Car's getting ugly(er)... leave faded or paint black?

[rexload]

If you are too cheap to spend $500 to get your faded parts painted, then your are like me. Bust out a roller and roll it. I rolled my Integra (the whole car)

[Leung]

If you are too cheap to spend $500 to get your faded parts painted, then your are like me. Bust out a roller and roll it. I rolled my Integra (the whole car)

If it's the one in the picture you're talking about, that looks really good. what was your total do you remember?

[rexload]

If it's the one in the picture you're talking about, that looks really good. what was your total do you remember?

About 10 bucks and a week of hard work but I already had sandpaper, bodyfiller, masking tape, and other bodywork supplies.

[thepowderblue]

Omg! Wft, Really. No dont roller your car.
If you are going to buy the paint and all the supplies why not buy a $20 sprayer and spray your car the proper way.
It will look alot better and its 10x the work to roller it.

[Leung]

trying to keep the cost down as low as possible.

[CB7H22Los]

maaco is having a 200$ paint special in my area...that's really cheap!

[rexload]

Omg! Wft, Really. No dont roller your car.
If you are going to buy the paint and all the supplies why not buy a $20 sprayer and spray your car the proper way.
It will look alot better and its 10x the work to roller it.

there aren't any $20 sprayers... unless you are talking about those home depot sprayers designed for spraying fences and walls. and if you use one of those, your results will be worse than a roller job, guaranteed. I know because I've done it.

to spray PROPERLY, you are looking at at least $300 in tools/supplies. don't forget, the harbor freight special air compressor isn't sufficient for painting a car... and quality paint costs money. plus you ain't just spraying it outside or in a regular-size garage with no room and poor lighting - because you WILL mess up.

just pointing out the facts.

honestly, OP's best bet is Maaco like already mentioned numerous times.

[tm123]

maaco forsure
do all the prep yourself though save some money
and around here they do shi++y prep jobs
i would even tape everything up yourself and jus let them do the spraying

[thepowderblue]

there aren't any $20 sprayers... unless you are talking about those home depot sprayers designed for spraying fences and walls. and if you use one of those, your results will be worse than a roller job, guaranteed. I know because I've done it.

to spray PROPERLY, you are looking at at least $300 in tools/supplies. don't forget, the harbor freight special air compressor isn't sufficient for painting a car... and quality paint costs money. plus you ain't just spraying it outside or in a regular-size garage with no room and poor lighting - because you WILL mess up.

just pointing out the facts.

honestly, OP's best bet is Maaco like already mentioned numerous times.

Thats BS. Harbor fright has good automotive paint sprayers for $20.
lets assume you have a small compressor to power it if not $60 at horbor fright. I used the harbor fright sprayer to paint my old 91 civic. It turned out really good. I just used single stage automotive paint and it was like 60 for a gallon and I had to spent 20 on thinner and $20 on paint hardier,I just painted it in my driveway on a day with out any wind.
So
$20 sprayer
$60 paint
$20 thinner
$20 paint hardier
$10 bondo
$20 sand paper
$15 masking tape.
and lets assume you have free news paper to use to mask.

So $165 to do it right, Thats not bad. Thats the cheapest paint job you can get with out it looking cheap.

This is the sprayer I used http://www.harborfreight.com/air-too...gun-47016.html

[wed3k]

Thats BS. Harbor fright has good automotive paint sprayers for $20.
lets assume you have a small compressor to power it if not $60 at horbor fright. I used the harbor fright sprayer to paint my old 91 civic. It turned out really good. I just used single stage automotive paint and it was like 60 for a gallon and I had to spent 20 on thinner and $20 on paint hardier,I just painted it in my driveway on a day with out any wind.
So
$20 sprayer
$60 paint
$20 thinner
$20 paint hardier
$10 bondo
$20 sand paper
$15 masking tape.
and lets assume you have free news paper to use to mask.

So $165 to do it right, Thats not bad. Thats the cheapest paint job you can get with out it looking cheap.

This is the sprayer I used http://www.harborfreight.com/air-too...gun-47016.html

yea but how much labor did you put into it? if you spent 20 hours total @ 50/hr thats...1000 dollars you could of made working instead of sanding and masking.

some people have more time than money. i personally dont have the time to sand and mask. it's dirty and gritty work too.

[King James]

Thats BS. Harbor fright has good automotive paint sprayers for $20.
lets assume you have a small compressor to power it if not $60 at horbor fright. I used the harbor fright sprayer to paint my old 91 civic. It turned out really good. I just used single stage automotive paint and it was like 60 for a gallon and I had to spent 20 on thinner and $20 on paint hardier,I just painted it in my driveway on a day with out any wind.
So
$20 sprayer
$60 paint
$20 thinner
$20 paint hardier
$10 bondo
$20 sand paper
$15 masking tape.
and lets assume you have free news paper to use to mask.

So $165 to do it right, Thats not bad. Thats the cheapest paint job you can get with out it looking cheap.

This is the sprayer I used http://www.harborfreight.com/air-too...gun-47016.html

how old are you....cuz you seem to know everything.

to spray with a cheap spray gun, cheap paint, cheap everything will not give you substantially better results than roller....how can you say roller is shit when its obvious rexloads turned out fantastic....its the amount of work your willing to put in if you want a cheap paint job to turn out good.

[texasvtak]

Omg! Wft, Really. No dont roller your car.
why would you want your car to look good like that integra?

translation.

[thepowderblue]

Its 10x faster to spray. Look at everyone else oh here that rolled it, They all suck. the teg looks good tho. At least in photos

[Law Grandeur]

rolling has been around for ages it just recently got popular or more widely known.


spraying isnt as easy as it looks either

[rexload]

yea but how much labor did you put into it? if you spent 20 hours total @ 50/hr thats...1000 dollars you could of made working instead of sanding and masking.

some people have more time than money. i personally dont have the time to sand and mask. it's dirty and gritty work too.

To look at the opportunity cost here more realistically, most of us (us meaning those who drive 20yr old Hondas) are lucky to be making 20/hr.

A quality paint job, one that a perfectionist would be satisfied with, would be ~$2,500 at the very least considering most 10-20 year old Hondas need at least some rust repairs. Plus you are looking at another couple hundred in sales tax.

Working a job at $20 an hour, you would only make roughly $300 bucks in 20 hours because Unlce Sam will also take some of that.



Now suppose you have some bodywork experience and it takes you 20 hours to paint your car RIGHT.

So paying a shop for a quality paint job =
$300 income
less ~$2,700 expense
net ($2,400) in expenses

Painting yourself =
($300) lost income
($300) supplies expenses
net ($600) in expenses

In either case you have to work 20 hours. Clearly painting yourself costs 1/4 of what it would cost to pay a shop even considering opportunity cost.


All these calculations obviously don't apply to half-ass paint jobs