Paint Job Question?

[M3 Ryan]

Don't knock painting your car yourself...
I did it on my last E30 M3. I spent 140 hours of prep/paint time, and the car was show-stopping clean.



Well, I did work at a body shop, and the paint alone was over $600 (Lesonal 1k, 2 coats base, 2 coats clear).
Bodywork is expensive, any way you look at it, you pay for what you get (most of the time)

[M42Technik]

Don't knock painting your car yourself...
I did it on my last E30 M3. I spent 140 hours of prep/paint time, and the car was show-stopping clean.


Well, I did work at a body shop, and the paint alone was over $600 (Lesonal 1k, 2 coats base, 2 coats clear).
Bodywork is expensive, any way you look at it, you pay for what you get (most of the time)

How much did it cost you do to this, in terms of paint supplies necessary? I want to do this, but I'm not sure how much paint/clear/etc... will cost me. I won't be doing this for awhile, but you can know I'll be doing 140 hours of prep too. I just need to learn how to prep the car for paint...

[M3 Ryan]

To give you a basic idea...
First I got the car to the body shop. I removed the bumpers/wing because they needed flex agent in the paint.
Then I started grinding off the paint from areas that had dents/damage. I used weld on studs and pulled out the dents until they were almost perfect, then used a light coat of glaze/primer/sand/glaze/primer/sand then sealed it with a self etching sealer.
Then I sanded down the whole car with 400 Dry, or you can use 500 Wet, its up to you.
I didn't remove all the parts from my car that I probably should have. I painted it with all the glass/side trim intact. I just masked everything off, put wire under the windshield seal to let paint flow up under it, removed the antenna and mirrors.
I also removed the decklid to paint inside the trunk jam as it didn't have a seam to end the paintjob on. I then popped the hood up and masked off the whole engine bay. and painted the fenders/hood with the hood in the popped up position, just enough room to paint the inside fender jam on a good line. The car was already brillantrot, so painting it wasn't too bad. I didn't do the door jams or the front radiator support that sits under the hood and you would never know.
Good paint is expensive. I spent ~$625 for 1 gal of red paint (red is most expensive- hard pigment to produce), 1 gal of clear, 1 qt of hardner, 1qt reducer, 1 pint flex agent (for plastic parts) 1 pint primer, and 1 pint epoxy sealer.

I only primed the areas that were damaged, and not even the whole panel at that. You can prime the whole car if you need to, but my paint was still strong and didn't have any peeling or failures so it was a good base to start with.

Most of my prep time was spent on fixing dents. I had 4-5 areas that I needed light filler and primer on. This process took up around 50 hours of my time. Had I done it again, I would have taken the car to a paintless dent repair guy first and told him to get as much as he could out first, then I would have spent only a few hours on finishing off the work.
Plan on masking the car for around 10 hours. This is to get everything done just right. A good paintjob can only happen if you did a good masking job, as its a critical part of how nice it will turn out.
Paint time is relitively short. We spent 30min getting the paint all ready to go. Base coat took 1.5hours to lay up 2 coats. Lesonal is a very thick product. 2 coats is equal to 3-4 coats of PPG. The clear coat takes around 2 hours as you need some 30-45min between coats to let the paint wick out a bit.
Once everything is painted, it depends on the product for when you can cut/buff. Lesonal is awesome in that you can cut/buff 12 hours after you finish with the clear coat.
The cut/buff process takes around 20 man hours to complete. I was sanding, along with my MOTHER (she wanted to help any way she could, so she spent 3 hours with 1500 grit paper and did a fender/door/quarter panel for me). I had one other guy sanding with us while my boss started buffing with compound on a foam wheel for 2 passes, then onto Meguires Fine Cut Cleaner #2 for polishing 2 more passes on a sheep-skin wheel.
The whole process started with painting the base at 11pm tuesday night, clear coat was finished at 3:30am. It was hot so we decided to wait until late night when it had cooled down a bit (still 75degrees in the booth). The paint was hard enough to start sanding at 2pm the next day. We started sanding and buffing, and I started hanging the bumpers/decklid/headlights and drove the car home at 10pm that night. I put the remainder of the trim on and the car was done.
I spent 6 weeks after work and on weekends preping the car, and then in less than 24 hours the paintjob was completely done.
I have a video of the process from start to finish, but its not digital... maybe I can get it hosted online as its only 4 min, if enough people want to see it, I will get it converted. I havn't watched the video since I did the paintjob over 3 years ago, so it will be somewhat nastolgic for me..

Wow, I can't believe I just wrote all that. You can see how passionate I was about that paintjob.
Few more pics for good measure:



Damnit that car was mint. Damn drunk drivers

[M42Technik]

That looks amazing.

I'm really glad you wrote that all up, now I have a template as to what to do when it is time to repaint my car. I'll be repainting it Diamantshwarz anyways, so I shouldn't have any more trouble. As for the paint itself, it looks great, but maybe its the quality of the last shot, but I almost notice some orange peel. Maybe not, but that helped me alot in terms of what to do when it comes time to paint.

So Lesonal is a great paint, eh? I can assume black will be a bit cheaper, and 1 gallon will cover an entire exterior?

I really wanna paint my car, like now, but I will wait...need M-Tech II first... :twisted:

[///M42 sport]

I wonder how much you'll save if you remove all the trim yourself.

[Gonzo318is]

I wonder how much you'll save if you remove all the trim yourself.

I would estimate it'd be a bit, you figure that's where most of the time is involved. When I had my bug painted I removed all outer trim, seals, lights, etc. All they had to do was mask and spray. I did it at "One Day" so I didn't pay that much anyway but still it took a long time for me to remove everything and I can only imagine what a good shop would charge in labor to do all that.

[Jand3rson]

I choked on and swallowed my gum when I saw that pic...

[808BMW]

We did my dad's car. This is the 3rd car me and my dad have painted. Next will be mine (probably). Take your time, take your time, and take your time :P

[M3 Ryan]

There was NO orange peel on my red car, must has been the angle. I didn't sand the lower section of the doors/sideskirts/bumpers/wing, but everything else was done.
check this shot:


Its a little blurry, but look at the reflections in the upper right...


Ok, I am done hijacking this thread with pics of my old car.If you need more pics of it, look here: http://photos.tobinhosting.com/album33
thats all I got.

[bimmerboy12]

paint job

I painted my 318i with one-coat acrylic enamel from Napa. Costed $118, had a friend buff out the orange peel after wet sanding with 1000 grit, then polish using all 3M products, and the it looks AMAZING. Used my dad's Binks gun and a 50 gallon air compressor, and did it outside on the driveway. Will post pics soon.

[///M42 sport]

I thought you could only get rid of orange peel by wetsanding.

[bimmerboy12]

Re: paint job

had a friend buff out the orange peel after wet sanding with 1000 grit

thats what I did.

[M42Technik]

There was NO orange peel on my red car, must has been the angle. I didn't sand the lower section of the doors/sideskirts/bumpers/wing, but everything else was done.
check this shot:

It was definitely the angle. Thanks for all the help, once I get the parts gathered for repaint (new panels and such), I'll be doing it myself now.

[96 Cosmos]

I just had my car repainted. Your question is a bit subjective, but here's my opinion. I'd call my paint job very good. My guy didn't take the entire car down to bare metal, only smoothed out any knicks or chips in the existing paint. An independent BMW mechanic who used to own a professional body shop did the work - using stage one PPG paint. That means no clear coat. Honestly, you can't tell the difference. It's beautiful and there's very little orange peal. I read the above posts and those guys are right....taking the car down to bare metal and doing a very, very nice job with the paint will cost 4 to 5 grand easy. My paint job...it was in the 2,000 dollar range and I'm perfectly happy. Find an enthusiast-minded paint guy who will work with you. I stripped as much off of the car as I could and towed it to the shop. That saved me hundreds right there. I found my paint guy through the local chapter of the BMW CCA. Hope this helps.

[James Crivellone]

If you want a decent paint job, you will spend around 2 - 3K...This is if you strip the car yourself.

If you want a professional concours job, expect to pay around 6 - 10K for this. Especially if you have any body kit pieces you want repaired.

Adding up all the hours on my paintjob + the bodykit work its around 9K worth of paint/material/labor.

Painting is not cheap, however if you just want a decent job, 2 - 3K is a decent estimate.