Hello all, as you all might know my car was in an accident and to fix the scratch on the back fender it will cost me 400 to fix it from "high quality body shop". Now i was thinking i might get my whole car painted and i just saw macco advertise yesterday, $250 or something for an ambassador paint job. Now i search and found those cheap macco jobs are bad and they won't look good. And some said that Macco has different plan for a paint job, and the 800 one will get you 3-5 yrs warranty and i also found this http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....ighlight=macco and "ILoveMyMax" says that the paint job on the orange maxima from macco looks nice. Now i want your opinion and should i get the whole car painted from macco with those 3 yr warranty, i mean its not bad for 1,000 for the paint to last 3 yrs. I am sorry for bringing this up but i just can't make up my mind on this. Thank you for any help in advance........

 

If your gonna keep the car I wouldnt reccomend it. if your gona sell it soon then why bother painting it? theres a reason why it cost $400 to fix it from a good shop and only 800 to paint the whole car.

 

I'm not as experienced as most of the guys on this site, but from what I've read here and what little I knew b4, a good paint job is based on the prep work done to the car. Maaco and the other "low cost" paint retailers do very little if any prep work. Causing the paint to chip and peel real ez. If they don't prep right it will cause for poor adhesion of the new paint. Also, they don't usually use a true clear coat leading to poor paint protection and dull finish. Go to the more expensive shop and check out their entire process if they will let you and then check out the Maaco's process. Check out other cars that they have done. Bottom line do your homework b4 you spend you money.

 

I had a friend you basically stripped his car and then took a sand paper and took off all the ewxisting point down to bare metal it took him about 2 weeks in his garage. Then he had it towed to the paint shop and got a paint job for like $1000, for what originally would have cost him $3-4K. So that is the other option.

Sohaib

 

my friend did his own paint job(with help from his dad) for maybe 400 bucks, bright yellow on an old s-10. that was a few years ago, but it looked really good!!!
he took a good 3 months of summer to do it, but that was REALLY taking their time. he stripped it, power sanded it, and used all the little tricks to make it look real good. then he sold it like 8 months later

oh well the engine sucked and left us stranded 1 time at the rock climbing center good times

 

The main point of it is you get what you pay for. do you want a quality repair for $400, or do you want someone to spray cheap paint on your entire car for $600 more?

guess which one will last longer and look better?

 

Maaco is a franchise. There are utter crap places and decent places depending on management and workers. Paint quality makes a difference. Thorough prep work is essential to a good paint job.

http://www.crxpower.net/reviews/Maaco.html

 

You still get crap if you pay for a $300 paint job. period. good paint costs more than that for enough to do the whole car.

on the cheapo jobs, they don't even sane the car or fill dents.. they just mask off the glass and trim, then spray an "adhesion promoter" which is essentially lacquer thinner on the car, then they spray the new paint, let it dry, then send it out the door.

 

my friend works there, and he says DO NOT GO THERE.

 

wow, ok i guess i might as well go to the "High quality body shop". Thank you all for your great feedbacks......

 

Yep, what he said

 

I just got mine painted by a guy who has done it out of his house for years. He did a great job. Its not perfect because he doesn't have a paint booth but its darn near perfect and it looks great because: a) the preparation....filling dents, and wet sanding the whole car. Also, if you get someone outside of a shop to do it, they tend to use more paint so that they can buff it out with a compound really well and not worry about buffing all the paint off. I got a $2k paint job for around $900 just by going to someone who does it on the side and knows what they are doing. Do LOTS of research before you slap nasty paint on your car.

 

Same here. I painted my Max in a co-worker's garage. We had to hose the floor off every 3-5 minutes, wear gas masks, and use a hood to suck the fumes out, but I had it done in about 18 hours. Still looks great. I have a friend who works for DuPont and he hooked me up with the paint. It ended up costing me $1000 for a body kit, body work including shaved trunk and removing or filling dents, and a total paint job/clear coat. The whole thing took me a month with all the body work but it looks good now!