My Fiero is in desperate need of a paint job. I would like to get one done right (no cheapo jobs) with proper prep to make sure the new paint job lays nice, looks good, and lasts.
What kind of estimates would be reasonable? I know a quality job will cost some.
I was going to tackle this myself as I have done some very small scale repairs on cars in the past with some good success. I just do not really have the equipment or space to do a full vehicle.
PS, if anyone knows someone in the WNY area that does painting, let me know!
I had my 88 repainted at a dealer (1996) as a fill in project to keep his shop busy when the work load was light. It was $1600 then and they had the car for three months from December until March. I lived in the Rochester area and the car got winter storage inside. The car's paint still looks good today, I'd expect you would pay at least $3K for a similar deal if you could find it today. Otherwise I would expect you would pay $1200 for a Macco repaint which can be OK if you do the prep work ant that shop has a decent painter.
Why not just take it to a shop and get an estimate?
I would recommend going to an independent collision repair shop, THAT OFFERS A LIFETIME GUARANTEE. No guarantee, no buisness. I would avoid dealerships, restoration shops, paint shops, or any shop that adverises with a particular insurance company, because they are a DRP and work quality is usually substandard. Stick with the busiest independent collision shop you can find.
Price depends on lots of stuff. How much bodywork and disassembly it needs, paint color and type and brand, as well as any extras like metallics and pearls. I would say expect in the 2k-4k range, and only use premium paints like DuPont or PPG. Get a BC/CC job and get waterbourne if avaliable.
Based on my personal experience a panel off paint job can easily cost $5000 plus for a near show quality paint job (gunmetal gray with pearl). I have one show car that cost a bit more than that but it has lasted about five years so far without even waxing and still wins best of class shows (Corsa Rosa red).
Nelson
[This message has been edited by hnthomps (edited 09-21-2013).]
I just had mine painted for just shy of $3k. It would have been a little less had I not gone with a pearl color and had the car not needed completely re-gelcoated due to sun damage. He also refinished my taillights which turned out really nice. When price shopping I got quotes as high as $6k. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/092485.html
I had mine done for $2200 in 2009, by a independent collision repair shop. They did a great panel off job, with a warranty for as long as I owned the car.
I had a bit of damage a year ago to the front nose from a cement truck dropping a chunk of cement. Luckly it only left a small mark.
The wing & rear bumper had some paint issues where the clearcoat was lifting. The paint shop was good enough to repair those under warranty ! That was great, seeing they painted the car in 2009. They told me they would take care of any issues, and were good to their word.
[This message has been edited by CoolBlue87GT (edited 09-22-2013).]
I paid a little over $12,000 for my orange and black GT....which also included some fiberglass work to the front hood and rear decklid. I paid around $10,500 for the VR6 paint job. Both were panel off and are perfect and flawless.
I paid $2500 for my gold GT paint job and it lasted 5 years and one month. It is now peeling off worse than a sunburn. They gave me a five year warranty. I plan to sand it down and have it vinyl wrapped this winter.
This might be a dumb question but why does a panel off job generally cost more? It seems to me that if I do all the work to remove the panels and bring them to the shop and all they have to do is spray them, that should be easier than masking and prepping a complete car? Or do most panel off jobs include the labor for removing and reinstalling the panels? Just wondering.
it is better when doing a color change. The rocks should come off regardless when painting, but to do it right, remove the door panels, all the trim, rockers, hood and decklid and fenders. Dave
I don't recommend panel-off jobs. I think they are popular with the Fiero crowd because many people get their space frames refinished at the same time.
A proper panel-off job would need all the bodywork done while the car is assembled to get everything straight in relation to one another.
Maybe people who are poor at masking recommend panel off because of the overspray, but that shouldn't be an issue to a professional.
It is normal to remove bumper covers, mirrors and trim, moveable glass, ect, when painting but full panel off jobs are uncommon in the real world.
If a panel off job is done with metallics or pearls, there will be a difference in the way the "grain" is laid down as well. Its not so much an issue with solid colors.
So far it seems all of the estimates are getting are in the $2000-$2300 range for a "respray" before the little details get added on to make it a high quality job. I spoke to a shop I liked yesterday, who was at $2000 for the respray, but was upfront in saying that would basically be a mask it off and respray it job. If I wanted to take the time to have the etched paint stripped, replace broken or bad trim pieces, really take their time to fix up stone chips in the front, etc etc, that it would be significantly more but it would be hard for him to give a good estimate since some of it is dependent on the time individual pieces took.
Anyway I think I have found the sweet spot for the going rate.
I probably don`t have a popular opinion here but 2-3 grand is a lot of money to me and if I spent that kind of money I probably wouldn`t even want to drive the car. I have painted a couple of cars but it was long ago with one-stage paint and even with the crappy equipment I had it wasn`t that hard. I have sprayed b/c coat on a number of parts with a Preval sprayer and they came out fine. When I do some large panels on my car I will use my HVLP gun. I realize that paint and all of the necessary supplies can run up to 1 grand to paint a car but I think there are some pretty good mid entry paints too. I used Sherwin Williams Dimension base/clear and it has seemed to work pretty well. Just my .02 Mike
