This is just paint materials. I think I am somewhere around $2,100 for just paint. Sand paper, wax and grease remover and all that other stuff adds up little by little as well.citrus3000psi wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:22 pmThis is good info. What is the parts expense? The paint itself?DC4MC wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:11 am Paint is such a pain to deal with. I did an engine bay rattle can job years ago and the entire bay cracked and spider webbed after a few years. Was such a pain to sand out (I actually sand blasted some of the nooks where it was hard to sand).
Getting paint done for under $5k is going to be pretty difficult. I have almost $3k in materials alone and decided to paint my car myself. For my budget, I decided I was too picky to pay someone for a less than perfect job. And there was no way I was going to fork over the money certain shops wanted for a complete paint job.
I guess I need to raise my budget a little bit.I'm not looking for show car quality, as I still won't be running any interior etc. But I would at least like the car to look halfway decent.
There are budget friendly materials that you can buy, but there are reasons certain paints cost more. I'm definitely no expert in the paint and body category, either. So please do your own research and don't take my word as gospel here.
I chose middle ground with my primer and base product, which was PPG shop line plus paint line. I bought way more materials then I'll need right now (2 gallons of color and had them mixed together), but I wanted to make sure I have the same color available if I ever did a new bumper, front lips, etc. in the future. A gallon of red was somewhere around $38X.XX. If I went up to the Deltron paint line (PPG's high end), the red was $9XX.XX per gallon. I bought 2.
I bought the high end clear. I can't remember what that was, but the hardener on it's own was over $100 I think and the thinner was around $50-$80 (for a small container). My materials list is below (From what I can remember)
Epoxy primer - shop line plus - 1 gallon
Hardener - shop line plus - 2-3 pints (I think)
generic thinner - some off brand - 2 gallons
sandable primer - shop line pus - 1-2 quarts
hardener - shop line plus
generic thinner (same as above)
Base color - shop line plus - 2 gallons
generic thinner (same as above)
Clear - PPG 2021 - 1 gallon
thinner (higher end paint line) - 1 quart maybe?
hardener (higher end paint line) - 1 pint
flex additive for plastic pieces - 1 pint I think
I'm not sure on the price breakdown for all of it exactly, but it definitely costs more than most people realize. I know there are cheaper lines of paint out there, but I didn't want to go any cheaper for my car (non-type R). I'd probably opt for the higher end paint if I did have a type R, as hard of a pill that would be to swallow.
Labor is the biggest part of a paint job. most cars have hundreds of hours in them and most shops probably bill around $75/hr. I would guess. I'm helping a friend get an old thunderbird redone right now and a more budget friendly paint job was estimated at 400 hours on that car. Granted it's being totally stripped to bare metal and redone. I don't think that's the case for these cars yet.
Hopefully there is at least a little bit of good info in my long rambling here.
