Hi fellas,

I thought I'd share my experience getting my truck painted. Before I had it done, I did as much research as I could online and didn't find a whole lot in the forums as far as what to expect and quality vs price. Other than stuff like "my buddy used spray cans from home depot and it came out nice..." or "my busddy spent $4k and it still doesn't look new..." etc. there really wasn't a lot out there on what I should expect to pay and what kind of quality I should expect to get.

I picked up my truck on CL back in March for $7200. It's a 2003 SLT QC HEMI. It had 96k miles on the ODO. The truck was from Sun City CA, and the paint was beat to ****, had tons of sun damage, clear coat was peeling and the hood was even starting to rust on one spot. It also had a big dent in the rear bumper, and some minor dings here and there on the body. Mechanically it was OK and drove good. I figured it would cost around $800 for a cheapish paint job at the time, and my total budget was $8000, so I pulled the trigger and bought the thing.

After taking it in for an estimate at Maaco ($1200 w/o clearcoat) and not being impressed at all by the work they were doing, I found a place called Carcoa here in San Diego that specializes in mid-grade paint jobs. Basically they are somewhere in between Maaco and the places that charge top dollar to deliver factory condition body work and paint (i.e. when insurance companies are paying for it). So, I took my truck in about 2 weeks ago and got an estimate. I have a crease on one door (thanks to my GF driving it), a replacement rear bumper that needed to be installed and sprayed, and a variety of other small dents and dings that is normal for a 10 year old truck.

I learned a few things during the quoting/research part of this endeavor...

1. If your clear coat is peeling and the paint underneath is also damaged, the vehicle HAS to go through what they called a "deep sand" to remove all the clear coat and paint in those areas. If your truck is in the sun a lot, it is a great idea to get it painted BEFORE the clear coat peals as this will save a lot of prep work. Jim, the owner of Carcoa, told me the prep work alone on my truck was going to cost around $1,600. If it wasn't for the peeling clear coat, he said it would be about 1/2 that price to prep it for paint.

2. Places like Maaco do what they call the "California special" where they do light prep work and spray a single layer of paint with no clear coat. This type of paint job will look good for about 1 year. With regular waxing, garage parking, it can potentially look good for 3+ years. Getting clear coat generally improves how long the paint will last by about 5 years. So instead of 1-3 years in the sun, you can expect 5-7 years of a good looking paint job (similar to a new vehicle).

3. Changing the color is significantly more expensive because they have to remove a lot more stuff to get inside the door jams etc. Expect costs to go up 30-50% to paint it a different color.

4. After painting a vehicle with clear coat, it takes up to 60 days for the chemicals to finish curing. During this time, soemthing like a bird turd, or even water stains can leave permanent stains in the clear coat. Therefore, you have to keep the trucK as clean aspossible or risk screwing up your new expensive paint job.

Initially the owner of Carcoa quoted me $2700 (for paint plus clear coat, he refused to even price out a non-clear coat paint job because "you have a nice truck and it would be a waste to do all that prep and then spend $500 on the paint"). I was able to haggle him down to $2400. This was still FAR more than I had originally planned on spending but after doing the research and deciding this is a truck I want to hang onto for a few years and be proud of, I decided to go for it. We shook hands and I dropped my truck off the following Monday morning.

I've uploaded some pics I took when I stopped by the shop two days later to check the progress. I was really impressed with the work they did on some of the nastier dings/warps around the edges of the bed that I thought would be tough to smooth out. The guy working on my truck when i got there was really enthusiastic about the HEMI/magnaflow sound and assured me it would be "like new" when it was done. Overall I was happy/impressed with the quality of the body work and the progress thay had made at that point. Also I thought it was interesting that my truck had a red bumper. Obviously it had hit something before...

Two days later I got a call from Carcoa. All finished. I went down and checked it out, and seriously... It looks almost brand new. HUGE difference. The did a detail on it and restored the plastics (they said it should last about a year, I think it will be closer to 6 months).

So here we are 4 days later, I have digested the new paint, and several people have looked it over pretty closely (some of whom were using me as a guinea pig for there cars). While the truck is now great looking, and overall I'd say it was totally worth it; I have to give Carcoa a 7/10 for the quality of the paint job and bodywork considering the price.

I was a little disaponted in a few things:

-The detail job they did on the truck after it was painted was sloppy. I realize it was a free add-on thing, but the guy left some kind of spray on my windshield that made it foggy, and did a poor job cleaning the wheels (which were dirtier than when I brought the truck in)

-When doing the metal/prep work on the body, they missed a couple spots. There were two small dents on the top of the bed they missed (which won't be noticable one it gets the rhino liner so no biggie) and there is a small dent on the drivers side door abover the door handle. They didn't flatten it out and now I see it everytime I get in the truck (it's more obvious now with the sweet paint job).

-So far, we have found two spots on the body skirts where there is some slight running/bubling in the paint. Not noticable from 5 feet away but when you look close, there it is.

-My coworker (I can't see it) says that he can see "little fuzzies" settled into the paint like the paint room may not have had a good enough air filter. Again, I still can't see what he's talking about but my eyes aren't all that great either.

I was also suprised by a few things:

- The truck is much darker now, I think this is largely because the old paint was pretty much bleached by the sun.

- The metal flake in the new paint seems to be a little larger than the original factory flake, so it looks more "metallic" now. Which I actually like.

I uploaded a pic of the finished product when i picked it up. I really need to take some better pics, and whish I had a good before/after comparison.
Hope this is useful as I've found a lot of great info in these forums and wanted to give back.

-SDGuero

EDIT: I guess I exceeded my quota and can't upload photos of the finished truck today. Will try again tomorrow...

 

thanks for sharing, some good info there. If you upload to photobucket then you should be able to post however many you want, just using the insert image button than copying the direct link.

 

yep you can save quite by doing some of the prep your self.

 

on bullet 2, the california special is a single stage paint, requiring no clear, its a budget thing, they dont paint cars that way from the factory, clearcoat is necessary with non single stage paint, which is about 99 percent of paint out there

 

Sounds like other then the few issues you seem vary satisfied with the job.