so im trying to get a paint job on my 67, i went out and got estimates today, and all the body shops were saying around 6grand! i just graduated from highschool i dont have that kind of money! lol anyways i went down to maaco and there top quality paint job would cost $3500. question is do you trust maaco? or should i save up?

 

3500 sounds like alot of money from maico. when I priced a paint job years ago it was only a couple hundred bucks. All the paint jobs I have seen from there were not very good. Overspray on evry thing and if you dont want it painted(IE chrom) either you mask it off yourself or take it off. However as the old saying goes you get what you paid for so if you want a cheap paint job that is what you are going to get.

 

well the guy at the body shop said the maaco guy was his friend and told me to go down there and says he does good work, i looked at some of the cars just coming out and they were nice jobs. im having some body work done on it too so that $800 of the price.

 

Listen man do a little reseach and you will find that it is just alot of time and patience for bodywork and paint ,anyone is capable of learning you just have to WANT IT bad enough im telling ya im gonna prolly paint my own car too.

 

have you thought about doing it yourself? Either in your garage or rent a paint booth. Save yourself alot of coin.

 

You forgot two important items - a place to do the work and the right tools. Actually three, experience.
Jim

 

$3500 for Macco sounds WAY high. They offer $250 specials around here. So even with your $800 in body work, you shouldn't be at even half of what they quoted you.

Beyond the price, here's the deal with Macco- Their paint is pretty much okay and the car will look just fine when they're done (other than all the overspray on parts you didn't want painted). The problem is that they usually don't do much prep at all.When that happens,the nice result you saw rarely lasts. So don't get too excited about the cars you saw that they had recently painted. It'd be worth more to you to see some cars they painted 2yrs ago. That being said, Macco sometimes is willing to do some prep work if you pay extra, but even then it's usually minimal prep. For $3500, maybe they will do a decent amount of prep, I don't know. But for that price, I'd guess you could find plenty of other places to do it. And I'd personally rather use someone who's used to doing good prep on every job instead of using someone who's doing a one-time extra special job for you.

 

do a search on here there was someone on here awhile back that paid alot at macco and was sorry for it.

 

I have a friend that bought an instructional how to paint custom motorcycle tanks and fenders. And by using his method you can easily apply it to a car, obviously their are more parts but watching those instructional dvds does help

 

the macco here i use to work for they used body filler as a fix it all i wouldnt trust them painting my house. for 3500 you could buy everything you need to paint but the paint. what id do is talk to some local car clubs see whos painted there cars. just remember even if the car looks good straight out of the booth give it 6 months see if the paint peals off.