I've not yet painted my own car, but I will pass on some second hand
knowledge and some first hand experience.
The prep work is the hard part. If you can get the bodywork to the point
that it is straight and even in primer than that is 95% of the work. My
shortcoming is always in having the patience to get that part right. If you
can get that far, I would say paint it yourself.
Also, I have heard of a few Maaco jobs that went well but I have had two
cars done by them and was not pleased with either. Both were bare metal
repaints and at least the second one can be verified as having a metal
etching primer put down first.
My first observation is that while some of them do get excited about doing
something other than a respray on an econobox, they are not used to it, so
even when they are being extra careful they aren't doing work to the caliber
that I would want. Both Maaco shops that I went to were excited and both
paint jobs had runs in them and both completely missed some areas of the
body. For instance, it never occurred to them to kneel down and paint the
underside of the turn signal areas, or under the taillight areas. They are
simply in the habit of spraying a color over a similar one, and aren't
detail oriented.
Second, I have never had a scratch in a Maaco paint job. However, if you
look at either car cross-eyed the paint will chip.
Lastly, Anything you want done needs to be spelled out in writing. For
instance, if you take a brand new glass bonnet in with the car and you tell
them to make sure to paint the underside as well, that doesn't mean that
they will do it, or that they will think it strange to leave the underside
bare fiberglass. It really seems asinine but you need to spell out every
surface of the car and have it written on the work order. Unfortunately,
the things are so basic that they will never occur to you. For instance,
would you have ever thought to tell a paint shop that when they do the final
prep for primer, not to sand off the bondo work that you have already done,
and then leave the spot filler-less. I never would have thought that, but
they did it on a number of spots.
I'm guessing that this is for your race car, so I'll add one more bit. If
you ask them to paint racing stripes, don't assume that they will line up
from panel to panel, or that they will wrap around the panel at all.
Can you tell my opinion of Maaco?
I have heard of a couple of people renting a paint booth from a professional
shop for a few hours and painting themselves. I don't know the exact cost,
but I was told that it was very reasonable.
As I said at the beginning, if you can get the car straight in body work
then you are 95% of the way there. Just paint it yourself.
I will definitely paint my next car myself.
IMO, naturally,
James Nazarian
71 MGBGT V8
71 MGB Tourer
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