I know the cost of a paint job depends on a lot of things. But I just want to get and idea of what people have paid.

My car is 70 Signal Orange, with small dents here and there, chips, no rust on body panels, will not need any longitude work and was repainted by some PO with what looks like VW orange over the Signal Orange. I will need rust repair done to the front trunk seal channel by the headlights but that is it. Also need to replace the trunk seals and the seal at the door around small side windows. Also the chrome on the small side windows looks like $hit.

I was thinking of removing the sail panel vinyl and the chrome tirm there and either painting black or just leave it off and paint the same color of the car.
I don't want a macco job but then again this will not be a concourse car either. Its a nice solid driver that needs to have cosmetics address. So what are your thougts. Can a quality job be done for $2K is that high, low??? I'm saving my pennies so hopefully I can get this done during the winter season here.

Anyone know of a quality shop in the Chicagoland area?

- Garold

I am in a similar position. I dont really want a cheapo 300 dollar tv job, but I cant afford to shell out 4-5 grand. I am going to do most of the prep work and just get it sprayed, but I need to find a place that will do it. I talked to a shop in my area that does mostly insurance claims and they casually quoted me like 4 grand, but they strip the car, take out glass, and do a really good job. But, my 914 wont be worth 4 grand... so its not worth it. I want to find a 1g paint job or so where they will do the last coat of primer, smooth it out, and paint a good quality finish, but it seems like nobody wants to work for that much... So, it seems like now days, paint shops are either maaco (3-500) or insurance claim shops (3-5000). Im still looking for a median!

I know of some folks who've had Maaco jobs that were pretty decent. I'd say do all of the prep work yourself before delivering it to them and you should be fine. I'm actually considering this route myself.

there are better paint jobs from maaco that aren't part of their 299 special... good, quality from what I've seen

I guess that is what I would like to have done. I plan to keep my car for a LONG time, it is very solid with no major rust issues. I paid $5500 for this car and I know after a $4k paint job it would be worth $5500 - $6500, but to me that price for that kind of paint job from a "quality shop" also gives me peace of mind.

I think we all know by now that the prep work for any project is the key to quality job. I can understand why a shop wouldn't want to spray a car if they didn't do the prep work also. I am not saying you guys don't know what you are doing, its me that doesn't. For me the ideal situation would be to find a shop that would let me work with them so I can learn the process and also make sure areas I feel need attention get it. But I don't think I would find any shops that would do that. Maybe I need to have a paint prep work party at my house

- Garold

I just got a quote from Maaco for single stage paint $625. Not including body work.

Jenny

As a relative painting novice... let me add my $.02...

After having done a black car with a lot of prep work... I wouldn't paint someone elses car for less than 4K... Its a ton of work.

Of course, I'm a cheap skate too.. and I'm painting a 2nd 914 right now... and its a lot of work too.... and I'm not willing to spend the 6K it would take to do the quality of job that I want.. so I'm doing it for myself (again)...

but don't kid your self.. It takes me 4-6 months of weekends to really do the prep work that I wanted on the car.... I'll never offer to do a friends car, because my time is worth more to me than I could possibly charge in prep time...

my recommendation would be to do your own prep if your anal like me and want it to come out right.. then have maaco or someone shoot it for you... I couldn't follow my own advice because there is no maaco nearby.. but I still may pay a hired hand to just shoot this 2nd car when I get ready..

brant

Garold, I'm glad you asked this. I also have minor chips and dings and minor rust in the battery area. When my engine comes back, I will take it in to a local shop (no Maaco or anything similar here). Now I won't faint when he tells me how much it will be .

i gotta say, there is a guy who lives in Sacramento near me who got a macco job on his 914, not the 299 but was about 800 i think, and it came out better than i ever thought it could. my friend and i didnt believe him, he said he had to take it back for some touch-up work they didnt want to do, but he said if you're persistent, they'll fix any errors and it turns out pretty damn good.

biosurfer, did he do his own prep work? or did they do it?

Macco lost one of my eyebrows/blinds, painted over dirt, painted over rubber seals not just ovespray either.

oh yeah the paint match specialists painted my alaskan blue 914 dark teal.

and all for 1000 bucks what a bargain

I think I will do a some shopping around and see what can get for prices. So what about driving your car while doing prep work. I see cars all the time running around with primer on them. Bad idea? The more I think about it the more I know I can a lot of the basic body work myself.

I will see if I can get prices for complete jobs vs just spray and see what happens.

- Garold

garold,

regarding driving around in primer.... Most primers are porus, meaning that any moisture or condensation on the car is actually able to seep through and make contact directly on the metal...
then what happens is that the metal starts to flash rust or surface rust from underneath where it is not readily visible....

this damages the adhesion and 2years down the road the paint goes to crap, loosens up, or bubles...
the answer is NO.. don't do it.

There is an epoxy primer which is actually water proof and you could get away with this... but most of the cars you see in primer are that way because someone is not taking the time or caring enough to do it right....

brant

Sounds like prep work is a great winter project. I have a heated garage so I would just need some guidance from my fellow 914 guru's and find a shop that would spray it. Of course that means I have to finish ALL of my honey-do list before winter

- Garold

I think if you do the prep work on the car Macco can do a excellent paint job. I had a VW done at a facto-Bake about twenty years ago. I preped the body and removed all of the chrome and rubber. This left very little masking for them. It still looks good.

I saw a Chevy astro van that macco had done with the $800 paint and this was taking it down to bare metal because of the factory paint pealing. This was a GREAT job.

Trust me some of the guys at these fast paint job shops can really paint. They have alot more experiance painting than most because of the volume they do.

I'd hesitate about maaco if my car wasn't already in pieces. There's almost no rubber on it except for what's around the rims. No chrome either. They can shoot the hell out of it for all I care.

Jen

i had one of those "better" maaco paint jobs before. all "better" means is that they mask off a few more items. my paint started to fade in year 2. (it was a dark green metallic). it wasn't a 914 , but the paint is the same. this was about 2 years ago. the car looked "great" but the paint did eventually start to fade. i think it was their $499 special.

I have a friend that works for a local high end body shop. I was originally going to take my car there for it's respray, and (ugly) stripe removal. He and I talked it over, and he said the best thing I could do is to go to this other shop. It was a cheeper quality shop, but according to my friend they had the best "gun" in town. I went there, talked to the manager and painter personally, showed them the car, and asked how much if I brought them the car stripped of all trim. 1550 was the price. base coat clear coat. They color matched the hood and around the windshield, the only parts of the car not painted, as the previous owner had spent over 7k for the "ugly" custom job, And no one can tell. Also, better quality job than 95% of new cars I see. I had a couple of days of trim removal but it was worth it.
moral of the story, is talk to the actual people touching your car, find someone you are comfortable with, and do the leg work yourself.
Ferg.

One of the locals here in the DC area got his 914 painted by Maaco. His looks fabulous but like everyone else said it all depends on prep. He did his own prep work. And Maaco's are all franchises so there's no guaranty of consistency from one shop to the next.

I've been to several places for quotes including Maaco but the one I went to didn't seem to be too good so I threw that estimate out. One of the guys that does only restorations (no insurance work) quoted $12k and possibly more if he found problems. That was to completely strip and paint the car. Outrageous.

Best offer to date in my area is $3-6k for the same work, single stage paint only in two colors for my LE including all 5 wheels (remember the spare?). The guy is highly recommended by the vintage Detroit Iron fab 50's Chevy crowd around here.

I agree, it's tough to find exactly what you're willing to pay, shops want to do work the way they want to do it and not the way you want it done. On the Pelican BBS there was some talk of shops in Tijuana that did excellent work if that's a feasible option for you to consider. Ferg's right! Find a shop you're comfortable with and work with them on a price vs quality discussion.

There are so many aspects to a good paint job that you really have to decide what you want. Quality materials can be had starting at around $300, for something basic and up from there.

The big money is in the prep and attention to detail. It's true that the high dollar shops usually have very talanted painters, and it's a safe bet, but not cheap if you have them do additional work at $60hr. Even the very expensive shops can do just the paint for a reasonable price. If you want to consider macco or any shop for that matter, just talk to the manager and especially the guy that's going to paint your car. Then, most importantly, go look at the cars that are in the shop that they painted recently. Do they have:

Orange Peel
Over Spray
Sanding Marks
Waves
Etc.

I'm with Brant on the labor aspect, you can literally spend months preping a car for a high end paint job, but then you also get to be somewhat paranoid about protecting it, so it just depends what you want. If it is a daily driver, there is no way you want the stress of driving behind a gravel truck on a regular basis when you have perfect paint.

The guys that are painting my car right now have a $150k street rod in the booth, so I'm not too worried.

I had my truck painted by Maaco. Cost over $1000. Included body work and some rust repair. A week later the paint started flaking off by the rocker panels. Side molding came off from and the windshield wiper flew off during a rain storm. They repainted the rocker area but I come to find out they didnt even scratch the paint before they applied the new stuff. Two years later and my truck looks like sh*t. Never will I do Maaco again!!!!!!!!!

don't forget that THE PAINT ALONE should cost somewhere in the $800-$1000 range for product equivalent to OEM (Glasurit, Sikkens, Centauri...). that stuff is about $100/qt and the reducers are not much less.

price the materials, find out -exactly- what you're getting.

i bought two cars with "fresh" paint that had obviously been applied just to try to sell the car (i would have offered -more- if they'd come up for sale -before- being painted) and in both cases, the sellers had receipts. here is a powerful lesson: There Is No Upper Bound On The Cost Of A $200 Paint Job !

I painted a 74 Super Beetle long time ago. Stripped off paint an sanded everything myself while I still drove it everyday.

I would do a body ection each weekend and paint it with what ever primer I had. God aweful ugly. But it made merging into traffic easy.

Took it to Macco or 1 day can't remember. They did a finish sand and single stage paint. Gorgeous job. lasted right up to the day someonce stole it while 3 miles surfing south of torrey pines state beach. Ya'll know the place.

I checked around alot before I picked a painter. My car is getting a all over paint job, inside and out, top to bottom. The shell is on a rotisserie and all of the other parts were stripped of all rubber, chrome and hardware.

I called and/or visited 10-12 different shops. I either got "we don't do all over paint jobs" or $6000.00. It amazed me how often that $6000 came up as the price. I saw some absolutely beautiful $6000 paint jobs but that pricey of a paint job does not make sense for the 914 that I am putting together.

I finally started asking the folks that sell the paint to the local body shops who they would recommend and what they thought the price range should be. No suprise this time when the 5000 -6000 price range was given as an estimate. One paint supplier and I got to talking about 914s he was pretty interested in the 914 and some past experience with them. Once the conversation got to more of a friendly level he got pretty candid about the work done by some of the local shops. He then provided me a list of names and numbers of painters that he recommended. He kinda broke the list down into 3 catagories. 1-Very good painters that commanded, and earned, a high price for their work. 2-Painters that would work with me and give me a paint job commensurate with what I wanted and the price that i was willing to pay. 3-Painters that would paint the car at a low cost but remember your gonna get what you pay for.

I picked a painter from the group in the middle. I checked out a couple of references that he gave me - this was easy since he had done work for a couple of people that I work with, and I looked at 2 cars that he had painted.

Can't let you know how it turned out -cause it is still in the process of getting painted. But my expectations are good based on what I've seen so far. I have gone over several times to drop off parts/check on progress and even helped strip paint a couple of times. My tub and parts were in really good shape to begin with and I am amazed at how much prep work is required.

Oh yea, I'm paying 3500 to have EVERYTHING painted including color change from white to signal orange and some welding- battery tray, closing up all AC holes, hinge pivot brackets and a few other welds. Plus I am buying the POR15 supplies. So far I am thinking that this is a pretty good deal.

Bottom line - Determine what kind of paint job you want. And ask around to find out about the painters in your area.

One other point of reference. I asked the guy painting my car what he would charge to paint a car that I had prepped. All that he would have to do is some masking, buy the paint and shoot the car. His price was 500.00 using a Dupont paint.

I would definintely go base/clear over a single stage
job hands down. While I've done a paint job or two while working in body and custom shops I'm not claiming to be the expert. But IMHO I'd say base/clear will give you a nicer job. Once it's wet-sanded and buffed any spray job can look like perfection! It's also much easier to cut into and blend on future repairs. And yes, prep work is the
key- I bought a damaged '02 Liberty and painted it
in my dark 20x20 dungeon of a garage last summer.
I took a little extra time because of the garage space
and it looks like brand new!

rezron

I've had a couple of cheapie paint jobs done over my own prep work, and they came out really quite good. From those experiences, I'd consider it again, but only if I my own prep work. Prep is always the key. If you want to save money by using your own sweat equity, this is a viable option, IMO. I would suggest you talk with the painter so that he can recommend compatible sealers/primers that work with his paint.

Andy

Everyone,

Thanks for you insights on body work. Doug I would be interested to talk to the guy doing your shell. I think there is a big advantage working with someone that has done a 914 or two before. Before I asked this question I had in my mind about $4k and I can live with that as long as its quality work and the person(s) stands behind their work.

- Garold

I'm thinking that my car will be complete by the end of April. You can check it out for a reference. You could even check the car out in process if you want. I've got some pics and may try to post some soon.

One thing about this guy is that he works out of his garage that he has turned into his paint body shop. Good and bad points to this. He walked me through the drawbacks of working out of his garage vs a true paint booth and what he did to compensate. He has a small operation in a relatively small town - His reputation has to be good in order to keep getting business.

Good news for me. I think I found a friend of a friend that has a pretty good body shop. If I spend a few weeks doing body work with experienced folk (my dad and brother), I might be able to put something good out. Its not an issue for me until the summer, when I have time and its running, though.

And, I was thinking of painting my engine bay, trunks, and stuff like that before I took it in so all they had to do was spray the outside. Does anyone have a suggestion for what I can use to get a paint thats simple to spray for the engine bay? I was thinking if its really close I could paint the engine bay before I install the engine, then go through and paint the exterior it wont be a stark contrast like it is now.

$5500 for mine, which included sandblasting and some body work.
the paint itself (guards red) was another $700 ...

the car was originaly Signal-Orange.
Andy

Stay the hell away from Maaco! They do trash work. I had a quote from them back when I was going to have them do mine $1700.00. The manager told me point blank NOT to have them do the work if I wanted the car look real good. Maaco does a bunch of used car lot type paint work. That is the core of their business the lady told me. After I looked at some of the cars that had rolled out the paint booth I could see why, runs, globs, etc. I would only suggest that you stick with a person who does this for a living and has a good reputation. Your money will be much better spent and your time less wasted.

Matt R,

If your going to spray anything yourself then why don't you spray the whole thing?

I would recommend against using rattle can paint.
It won't be compatible with the other and won't hold up too well.... So if your going to buy a spray gun and do some of your own work...

brant