It has come time to paint my 914 so I'm looking for a shop located in SoCal. The limit is $2000, the color is Light Ivory, the body work is minimal. I know about the place in TJ, but I'd rather not drive down there to get my car painted unless it is the last resort.

Any suggestions?

Put down the crack pipe...J/K


Paint alone will be $500 minimum and then you have the other materials.

Let's say a guy spends 40 hours on it. ( not )

Most shops don't ( won't ) work for $25-30 dollars an hour.


KT

Light ivory, isnt that a rustoleum color?

QUOTE

a rustoleum color

For $2000 you could buy several quarts of that and build your own wood framed booth and buy an HLVP spray gun.


KT

QUOTE (brokenmoped @ Apr 8 2006, 06:47 PM)

It has come time to paint my 914 so I'm looking for a shop located in SoCal. The limit is $2000, the color is Light Ivory, the body work is minimal. I know about the place in TJ, but I'd rather not drive down there to get my car painted unless it is the last resort. Any suggestions?

If you are willing to tear everything off the car, i.e. chrome, interior, weatherstripping and do most of the prep yourself, you can get a shop to finish-up the prep work, pull the doors, and professionally paint it complete. Not a whole lot of shops will work with you. The shops in my area literally quoted me between $4500-$8000. I found a shop in Visalia that did what I just described for a little over $1200 out the door.
Restoration

QUOTE (brokenmoped @ Apr 8 2006, 07:47 PM)

It has come time to paint my 914 so I'm looking for a shop located in SoCal. The limit is $2000, the color is Light Ivory, the body work is minimal. I know about the place in TJ, but I'd rather not drive down there to get my car painted unless it is the last resort. Any suggestions?

Big Rays Auto Center

(562) 429-0886

12520 Carson St
Hawaiian Gardens, CA 90716

Tell them you heard it from PKRMONY on the 914 club

Check your PM!

Do it yourself!

When I was shopping around for a paint job (Custom Light Ivory) last year no one would even talk to me for under $7k. I ended up going with a private party referral for $4k.... job was okay, but wish it was better. You get what you pay for. Steve

for a $2k job, you may need to look for a professional that can do it on the side out of their home shop or whatnot. as others have stated, it may save money if you do much of the prep/trim removal work yourself. i chose a local shop based on the owner's commitment: he wasn't finished until i was happy. and he stuck to his word: i brought the car back to him twice, to fix a weird door gap on the repaired fender, and a nearly imperceptible dent that they missed. all at no charge.

materials cost for the entire body/paint was over $1400. good paint is not cheap!

~a

I'm facing a simlar need in about 6-9mo. I found one guy on craiglist, pro but doing it on the side, told me it would start around 2500. My budget is now ~1500. (It may go up depending on how the car comes out.)

I'm in No. Cal, so Mexico is probably not an option for me.

I know it's not the good, but I talked to the Miracle shop 10 miles from my house.
They have base prices for a $500, $900 and $2900 full paint jobs.
The $900 includes spot primer and custom colors. I really curious if anyone has experience with one of these jobs. I mean, assuming you do the prep yourself, they can probably spray better/cheaper than I can, on a first try..??

Yeah, they can spray better than you could, if you've never done it before.

A $500 or $900 full paint job isn't going to be using very quality paint, though. Quality materials are surprisingly expensive (and I'm not talking about super high end stuff).

BUT, the body work is what takes the most time. Getting the panels perfectly straight. Takes a lot of block sanding and care, that takes time, and that's 90% of the cost of a $6000 paint job.

So if you do that stuff yourself, you will save a ton.

I've found it's not worth spraying paint at home anymore. You can get someone to do that work (just the actual spraying of the paint) for $500. That seems to be the going rate here in So. Cal., which has high labor rates. So other parts of the country are likely even less.

For $500, it's not worth setting up some bogus spraybooth in your garage, dealing with the incredible mess, toxic fumes, angry neighbors, etc., IMO. Plus, when you pay the $500, you are also getting a guarantee that the job will be done right - if they mess it up, it's their problem. If you mess up, it's easy to kiss a ton of labor and several hundred $$ of paint and materials away.

I've seen lots of cars that have been done by the low end MAACO, Miracle, One Day, etc. type places. My friend just spent $1800 there in the last year. His car looks like crap! He didn't do any bodywork, only disassembled parts of the car. They didn't straighten out the panels very well, so the car is pretty wavy, there are some visible sanding marks, etc. They used their own cheap paint, and the clear is starting to peel in spots in less than a year.