I'm just curious of anyone's possitive, or negative, experience with a MAACO paint job. And which paint job was it?

I know, I know . . . you get what you pay for. So on this project I'm not expecting that much. (A rock crawler VW Bug.) But for $600.00 to $1,000.00 it'd be O.K. right? Or no. Two local shops both wanted between $3K and $4K! Once they found out there was no insurance money involved , I think they hiked the price as a way of saying, "We don't want to mess with it."

 

I did this about 2 years ago. It is very true that "you get what you pay for", but it was really not all that bad for the price. I had a 1969 F-100 regular cab long bed 2WD painted. 390 ci V8 with the 'three on the tree' 3-speed manual transmission. The truck was in excellent shape except for the paint. No rust, no dings/dents, very low miles - it must of been kept in the garage and never used as a truck. Previous owner was restoring it and then ran into financial problems before he could finish it by painting. A friend told me about it so I bought it for $1500 since the paint looked so rough (he needed the money & I had the cash, also I wanted a simple project (toy) vehicle). It was an ugly brownish color from the factory. It was very thin & had tons of scratches on it (like a cat clawed on it). Cant remember which level paint job it was, but it was one under the very best they offered at the time I think. I wanted to change colors to a very glossy white (because I figured it would be hard for them to screw it up & it would not fade as bad in the long run). They wanted an extra $50 for the color change. Watch out, they will jack up the price for piddly stuff. Plus an extra $50 for painting inside the door jams. Plus extra for removing door moldings (if there are a lot). Plus extra for painting various trim. This does not include any body work they could do, like fix door dings or hail damage or other stuff. When I got it back it looked very shiny and good. Only seen a small amount of overspray around the tail lights and front grille chrome areas. I was able to remove the overspray with some carb cleaner on a rag. All I can tell you is the paint looked good for the first 2 months & then I sold the truck to someone I dont know, so I have not seen it since (cant tell you how it looks today). The new paint job (which was around $1000+) helped in selling the truck for sure. I put the For Sale sign on it and 5 days later a dude was handing me a $4000 money order. He said it was the best vehicle he seen for that amount of money even though it was old. I now regret selling it even though I got way above Blue Book for it.....

 

maybe have it sprayed with LINE-X. It would look good.

 

Have had several of our Rangers repainted with a "standard" white at Maaco. As I recall it is around $500 and very acceptable. They even painted the grille and bumpers black again. Again as said before, you get what you pay for as Maaco can equal the original colors/clearcoat however for a fleet of couriers - well nah...

Russ

 

The trick to a Maaco or any cheap paint shop (Earl Scheib, 1-Day Paint, Sprayglo, etc) is to do as much of the prepwork as possible yourself. As mentioned earlier, these places charge extra for bodywork (which isn't that great) and trim removal. Assume that anything left on the vehicle will be painted, and remove everything you don't want sprayed. Do as much bodywork as you can (though it may be a moot point for an off-road Bug) and get it in primer. A case of rattlecans will do if you don't have access to a gun and compressor. Make sure that you wash it before you prime anything, and wipe it down with a tack cloth after it's dry (from water, not primer). If all the shop has to do is scuff it and shoot it, the results will be pretty decent. Plus, you'll save money by doing the majority of the manual labor yourself.