I set up an industrial paint shop in Auburn WA about 10 years ago because I needed to have parts painted for my office furniture manufacturing business. I was thinking of developing a new business and offer to paint automotive parts for crazy people (like me) who think their cars are works of art. If anyone would like to give me feedback on the venture, I open to ideas and words of warning.

billy

Heck with parts - how about the actual cars?

The perception is that 914 owners are cheap bastards so if the price is right your sure to get business.

Do any powdercoating?

We use a two part paint that drys very hard. I'm not set up for doing body work and wouldn't want to deal with dust from that kind of work. I guess painting cars would be an option, but what I really want is volumes of small parts in the same color, like black.

Like a group buy on engine tin painting?

Skip

as a body shop/ restoration shop owner... I would suggest sticking to things like engine tin. for the simple reason that you wont make the money you need to make (giveing a quality product) solely on paint. mainly cuase on a complete paint on a car there is usually 4-5 hours of prep, then tape then wax and grease then.... see alot of work befor the paint gun comes out. then there is color sand, de nib, and buff afterwards...

and like said above if you arent doing body work you wont have a "check and ballance" type of situation and so on....

then on top of that your missing out on the $$ with metal work....

people want a cheap complete prep it youself and go to maaco...

(to give an idea I just finished a 56 t bird BLACK w/o one wave or flaw. (that you'll find....) For 14k...

and when It was all said and done I made OK money on it... not great.

I agree that painting cars is not the kind of work I want to see my shop doing. We're set up for volume work. Painting trim would be perfect. One issue I'm concerned about is that the paint I use takes several days to cure. It actually takes a few weeks to fully cure. That doen't mean that you can't handle the part, but the paint chips easy until it is all cured. The benifit is that once it is all dry, it is very strong.

Anyone in the Puget Sound care to be a test customer?

Where were you last week? - just dropped off some tins (thanks again Rhodyguy) for powdercoating here in Olympia.

If I had others I would send em to ya. Should be someone around here that needs paint.