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OP, Maaco is NOT a monolith, meaning, it's a franchise with different body shop managers, painters, etc... each one is different. If you can disassemble your cars yourself and find a good wet sand/buff guy, you could have a good end result. There are people out here that spent 4x what a Maaco job cost and their cars have been gone for YEARS and their end result isn't better than some maaco specials.
Also important that Marco offers different levels of paint, work and prep. It's a car paint menu.
I have a friend that used to run a large body shop and he hired all his paint booth guys from Marco and
Earl Scheib back in the day because they sprayed a LOT of cars, so they were smooth and fast..
He was usually spraying Sickens or Imron so timing and gun control mattered..
Decent paint can be north of $1200 a gallon right now.. in the can.. NO extras..
Last year I was talking to an owner of a 4th gen Camaro that was painted by Maaco. The paint looked surprisingly good. I think he paid $2500. Not sure how long it will last but I'd say the quality was probably on par with the factory.
I've never used Maaco. Per the internet you can find good and bad things about any body shop. You can save yourself a ton of money if you do all the prep work yourself. I help at a local body shop a couple days a week. Due to my lack of skills I'm the king of block sanding poly (sprayable filler) and 2K primer along with wet sanding (1000 grit, 1500 grit and the 3000 grit) as long as I stay away from the edges. Leaving that for the techs have more skills than I have. No one is standing in line to block sand at a body shop.
I did all the body work on 68 C10 under the supervision of the same body shop. The young guys loved to tell me the old guy what I was doing wrong.
Total body off nut and bolt build. I stripped all parts down to bare metal one at a time and then brought them to the body shop for 2K primer to keep from flash rust. Then again one at a time I body worked them one at time getting them ready one at a time for primer and paint. Block sanding is really good for the shoulder muscles.
Prep and materials from the same supplier are super important. Don't mix and match primer, sealer and paint.
Start and finish pics.
DEAD THREAD Revive
so the #6 Maaco in the nation just painted our formula. **** job. Had them re- do the front clip and roof. Will find out tomorrow how it went.
had black spots all over the front and some titty bumps on the roof.
lots of overspray I’m sure I’ll have to clean off, but 2 small dents, rear hatch jam repaint same artic white for 5300 ain’t terrible compared to 8-10k at a regular shop.
also had the antenna hole filled in.
Last edited by Truckinu; Apr 12, 2024 at 08:02 PM.
Take the car apart yourself - bumpers, trim . . . everything. If you can do the stripping off of the old paint - chemical stripping or dustless blasting, even better. Good paint prefers a bare metal surface if at all possible. Then find an auto body shop that will paint your vehicle using booth fill time when nothing else is going on. My 70 El Camino got painted using fill time about five years ago and it was only stuck in paint jail at that place for three weeks. This included adding two SS hood stripes and a few minor body filler skim coat repairs all for a little over $3700. Shop labor costs a lot of money and you can save those costs by doing it yourself and having the vehicle flat bedded to the shop. And you will need to ask the automotive paint stores in your town who they recommend for this course of action because they know who these boutique shops are. Legwork and personal visits to these out-of-the way shops possibly required.
I'm going to follow this exact same process and use the same paint shop for my B-body Catalina convertible at some point in the next year. It'll certainly cost more than five years ago but it is virtually certain that I will be happy with the results.
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