How much to budget for a complete repaint..?, A tough question I know but I got to ask... Options

[Nozzle]

Well after doing the standard Spring clean-up on the old girl last week, it looks like the valiant efforts of the 36 year old Saturn Yellow to protect the body are starting to fail. But before I start putting together a serious savings campaign for a full-bore repaint I need to ask what I should plan for as this is very new territory for me. I would be having a professional shop do the prep and repaint as I've got zero talent in this area. I figure rust repair costs will just have to be one of the unknowns at this stage so I'm really looking for a paint-only figure.

The 914 in question lived almost its entire life in Santa Barbara, CA and was never in an accident so far as I can tell. A hell-hole repair was done by AA two years ago right after I bought the car and now the windshield base on the drivers side where it meets the fender line is starting to bubble. No doubt there is more to be found but that's what I know for sure.

So the main goal is to get the car repaired and preserved before the rust gets any worse. The plan would be for me to disassemble the entire car and then have a good shop do a presentable repaint in the original color and take care of any rust issues found. In other words I'm looking for perfect metal not perfect paint.

So any help on what I should plan dollar-wise for for the prep and repaint would be MUCH appreciated. Of course any help with locating a good restoration shop in the MD, VA or PA area would be very cool too...

Thanks everyone,

John

[Dave_Darling]

Mine was $8K. I did some of the prep work myself (taking parts off and such) but it was a drive-in and drive-out paint job. There was something on the order of $2K of actual repairs in that. This was exterior-only (plus the bits of interior that had needed fixing) in the original color (or an approximation thereof) with no real extras.

Labor prices vary greatly from area to area (I think Silicon Valley is one of the more expensive areas) but it would be easy to pay a whole lot more for a top-quality job.

A scuff-and-spray can be had pretty cheaply. The guys in GRM have gone to their local Big Chain Body Shop ™ and gotten good results for well under $1K. But they would trailer the car in with all of the major stuff already dealt with, and they found a shop that actually cared about the results. Not all of them do.

With rust repair, the sky is the limit... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

--DD