I might go for it IF I too owned a Corvair! This is TOO much labor for a questionable outcome. I know that body and paint work is expensive, that's why I do my own...but it would be a much better proposition if the guy learned how to spray paint and took half the labor he saved and bought some decent paint and spray equipment.

 

Earl Scheib DID do it years ago...$19.95, any car, any color...remember?

R

 

Cut rate places like Macco can to a pretty good job cheap as long as you do all of the prep work, bodywore, sanding and taping. Usually their prep work consists of sanding only what they can do with a DA and they'll do a half a** job of taping everything off. Of course it will ad up if you have them do the entire inside, their cheap paint jobs only cover what they see without opening the doors.

 

Funny you should mention Maaco! My daughter had my grandbaby yesterday, and I stopped to see her on the way to work today. Took a shortcut past Maaco, and saw a '52 F1, just painted! Turned a huey, stopped and took a few pics. Lousy body work!!! Maaco didn't do the body work, just the paint. Everything showed up, through the paint. they painted it inside and out. Nice color, though - the drab green, with cream grill. Had to go inside and check, I bought a car once from the owner, so he knows me. The owner paid $1150 for the paint job, alone. Maaco did some other work, disassembly, assembly, and a few other things I didn't see on the bill, almost $3,000 for the total.

I have an excellent painter, I will have do mine. I'll do my own bodywork - all my bondo has been 30/70... . But, mine is way above average, body-wise, to begin with, from what I've seen in the forums.

R

 

I've done some testing with the Rustoleum on my Ranchero. Thinning with mineral spirits 50/50 I could spray it with my $20 harbor freight gravity fed gun and get decent results I shot first primer coat in the evening 2nd in the morning. It was still slightly tacky that evening. I wet sanded 3 days later and shot 3 coats of color the following weekend waited till next weekend to wet sand and buff. This was just a test on the roof. It initially had alot of fine orange peel that wet sanded pretty smooth and after some buffing it shined nice. I got the color alittle wrong so I'll be stripping it when I get energetic and sand the whole car. But I'll be using this method heck the paint cost $7.50 a quart and primer is $26 a gallon. I shouls be able to shoot 3 coats of color with that 1/2 gal once its thinned down by my guesstamates. The thing to remeber is you want it on kinda thick because you have to sand it smooth. It doesn't smooth out as it dries

 

For the average low bidget joe...this is a great way to go. The method does work and if you take your time and sand in betwen coats you can get great results. A lil extra work to save some money and keep a project on budget.....I'd do it......Just remember white hides it all!!! If the body work isn't staight, a lil wavy, or not the greatest, paint it white to hide the flaws. If everthing is straight and even any color will work fine.

 

There appears to be any number of different types of paint for a myriad of applications, houses, boats and, yes, even trucks and metal lawn furniture. Generalizing, one might say that you can either roll, brush, dip or spray paint. In my studio there are acrylics, oils, temperas, water colors, caseins, enamels, lacquers and on and on. Choices, then, can be rather complex.

Back in the early 1970's I sprayed my Corvette with Dupont acrylic lacquer with a nice DeVilbiss touch-up gun. It looked alright, but my second daughter came along about that time so the Corvette left and I never saw it again. It was a relatively (for the time) cheap paint job using good materials and mediocre equipment and limited experience.

My technique with some of the paints listed above are used with a certain amount of professional elan. Depending on what I'm painting and how much of me I'm willing to expend, renders the results expected of an artist and at what level. In truth, you can't expect much from something I might paint in tempera, however. Experience affects cost.

Surely, paint chemistry, modern equipment and painter's skill and experience enter into things, but seem to take us far from the 50 buck paint job discussion.

Thinking about a $50 paint job here some three and a half decades since the last car I painted, leads me to believe that the standard formula holds true. You can have it cheap, fast, or good... pick any two. The tedium of sanding each coat of paint looms heavily in my future.

artistically, himmelberg

 

Again, I must comment about Rustoleum. It's a very slow drying paint, that's the main reason I don't use it. Also, in my younger days I sprayed my sister's car with it and it didn't take long for it to dull out under the sun. I have used it on other things and it just doesn't handle the UV.

Whenever I spray something now I use Valspar, no, I'm not a sales rep for Valspar I just happen to try it a about ten years ago and have had great success with it. My strong suggestion is, if you are going to use a everyday hardware store paint like Rustoleum or Valspar, you have to use some kind of hardener to accelerate drying and improve duration. I have used Valspar's oil based enamel hardener since it appeared at the local farm store, about five years ago, in all of the paint I spray.

I'm not a professional painter, although I worked in the auto body business 20 year ago and have painted at least 50+ vehicles, I build industrial control systems for industrial machinery. Some of the panels I build the customer asks for a custom color so I paint the panels. I usually have to have a color custom matched using Sherwin Williams paints, which I also add the Valspar hardener to. I don't have a specified paint area in my shop, I spray them on the open floor after everyone goes home. I need the paint to dry fast, and hard before the morning so I also add the Valspar hardener. Works great every time. I can usually spray the entire cabinet with 3-4 coats of paint 20-30 minutes apart, depending how the coverage is looking. The paint comes out smooth and shiny. The paint dries to the touch in about an hour, which is really important to a back yard painter to keep the bugs and dirt from getting into the paint, and is usually dry enough to handle in 12 hours. I like to let the project stand for at least a day before moving it around but I don't always have that luxury.

I use mineral spirits as a reducer and mix the paint fairly thin so it lays down nice and smooth. The thinner the paint the faster it will tach up between coats but the more coats it will take to cover. You have to experiment to see what is best for you.