Re: [alfa] maaco paint jobs

[Stacy Faught <onethumb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My own experience with my '87 Spider Quad:

On the recomendation of a like-minded car guy across
the street from me (although he collects british
cars...I try not to hold it against him), I went over
to the local One Day and sprung for their top-level
paint job, which involves a two stage paint, and just
about any color you could want.  I chose the
pearl/metallic titanium silver (a color match for the
new BMW's), to paint in place of the original Alfa
silver.  Total cost was around $1600, since the trunk
and hood had to be stripped to bare metal.  Before
taking it over there, I took off all the trim,
headlamps, door handles, ect...

Going into the shop, the first thing I noticed is that
mine wasn't the only Alfa there...there was a late
70's Spider in there already, along with a handful of
older muscle cars and a pretty nice 70's mercedes.
Now, let me also state before I get going about the
quality of the job itself that I used to work as a
designer at GM, and the bulk of my work involved
concept cars for the auto show circuit.  For me, any
flaw at all in the paint stands out like a sore thumb,
and bugs the hell out of me.  It used to be a job
requirement, now it's just a another manifestation of
OCD :)

Overall, it looks fantastic from about 5 feet away. 
The metallic was sprayed reasonably well, with very
few shadowy regions.  The pearl effect is amazing,
because of the more dramatic curves of the Alfa body
to the BMW---when the car is sitting in the direct
sunlight it can be painfully bright to look at.
Now, the bad part....  One panel had to be totally
resprayed when I picked it up.  As long as you are
nice to them, and have sprung for the more expensive
paint, then this shouldn't be a problem.  They were
happy to fix it.  If you look closely, you can see a
few small areas where the fine-grit sanding wasn't
done well.  There are small sanding marks in various
places all around the car, but again these are
noticeable only if you are looking for them.  Also, a
few small particles of lint or dust found their way
under the clear coat.  They are small and unnoticeable
to an untrained eye, but they look like boulders to
me.  
The paint is not quite as hard as an OEM paint job.  A
car door took a nice sized chip out of the side of my
newly painted car about 2 months after it was done.
Go figure.
I suspect the only way to get the shell-like hardness
is for the panels to be individually baked at a high
temp, much like the factory does it.  Mabye the custom
shops are good at this too, but I'm not sure of the
exact details.

Overall, if I had to do it again, I'd probably wait
and spring for a $4000 job done correctly.  I'm
somewhat upset at spending over a grand on a paint job
that is less-than-perfect, even though it looks very
good from a short distance away.  Certainly driving
down the road I get a lot of attention, so mabye it is
serving the purpose.  But I'm too much of a
perfectionist to accept "good enough", at least when
it comes to my cars.  If you're going to do something,
do it right or don't bother.  

A few people have mentioned going to the local
community college.  I think this is a fantastic idea, 
not to drop it off and let the students do it, but
TAKE THE CLASS YOURSELF!  Most of them offer night
classes for this stuff, and they have the proper
equipment.  It's not easy, but if you are looking to
save money and still get it done right, this is
probably the right way to go.  At the very least,
you'll gain some appreciation for the skill involved.

Barring all of this, it is possible to do a lot of the
prep work yourself.  Buy a primer gun, strip, spray,
block sand, hand sand, respray, ect....there are a
number of good resources out there to learn this
stuff.  This is assuming you have dedicated garage
space and a forgiving significant other that won't
mind you spending every weekend for the next 2 months
in the garage.  Once you have it primed and straight,
take it to a custom paint shop and they will spray it
for you, at a reasonable price.  Pick it up, color
sand and polish yourself.  LOTS of work, and you may
have to strip and re-sand some of the panels--it's
awfully hard to get it perfect the first time you try.
Don't try to paint it yourself...you'll never get the
paint to set properly, and most modern paints are
downright dangerous to work with.  

That's all I got...hopefully this will all help you
decide.  As I said before, after going through the
whole process, I think the best thing to do is to just
bite the bullet and pay the money for a 1st class job.
   If you don't have the money, then save longer...
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