If you sand through the factory primer to bare metal, it must be primed within an hour at the most to prevent rust -- it will show red dust by the next morning around here. Best to leave the primer -- if it is still stuck tight after 20 years or more, it will last forever with paint on it.

Maaco, as I understand, does not do body work, they spray paint. They will cheerfully paint over your body work, but they don't do any. Period. Rust spots get painted. If you have a car in decent shape and don't expect the paint job to last forever, they will give you the best "cheap" paint job in the business, since they use the best paint. However, they will NOT edge out door frames, paint under trim, behind trim panels, etc.! If this is what you don't like about the current paint, you will be dissapointed.

My brother has always used DuPont DelStar polyurethane enamel with hardner. This isn't quite what MB uses (theirs is more expensive) and red oxide primer. He isn't fond of the gray primer, thinks it fails more often. We had a bunch of bad gray primer some years (30) ago that didn't stick to the paint -- get a stone chip, and the paint would blow off the car in sheets, much like the "leopard" effect GM and Chrysler sport these days with while paint -- same deal, but the new problem is not enough pigment in the color coats to protect the primer from UV.

The DelStar costs about $200 a gallon these days, MB paint is more like $400 a gallon.

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!