more the 1k on repainting it. I want to stay with Milano Red so no color change. Does anyone know of any good paint shops or independent people is southern IE or north county near San Diego?

 

I don't know of any shops around there but I suggest you do most of the "prep work" you can save quite a bit of money. I'm somewhat in the same situation but I'll be buying myself a sprayer and a welder and learning how to do it myself.

 

true milano red is a tri coat. so good luck with that for $1k.

 

Yeah, thats what I've been told with the prep work. And, once again I was not aware the true milano was specifically a tri coat job. thanks for the help guys. Keep the advice coming please :-].

 

It's available in a base/clear but of course won't quite have the depth of the OEM paint. Don't perform the prep work yourself unless you already have a shop agreeing to paint over your work. Not all shops will split the work with a customer since they'd be basing the paint's longevity and their reputation on someone else's work.

 

Well, thats definitely good to know with prep work. Does primering the car pertain to prep asl well?

 

if you explain to the shop what steps you took to prep you body, and if you did a good job i think there should be no problem with the shop painting over your work.

 

Yeah, priming is something that can be done without professional spray equipment but it costs more to buy it in cans and then you'd have to apply more primer-surfacer than with a well-atomized spray. For doing an entire car, I definately wouldn't reccomend it.

I'm always in favor of people learning to do their own body &/or paint work properly. If you care about the vehicle you're working on, you're going to do a better job. That said, you run into a particular problem when working on a whole car- it's a little hard to wrap it up & keep it perfectly clean during the trip to the shop after you sand it. Sanding removes crap embedded in the surface that might cause fisheyes, adhesion problems and other bad stuff. Also, dirt embeds easily into a scuffed surface, often requiring re-sanding to remove. If you prep it at home, you should plan on having it towed to the shop after you tape everything off well. Even then, you're still adding an extra chance for problems.