I've read through about 50 threads regarding painting your car. Right now I'm in the process of sanding the entire car (pain the butt, btw). I'm not sure if you need to sand the sides if they are smooth (in other words, just primer over the existing paint) but I'm sanding everything anyway just to be sure the surfaces are prepped as best as they can be.

At any rate, I haven't seen any threads about what people have done for their door jams. Does Maaco or any other shops do that with their cheap paint job? Right now I have the green-blue CRX color and I want to change to a different color but obviously it's going to look strange with different colored door jams.

Anyone have any input or suggestions? Thx

 

First, you must sand the car so that your paint will stick properly. If you don't do this, paint will peel very fast.

If you are changing the color of your car, you really need to paint the door jams. Use a grey scotchbrite pad to scuff the jams (get is a autozone). Much easier.

fs

 

When I had an ex-beater painted at Maaco, they charged me ~$100 extra to paint inside the doors, hatch, and direct underside of the hood/fenders.

They'll all do it....and most of them have standard fees. I think one I used was $25 per area.

 

For me instead of getting maaco to paint my jams/trunk/engine bay

Since I was already getting Lexus Is300 graphite gunmetal paint

I just picked up some Duplicolor Gunmetal Metallic wheel paint and did them myself and ended up painting the car myself anyways. Looks great and you cant tell the difference in colours and cost me about $21 and a roll of tape

Go all the way to 600grit atleast with your sanding, thats where I fucked up, stopped at 320, gonna repaint the exterior again this year

 

Okay - thanks for the responses. I'll see what Maaco is going to charge me to do the jams, trunk inside, hood underside, etc and go from there. I was thinking of doing the jams myself but figured it might be pretty difficult to mask off the interior - I guess you can just put a sheet of plastic there to block the paint. Plus, it may be difficult to match the paint exactly with the exterior.

I'm also looking for a good replacement color and was thinking of a nice deep blue.

 

I was going to spray paint my car also due to lack of funds.

So Dupli ones are good right?? I painted my fenders just to see how they looked and it's pretty nice.

Thanks for the info that you have provided. Now all I need to do is prep the car.

 

I actually spray painted my first crx with duplicolor gunmetal wheel paint

Came out great and costed me about $160 including clearcoat for 10 cans of paint for 1 light coat and 2 solid coats of base and 2 clear coats

If you do end up spraying it, go to Napa or Autozone or whatever you have and get the spray can attachment

You just pop off the the spray on the spray can and put this one on, and it sprays in a vertical line like a spray gun would, cost me about 8 bucks and you can just transfer it over to every can, cleaning it out after every other spray can, was like 8.99 or soemthing

Prep work makes or breaks the paint though, which is where I lack lol

 

That is my worry - the prep work. I can do all of the sanding and priming, but when it comes to pulling off the molding and such I'm not sure what Maaco (or whoever) will do it. Will they remove the molding or just put tape over it? If they just tape over it then after it's painted you would be able to pull the molding up and see the old paint - not good. Thing is, I can't take off some of the molding since it holds the windshield in, the rear hatch, etc.

I will need to drive my car over to where ever it is painted so that car at least needs to be in a driveable state. So I'm wondering, even with all of the prep, there is still the issue of the unremovable stuff. What do you do then?

 

If you have a good steady hand, just tape it off yourself. I painted the car with the windshield still on and the mounding. If you just tape it perfect along the line it will look fine and getting windows reinstalled and removed is not cheap and would defeat the purpose of getting a maaco spray job

Also for the mouldings of the doors and fenders, just pop those off yourself and when you get the car back, reinstall them

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by slash00R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">That is my worry - the prep work. I can do all of the sanding and priming, but when it comes to pulling off the molding and such I'm not sure what Maaco (or whoever) will do it. Will they remove the molding or just put tape over it? If they just tape over it then after it's painted you would be able to pull the molding up and see the old paint - not good. Thing is, I can't take off some of the molding since it holds the windshield in, the rear hatch, etc.

I will need to drive my car over to where ever it is painted so that car at least needs to be in a driveable state. So I'm wondering, even with all of the prep, there is still the issue of the unremovable stuff. What do you do then?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Are you sure you can paint a car if you don't know how to prep it.

Maaco, like any other body shop mask around the moldings. You don't pull them off. If you want that, then it will be more expensive.

Get yourself some good masking tape and masking paper and go for it. Reletively simple.

fs

 

Man this sounds like a plan........

I am glad that I was not he only one that wants to spray paint their CRX.

Hopefully it comes out nice, gotta fix the driver side fender somehow but yeah I'll post some pics when I get a chance to do this.

 

Maaco will just barely tape over anything you leave on the car.

They do a VERY crappy masking job. You'll have paint on your engine, on your tires, on your exhaust.

Take off everything you don't want painted....it's as simple as that. If it renders your car undriveable, have somebody tow you up there.

You'll be much happier in the long run.

 

yea its true they do a bad job. but like u have to first sand the car with a 400 i think is really light just to take sthe shyne off the car and thats what keeps the paint stick to the car and not peal off.Then u primer and then u sand it again with the same 400 and then u have to make sure that u got every wher. And u just got to paint ur car then. but for the like the fenders and like the side stock side kite u have to like put it on before u paint it or it wouid come of

 

Oh no - not this question again!

It all depends WHO does your car... not where you take it.
Maaco and places like that are chains - different people do different work.
Every store gives different experiences.

 

But we can all agree that the vast majority of Maaco franchises do not do OEM quality work.

There's always a few exceptions, but in general Maaco is a discount paint shop and the work shows it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jonathan_EH &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">But we can all agree that the vast majority of Maaco franchises do not do OEM quality work.

There's always a few exceptions, but in general Maaco is a discount paint shop and the work shows it. </TD></TR></TABLE>

owned !! ouch !!

man you guys used spray cans to paint your car ? crazy, i'd try it but i'd have **** flying onto the paint all day long.

 

I would never spray paint a car....

No matter what anybody says it never looks good!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jonathan_EH &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I would never spray paint a car....

No matter what anybody says it never looks good! </TD></TR></TABLE>

I saw ONE ultra flat gray spray paint job that looked good. NO shine clear coat, it loooked good. Only because the color pigments were flat. Plus it was on a 240 convert s-14

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jonathan_EH &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">But we can all agree that the vast majority of Maaco franchises do not do OEM quality work.

There's always a few exceptions, but in general Maaco is a discount paint shop and the work shows it. </TD></TR></TABLE>

No place can do an OEM quality paint job for under $5000

For the $500 they charge its amazing

I also started a thread in Appearance looking for spray painted Hondas, got about 50 pics, they look good for dark colours but light colours you can see the strokes, the gun attachment will take care of that though

But yes, every Maaco is different. They have different workers and different deadlines. When my brother got his old f150 painted he talked the to painter the day before and gave him 40 bucks for some extra attention, the guy ended up doing the door jams and trunk for free and its still looking perfect to this day 2 years later

Id rather do it myself though, you learn and you save

 

Maaco looks good if you stay with non-metallic colors.

Their metallics suck donkey *****...especially with their integrated clear coat crap. Basic white, blue, red etc look DECENT.

You're always going to see strokes with a spray can; especially when you want to do a metallic.

At the most you get like a 4-5" fan, and the pattern usually sucks.