Painting the e34 - DIY

[Scott C]

Maybe I am getting over my head... First of all let me say that I do appreciate and value all of your advice. Its not falling on deaf ears.

I have always enjoyed DIY and im looking at this as more of a challenge rather then a necessity. It would probably be smarter (and even possibly cheaper) to just go and pay a body shop to do it, but then I could not get the benefit of the experience

If the fender turns out poor then thats ok, I will leave it to the pros. If not, I will consider doing the rest, but I will start small for sure.

One of my friends painted his last two cars with no experience, and they turned out ok. No different from other cars you see parked next to it. That has given me a bit of comfort.

I will take some pictures and post my results. Will try to get everything by the end of next week.

I am the same way

Just make sure you protect yourself properly (I know of a kid that did not protect his lungs - he is permanently disabled at 20) - the paint job will come out okay, especially if you take your time on prep - the painting is actually the easy part in my humble opinion. Don't sand the basecoat prior to the clear, make sure you are really happy with the primer/surfacer prior to putting the base on. The clear is where you will have the issues but that is because of its consistency.

Metalflake is harder as you have to be precise with mixing/shaking the can - both the base prior to mixing and the mixed paint in the gun while painting. I actually find black to be easier to paint - hard to screw up. You mention blue metallic - that is going to be "harder" to match from panel to panel. Get a mixing cup that has graduations (cc's) on the side to help you be more precise.

You may consider the paints that are sold at autozone that appear to be lacquer based (although I would expect that the longevity/durability is not as good as base/clear).

Good luck!
Scott

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

The problem is dust.... and paint will fly everywhere so you need to cover everything in your garage that you do not want painted.

Painting is an art. You need to have the right wrist movement and the right patterns else it will look like crap.

Are you doing single stage paint or base and clear?

Yup, done this once...once. it's a lot of work keeping everything clean.

[Kibokojoe]

Here is a site on painting. Have not tried any of his procedures and I also notice he only shows painting in solid colors

http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/Painting.html

I see he says to ground the car to reduce the effects of dust

I called around town and got some quotes at about an average of $1,000... This place MAACO is offering to do it for $300. I read up on them a bit and looks like its cheap because they don't do any prep work, just paint over your old job. + the paint is kind of crappy too.

So... I figure that I may be able to do a better job than MAACO myself and save money too. I have a compressor, garage, and gun already.

I have a new fender I have not got around to installing, so I figure maybe I should just try to paint it and see how it turns out. If it turns out alright I will do the entire car. If not, well.. Lesson learned, no harm done.

So here is my question:

1) How much should I expect to really spend on a DIY paint job? Could someone give me a ballpark estimate on how much it will cost for the primer, paint, and clear coat to cover the entire e34?

2) Whats the best place to buy auto paint? I was thinking O'reilly auto, or autozone...