before I sent a car to MAACO, I would pay me to paint it atleast you would know you got good materials
I just saw a truck a car dealer client of mine had painted at Maaco. Honestly.....it looked really good. I was impressed.
verdict is im paint my own car lol i can post pics later if you guys are interested to see how it comes out if not i wont go through the trouble lol
Well, when you drop it off Monday morning and pick it up Tuesday afternoon, ya gotta figure they didn't have a lot of time to tape it all up.
my work truck got painted by maaco a year ago. its still good. it looks good. they did a decent job of maskin. the truck was 3 different colors due to us having bougt a crashed truck then geting a doner truck to replace the damage and had to get a door from the salvage yard. maaco painted it and the paint is still on and there is no color difference on the diffrent panels that were different colors before the paint job. they even painted the wiper arms black so it looked even beter.
lol i think thats just cause you live in a nice area im in miami fl not that great of an area alot of companies seem to take alot of short cuts and just leave you hangin so glad i got all your inputs though helped me decide to just do it myself. itll take a little longer but i love workin on my mav so i dont mind it. and itll look nice so thats all that matters right?
I have decided to paint mine myself too. I bought a paint gun and am planning to get a compressor with the plumbing to a dryer system of some sort.
Hey Bluegene, I've used them several times and have been very pleased. It's a great price performer. The trick as everyone one has said is the prep work. I've always washed the car with a green scotch brite and something like comet cleaner then finish up with 320 grit wet/dry. You'll have a surface ready to accept a smooth coat of paint. Remove as much trim as practical and they'll do a decent job of masking. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation if you were looking for show quality but you sound a lot like me-------PRACTICAL! They will of course bake the finish which you won't be able to do yourself unless you've got access to a booth I've painted a couple of cars myself when I used have access to a booth that was well lit, warm and bug free. Those days are gone however. You're probably looking at least $150-$200 for paint, reducer and hardener, tape and paper, and a full weekend of work. After trying to paint my son's Geo in the garage I quickly came to the conclusion that that extra $100 was well worth it. I've got to hand it to you though if you decide to do it yourself. Painting is fun, instant gratification.
That makes two practical geniusessss lol. I like gratification but mostly I like showing off my many talents around town so my ex can see what she didn't get with her back door guy. She was amazed to find out that I can use a sewing machine. She was already "glad", as she put it when we were married, that I am a tech. I repaired and maintained our cars. I cooked better than her, sandwiches and spaghetti are easy to beat. She is letting an LTDII rust away in her new husbands front yard. She has always been jelous of my GT cause I "cared" for that car. Sooo, I am dreaming of the day she sees it. She thinks it's still in the same condition when she got the boot. Paint (and me doing it) is the iceing on my cake LOL!
if i were to take a car to a paint shop i would atleast do them the favor of taking off the bumpers and anything else that easily comes off that i dont want paint on. my local macco does some pretty nice jobs if your willing to get into the $500 range. they turn out that much better if you do all the prep for them. id atleast wet sand and rough up the paint on the car now. you can just get away with doing that and skipping the primer if your only after a macco job, depending on the condition of your current paint ofcourse. if its all cracked and chipped and generally very uneven it'll need a little more attention
I dont know you or your shop, but man i dont believe that for a minute. I payed way too much to have mine painted and dealt with the crooks for about six months to get it fixed halfass. Never again. I since have just traded off cars and trucks that i had that needed paint. I will paint it or get rid of it. Too many horror stories around just like mine to let go of my money. I'd say maaco can do as good as anybody for the money or even twice the money.
So, what part of it do you not believe? That my material to paint a car is $600-$1000? Go to any Dupont or PPG jobber and get a material list to paint a complete car with top of the line base coat/clear coat and then add for enough sand paper (3-4 different grades for body work), 3M body filler, spot putty, 3M tape, masking paper, Dupont 2-part primer, Dupont sealers, Dupont reducers, activators, and a few other things that add up to properly prep and paint a complete car with a 1st class paint job. I allow nothing in my shop but 1st class materials and do nothing but 1st class paint jobs that I guarantee as long as my customer owns their car. I regret none of it and I have all the business I can stand...sometimes too much which is the case right now. I can pick and choose my work. About 6 years ago I had a Maaco rep approach me and asked me about running a new Maaco shop opening in my area. Not knowing much about them I took up his offer to tour a shop in a neighboring city to see their operation and hear out his offer. After two hours with him I saw real quick that my name would never be associated with Maaco or any shop that operates like that. I have a good reputation for running my paint/body shop and intend on keeping it. Been running this shop for 20 years and plan on many more. Oh yeah, they did open up that Maaco shop and painted lots of cars, about 5-6 a day 5 days a week. I knew some of the local guys that worked for them, usually a month or so and they would leave. And some of the cars did "look" good when it left the premises. If the didn't, they would run it back through the next day and do it over. We are talking about one-day paint jobs. They even painted 4 or 5 for the used car lot of the dealership I work for. They were experimenting but it bit them in the ass. Two years later they close their doors and haul ass. The painter that was working for them at the time came to me looking for a job telling me that they closed without notice and even took his 4 paint guns with them. He never got them back. All the cars that came to my shop for collision repairs that had been painted there cost quite a bit extra due to the fact that the crappy materials that had been used had to be stripped back down to the metal. I could immediately look at a car and know where it had been painted. Fortunately, most of the cars they painted were pieces of crap to begin with so I never saw them in my shop. The ones that did come were priced accordingly and I didn't have to deal with them either. Now don't get me wrong. There is a market for this type of paint job. There are lots of older cars out there that just need some color on them to make them look better than before. There are lots of people that just can't afford a 1st class paint job and I have no problem with that. Sadly, there are also ripoff shops that supposedly take your money and claim to paint a car 1st class with the type of materials I mentioned above. Maybe that's what happened to you. I'd take them to small claims court and try to get my money back. Anyway, I stand by my statement...you get what you pay for. I will put up my paint jobs anytime, anywhere against any Maaco (or Maaco style) paint job. Okay...that enough from me on this subject. Got a busy day tomorrow. Good night everybody.
There was a good body shop just up the hiway from me that quoted, as a minimum $3000 for a paint job. They did good work with paint and I had no problem with the price quote. I painted my own car and a few others and I do a pretty good job. I don't mind the painting but I wish I had someone to do all the prep work - That part I don't like to do. Just one of the necessary evils of painting your own.
