exterior paint

[captainkim]

Sorry if this is in the wrong section.....I have a 86 z31 that is in need of paint...very minor body work....Everything on the car runs fine, but its a nightmare to look at all the fading colors on the car. Ive been getting very high prices for quotes which is more than the car. Would anyone know of a good painter that is reasonable in price? NOt looking for a show car paint but not a rattle can job either,. Looking to do a single stage paint and have the entire car sprayed with the OEM color (remove the stripes on the bottom) to make it more cost effective. Im in NJ . I will not go to Maacco as I have tried them previously for other cars and they are horrible. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

[Z_Karma]

You might try your cities local subreddit. Like, i live outside of Portland Oregon and the local active subreddit is reddit.com/r/portland.

If you're not familiar with reddit, it's basically like a enormous message board covering any topic/interest under the sun. Usually
the subreddits (forums) in your local area are good for asking recommendations for services like this.

[dbruce]

I've been looking at this too , my 85 blue mist car has various paint problems ... what a nightmare ... found this article about getting your car repainted .
..
https://www.musclecardiy.com/bodywor...ay-paint-jobs/

You’ve got a car or truck that needs painting. But you can’t afford —or don’t want to pay —the two, three, or five thousand dollars it realistically costs to have a local body and paint shop do the work. Or maybe the vehicle in question really isn'’t worth a two to five thousand dollar paint job, but you’'d like a nice paint job on it anyway.
...
The shop we chose is actually called 1-Day Paint & Body, a small chain located in the Southwest. Steve drove the car there then removed the taillights, license-plate bracket, and side-view mirrors

[captainkim]

Thanks.! I’ll look into it. Worst case scenario I may have to try painting myself!

[captainkim]

Just looking it up and saw that Macco just bought them out. Should I be worried.

[jdmlegends]

I've thought about doing a repaint on a couple of different Z cars. What I've learned from talking to different body shops is it simply isn't practical. If you want a good paint job that will last a long time, it's going to cost $6500-$8500, yeah that much. $500-$2000 if you go to Maaco and you can talk to the shop manager about what you want done. But it'll still end up with imperfections. The other thing some body shop owners worry me after talking to them. For example, one guy likes to use bondo and bondo is only supposed to be 1/4" thick. I got the feeling he'd have a field day with it and just glob bondo all over. If you really want to have a paint job done, you could save some money by doing the prep work yourself and removing the tail lights like shown in the link dbruce provided.

[captainkim]

thanks for the TRUTH.....I know nothing about painting. To my knowledge the car has one ding that i can bondo and smooth out. There is absolutely no rust so im hoping that would be the only fix..... I was thinking of sanding the rest of the car down to metal and then seeing if a reputable shop would give a better price. I hate the stripe part on the car so i would have to get rid of that and then add my aftermarket bumper.....this is getting tooo costly.....I could probably buy another car altogether that is all fixed for the same price but i feel so invested in it with all the work ive done so far....will have to think about it....i may just have to drive the car as is.....runs excellent...body is excellent shape....paint sucks balls! what to do....

[dbruce]

It's sad , I did my first car by prepping it myself at home and had it towed to the body shop ... nothing is easy now ... Painting in the garage doesn't sound half bad after you hear the quotes .


Car 1. A 1954 MGTD I restored my senior year of High School.

[captainkim]

I was watching JDM legends on TV and they were saying that the metal on the cars are thinner than the normal US cars....The TV show recommended using aircraft stripper instead of sanding? I know he was dealing with older cars like in the 70s....does that also apply to 86 as well?....Just in case im tempted to start painting

[dbruce]

the 240z and probably most datsun/nissan pre-1980 cars had the thin metal .

[edizzle89]

how hard are they sanding that the metal thickness becomes an issue? if its not a rusty spot then i'd think the metal would be fine. If it is a rusty area then that needs to be addressed separately

[jdmlegends]

It's sad , I did my first car by prepping it myself at home and had it towed to the body shop ... nothing is easy now ... Painting in the garage doesn't sound half bad after you hear the quotes .

I was thinking about doing the same thing if I ever truly decided to have one of these Z's painted. But captainkim thought about something very important. It's probably better to sell the one that needs a repaint for one that is in very good to pristine condition. The only caveat to that is you'd have to keep the really nice one garaged and some ahole might hit the car whereas you wouldn't care too much if the car had some dings and needed a new paint job.

[captainkim]

Lol. Very true. Lesson learned. Next time I buy a car...make sure the painting is to your satisfaction. I may just buy the Eastman contour sct and start strippIng. What’s the worst that can happen...end up with a metal car!!

[Dunkine]

Another option is finding someone local that does body work and paint on the side. I've had a few buddies over the years that did body and paint work out of their garages with great results. Prices were decent too, since they didn't have the overhead a shop has.

[jdmlegends]

And a second option to the one Dunkine proposed is to rent a paint booth from and auto body shop. Yes, you can rent them for $50-$100 bucks. Sure, you could set one up at home but most of us don't have the room for that. Plus we wouldn't want the wife or GF yelling at us for setting up these contraptions to work on our projects that make no sense to them.

Here's a link that has some information and even a short video about renting a paint booth: https://www.learnautobodyandpaint.co...a-paint-booth/

[Dunkine]

That's what one of my buddies does, he does all the prep and primer at home then has the vehicle towed (if needed) to his friends body shop and uses the paint booth there. He mainly does this for all over paint jobs, the smaller stuff he just does at home.

[captainkim]

I didnt know they rented out paint booths....ill have to research some more. Still on the fence of just putting an end to this money pit and cut my losses.... thanks for the info!