Remember usage vs. cost vs. perfectionism vs. bang for the buck
If you drive your car a lot, especially at speed, unless you put on one of those assinine bras, you will nuke the paint job on the "nose cone" within a few years - really regardless of how little or much you pay.
A decent, mid-high level paint job is in the mid thousands and looks fantastic. 100 miles of gravelly road or dirty high way and the front and it is already damaged.
To me, this always made this the province of show cars and people with staggering amounts of money.
Four thousand buck buys you a Gear Vendors Overdrive and new modified suspension, installed. That gives your car, all else being equal, the same performance capabilities of a new vette of ten years later, or, if if it's one of the early big blocks with monster horse power, the same as one of today.
Alternately, $4K gets you a great crate SB, easily in the 100K mile rebuild range, yielding 375 hp. Going through a local rebuilder with a solid reputation, a couple of thousand over that gets you a mill of 100+ more hp with an enormous red line.
Guy, when I bought mine it needed a paint job a little. After the first 6 months on section of the hood bubbled. I stopped buying the touch up paint in the little bottles and tried to find one with a little brush on a five gallon bucket...
Despite that, the car still gets gawked at by an almost uncomfortable number of people.
The car had been painted two years before I bought it for under $500 and other than that one defect, looked fine except for the standard road trash abrasions. It never had the "liquid pool at midnight two feet deep reflection" of a first rate $8K paint job, but it looked fine and stood out to most far, far more than more modern blingers with the $5K wheels, $8K paint job and 100hp motor, which are so common as to be invisible.
In the less than two years I've been in this red ocean of debt, I've racked up about 47,000 miles. I have spent just under a buck a mile on it too, mainly because I am building it up as a platform for a monster $20K engine and am not trying to just have it a "nice old vette in good shape," and also because I had a rear wheel come off at 80 due to a frozen bearing I never detected.
By the time my project is complete to my original plan I expect to have spent about $75K. Despite all of that, I just plan to get a $500 paint job every 2-3 years and not sweat the small stuff. To me it's just a crazy waste of money better spent on performance, luxury interiors, the enormous number of aftermarket upgrades made for these things if you plan on pretty much living in the car as much as you can. (I spend much more on CREDIT on this stupid thing and I *WILL* be living in it...
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Some tips on the frequent 1/10th cost decent paint job approach.
1)Make sure you see several examples of the shop's work - preferrably SELECT the shop based on some acquaintances vehicles you have seen. Make sure they do fiberglass. Fiberglass is NOT as tough to paint as some seem to think, but it IS different from metal, especially in depth of prep required and paint, primers, etc. If the shop has a particular brand or shade they want to use, let them! They work with the stuff all the time - cheap or not, they know what has worked in the past in all likelihood.
2)Pick a good solid bright color with no frills. Forget the 18 layer metallic flake with 82 hand rubbed clear coat hopes. Red. Yellow. Green. Black.
A decent Non-Fading Blue. Nothing fancy. No fades and airbrushed things or scenes or other crap. Those high tech staggeringly expensive and stunningly beautiful paint jobs (which are ruined by one. little. brat. with. keys. or. one. distracted. soccer. mom.) don't look good unless the absolute finest in craftsmanship is used to apply them.
3)Pick a color that is an EXACT match for some commonly available touch up paint. Try to get some perfect touch up paint FROM the painter, but this is more generally available on higher end paint jobs.
4)Spend more money on upgraded polished SS/chrome trim items. They are cheap and offset the lack of a world class street rodder paint job a lot.
5)With a cheap paint job, try to get it painted in a moderate temperature time of year. Too cold or wet and it may cure too slowly...too hot and it make "cook" before fully curing. This isn't even much of a concern on high end work, but is with "Fred, the guy around the place" who put up a paint booth in his double garage and REALLY KNEW DALE ERNHEART!!!
6)Let THEM do the prep. Unless you have a bunch of friends, that is an ENORMOUS and messy chore. Not only that, most key to a decent looking job is UNIFORMITY. Doing a great job of getting down to the gelcoat and no further in one section only to barely go through the top level of dead paint somewhere else and practically THROUGH the fiberglass in yet another will yield a finished product MUCH worse than if they had just gone through the top few layers of paint everywhere because their crew of cheap assistants were in a hurry. Uniformity is more important than much else in paint.
7)Do any body owrk you need done at LEAST several weeks ahead of the paint, prefferably a month or more. You want that patched fiberglass perfectly cured and all excessive reactants gone.
8)If you can arrange it without annoying them, drop by the shop AFTER the prep is done but before the taping is. Don't hesitate to ask if some part is not done correctly to your eyes or similar to everything else.
9)Be freindly and generous with the crew doing the work - not just the owner. A promised decent tip and/or a case of beer and some fast food for lunch can be the difference between an indifferent rush job and one where the people doing the work did their best. Remember, in places where you get a cheap paint job, the help is NOT paid very much and is expected to hustle.
