the paint all over my car is cracked. i took it to a body shop and they told me that it was what they call "crows feet". well they told me its all gonna rust and fall off unless i give them $3000 to completely strip and repaint it. is there any other way to save the paint and make it look better without breaking my wallet????

 

$50 in rattle cans, $10 in sand paper and many hours invested, don't foget the $10 in tape

 

lol seriously

If you dont mind doing it yourself, then yes sand 'er down! You can do it by hand or buy and electric sander and get all that old paint off. Get some bondo and fill up anywhere the rust might have gotten thru. Then buy some primer rattle cans and shoot it. The next step is how good you want the quality. You can continue on with a rattle can job, very cheap but its not going to be perfect, probably blotchy in areas. You can buy a compressor and some spray guns which is what I did, and just learn as you go. It might come out amazing, it might not be as you thought. Final choice is just after prepping it, take it to a body shop or paint shop and have em shoot it from there, with you prepping it, anything over $700 is a rip off.

 

Are you kidding me? Maybe at Maaco for that price, lol, plus if you prep it right and know what you are doing, if not, they will be painting over a disaster which will definately show. There are ALOT of different steps to properly do a paint job from start to finish. Do you even know how much proper quality paint, supplies and labor cost for a paint job done right by a pro is? Well, you get what you pay for! Like I said, if you want the cheap way out, go to MAACO, or spray cans, LOL, depends what you want to do with this car in the long run, if it's just a beater or what...a nice paint job on a Monte total should run easily 3,500-5,000. JUST for the cost of the paint to do my hood and trunk and stripes was a few hundred dollars.

 

That depends on the color as well and if they cleared over the whole top of the car as well. Theres no reason the paint on that car will cost over $400 to buy. You cant base the cost of your stripes to a regular job because it costs much more to get it all masked off and such. Go to carquest and you can get the exact same paint body shops use for about $400, thats 200 for base and 200 for clear. Factor in another $100 for hardener and reducer. If its not going to be perfect, get a single stage, and thatll work just fine. $200 a gallon for that. If you take it to a shop and have them paint it a metallic color , and they have to fix rust and paint the bay and door jambs, then I could see 3500-5000 without you prepping it.

 

Yea ive never heard of those kinds of prices. An all out paint job, metallic, two tone, anything elaborate like that will not go over 2,000, and thats for a truck or suv. I guess I could see if your town had 1 paint shop then sure they could charge what they wanted. But here where theres hundreds of body shops, a start to finish paint job at even the cities top body shops will not go over 1,200. You have to know what to look for and make sure people dont take advantage.

 

I was going to say...it also depends on where your at what the price could be.