Paint too far gone?
 

I took my 400e, which has been sitting since 2004, to get detailed and I just got a call from the guy. He said he started on the hood since it was in the worse shape and nothing was working. What he was doing was actually bringing out the scratches and making look worse.

The clear coat looks like it's still there and the sides will shine up very nice. He has suggested a $250 macco paint job:eek:

What to do what to do? Find another detailer?

Stay away from Maaco. Get quality paintwork done at a shop that specializes in MB automobiles if that's what is needed on the hood. In the meantime get another detailer to look at your 400E, or detail it yourself.

Stay away from MAACO or any other shop that doesn't know what they are doing. Check out their work on previous customers. There are some MAACO franchises that know what they are doing and.....you are paying for what you get at MAACO.

What color is the car? I have used Maaco in the past and they have done satisfactory work. They are a franchise so the paint job is as good as the people that the owners hire to do the work. The one that I go to has a good painter.

If you're just painting the hood, then they should be able to do it at reasonable cost.

If it's a metallic paint job, then i would avoid the $250 paint job because that's single stage enamel. If you try to wet sand or buff it, you'll move the metallic flakes around and trash it. You'll need base coat , clear coat and even at Maaco, that's a $900 job.

It sounds like you have a project car, why not save a few bucks and paint the car yourself. This is what i'm doing with my 76 300D and it's working out quite well.

http://www.w108.org/gallery/albums/7...0188.sized.jpg

http://www.w108.org/gallery/albums/7...0194.sized.jpg

I don't know the actual color code/name but it's charcoal gray. I am going to take it to another detailer and see what they say. I have a buffer and the meguiars 3 step stuff... I used it along with a clay bar to "test" the trunk and right quarter panel. That is when I decided it was too hot out for me to buff the car myself and to go get it detailed.

I still don't think it needs painted anywhere. There are some baked in water/sap marks on the trunk but it does shine pretty well.

If you have a random orbital buffer wait until the weather gets cooler and detail your 400E yourself. As a rule use the least aggressive product that will restore the finish. Then apply a coat of carnuba wax to protect the surface.

Yeah, find another detailer or try it yourself once it cools down. I would think the Meguire's three step stuff, or Ultimate Compound, should be able to remove 99% of the contamination.

It all depends on whether there is any paint left on the car.If it's rough, it may be because the clear coat is off and then there's nothing that you can do except re-shoot it.

A proper detailer with a 'real' buffer that can actually heat up the paint should be able to do magic. If the clear is gone on an entire panel and its working its way down to bare metal, there's nothing that can be done.

I've seen paint as dull as chalk,.....a pink car turned back into beautiful signal red. Once that's done its just a matter of maintaining a coat of wax and washing regularly and you won't have to go back for another magic buffing session for a few years. 75% of the cars our there that are repainted could have been buffed, or even wet sanded/buffed if they are that bad for 1/4 of the cost and the results are often the same or better. OEM paint > any respray.

The last comments are totally true if the coating is actually OEM. A lot of cars have repainted areas, and some of the jobs are not as good as others.

I still would avoid MAACO. If you are worried about fine scratch details, you could run into a major problem with their jobs. It is just a fact of life that you cannot have a quality job at the prices they charge. What they charge for a completed job wouldn't get you materials with a higher quality paint, let alone labor.

Even if its not OEM paint, sometimes it worth trying anyways. Especially with single stage. Here is what I did with a cheap 20yr respray on one of my previous VW Bugs. This was wetsanded and polished by hand too. Machine results would have been better (and easier on the arms).


http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/354442.jpg

Maaco can do very good paint work, with no runs, no orange peel, no blemishes. Those guys are spraying paint all day every day, after all.

The thing Maaco doesn't do a very good job of is prep. In fact, their prep is piss poor IMO. That's why most Maaco paint jobs have tons of overspray. If you do your own prep work, and just bring them the individual parts to be sprayed, you can get very good results for cheap.

The only way I'd let them paint a whole car though, is if the entire chassis were stripped down to bare metal inside and out.

Yep, they're a good reason behind that. The paint packages that they offer only account for 2hrs worth of prep work. If you want more, then you can pay more and they'll be happy to do it.

Material costs are have nothing to do with it, they use the same paint as most other collision shops.