The paint on both my front and rear bumpers is fading pretty badly, and I have these corny 80s-looking purple and teal stripes running throughout the sides and hood of the car. I was thinking about having the bumpers repainted and the (painted on) pinstriping removed, but would it be more worth it to just have the entire car repainted? I figure the money I spend doing that other stuff will be about the same as giving the car a new paint job. Any suggestions?

In the picture, you can sort of make out the the pinstriping on the rear quarter panel as well as the door...

 

Its not so bad just doing the bumpers if the rest of the paint is still nice. Just the bumpers is gonna be cheaper than a full decent painjob. So if you can only afford that at the moment go for it....its not gonna make it looks worse. Now if you can hold of on it and save up a little more then do the whole car.

 

Even if you don't get it painted, remove the pinstriping.

 

Right now, I can barely afford to have the bumpers repainted. I figure it will take a while for me to be able to afford a whole new paint job (I'm a 19 year old college student). The paint itself on the rest of the car is fine, it's just the bumpers that's fading a lot, and of course those hideous pinstripes. Maybe I'll fix the fading now, then maybe after the summer I'll take care of the pinstripes.

 

Repaint the whole thing (with-out pin striping) later, when you have the money to do it right! My car was disassembled, taken down to the bare metal, (all ground effects, bumpers, mirrors, hood blisters were painted separately), then they painted the whole car and then bolted on the rest of the painted parts. This is the way to do it right (that way you have fresh paint underneath the parts that were removed). Here's a pic:

 

Yeah, I'd say slightly worn original paint is preferable to a poorly done re-spray. If you don't have the money to repaint it right, just do what you can afford now. There's nothing worse than a cheapo re-spray to just ruin the whole car. BTW...where in NY are ya? I've got a great body shop on LI..mid Suffolk. There's pics of mine at https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hlight=deemax. This was disassembled and stripped to metal.

 

I'm actually right in the middle of Long Island as well, in Holbrook.

EDIT: from the looks of those pics in that thread, I'm gonna guess that those were taken somewhere on the south shore... Patchogue, perhaps? Awesome job, by the way.

 

Hot91...small world. Holbrook, eh? Take your car to American Heritage Auto Body on Church St, just east of Lincoln. Talk to Andy (or Joe...but Andy does most of the paint work). That's who painted mine. If ya wanna see mine up close first, just drop me an email. I'm in Patchogue, just like you figured. And thanks for the compliments.

 

Holy crap! Andy? That's my good friend Dan's father. He's a pretty cool guy. I know exactly where American Heritage is, I've been there a few times. Wow, really small world, lol. And I was actually planning on taking it there to get it painted in the first place too. Anyway, I'd love to see yours in person.