I got some bright red ground effects for my cherry red SC, is there a way to spray paint the effects and my black mirrors to match the car that looks good and shiny like the rest of the car? or am i better of just taking it to maaco?

 

That all depends on how good you are with a spray can. If you do all the right steps, take your time, it can look good.. but spraying the mirrors is one thing. The GFX is a different story they are a bit bigger, and you could end up with shadows.. A good solid even coat would be a bit harder to acheive.. Price any of the better body shops out.. for the extra cost they would be much better than any macco job.. If the macco out there is not any better than the Maccos out here, you pay cheap, you get cheap. I think a previous owner did Macco on my car.. the paint is seperating in some places..

 

If you get a good color match out of the spray can then it should be pretty easy. The hard part comes after you've sprayed the paint (use extra layers so you have thickness to work with). Wet sand a couple of times using finer & finer sandpaper. The polish, polish again, & polish some more. Then wax. It can turn out really good (I've done it). It's just a whole lot of hand work.

(More money spent = less work. Little money spent = whole lotta work.)

 

do i want to clear coat it after all the polishing and before i wax?

 

Are you sure you want to trust a rattle can on pieces that big....I wouldn't!! I can sprayed my air filter cover with black enamel, turned out real nice. ... That's about as big as would be prpapred to go without professional help..

 

I did some work on the hood as well as a couple other places on my car. When I first got it, the paint on the hood and around the windshield was trashed. There was primer showing and that was on the good parts, so a friend and I went and grabbed some spray cans and fixed that right up. I got lucky because the color of the car is black. The hood turned out rather well to my surprise, although there was more work on the hood than I really wanted to do. If you have the time and the patience you can save some money even if you have never painted it before. The worst thing that can happen is you have to take it down with some sand paper and do it over again. If you are looking at taking it to a shop you could probly find out what they would charge total or if you brought them the car or just the peices you wanted painted you could strip them down so you dont have to pay the labor charges for sanding it.

 

if the car needs painting, get the whole thing done at maaco. as long as you do all the prep work and priming before you get it there, 500 bucks will get you a sweet paintjob. try to do the masking yourself, as the guys at maaco seem to suck at it big time (overspray anywhere you don't mask thats not a window) good luck

 

Belker has it. The paint can look really nice if you take time to do it. I bought an 83 camaro that someone had let sit in the back yard AFTER he had removed paint from the drivers side quarterpanel. It had ALOT of surface rust on it and some spots of rust throughout. I spent $30 on GM colormatch paint from AutoShack, about $10 on primer, and about $20 on sandpaper. A couple of weeks later (took my time), It looked great. I bought the car for $300 and sold it 5 months later for $900; after I bought a nicer 84 Z.

Take your time and save yourself the money you would pay for the shotty job Maaco would do. Then put the money in the motor.

 

The hardest thing is getting the paint color to match. If the paint on the car is factory, repainted or not the color might be then go to a paint store and see if they can't make a bottle of spray paint for you. If it s a different paint hopefully you still have the paint code for it. A gloss black paint has other colors than just black. They through in yellow, red, white. Just keep that in mind if you decide to do it your self. And remember thin coats are better than thick ones.

 

Im preparing to spray paint my own GFX.
The only problem is, the GFX wont come off my car since the screwes are way behond recovery and trying to get my gfx off last time made a good crack in it. So im just going to spray paint it black, and do the rims also.
Its a spray painting kinda job!

 

It can be done well, for sure, but it IS all about taking your time...I did (and REdid) the nosepiece on my car because the clearcoat was flaking everywhere....first time looked a bit spotty because of my uneven painting, but I took it down a bit, did about three coats....looked good. After that, 3 coats of spray clear and the match to the car is really nice. I reccomend it to anyone with a LOT of time and patience.

 

I've used those exact color-match spray cans myself; on a huge scratch on my door (damn parking lot jerks) and a friend's entire car roof. The stuff came out decent; there's a few key things to keep in mind. #1, PREP. See my message in the "better get Maaco" post about prep. #2, get the exact color match'd spraycan. At the local Pep Boys, they have a book hanging by the paint; you write down your WA#### and UA#### color codes from your RPO sheet, and match them against the book to get your exact color. Remember if your paint is faded then the paint isn't going to match no matter what.

#3, follow the can directions. #4, wet sand with 600 grit on a piece of wood when you're done painting. Follow that up with a good buffing with a compound similar to 3M's black bottle- I forget the name, something like Paint Shop Compound, it's meant for a "final" step after wet sanding. (It's in the 1000's of grit levels.)

Don't forget spraying the clear coat, either.

Use a tack rag (sticky cheesecloth) between coats of paint. This removes any dust from the surface. You can keep refolding the tack rag to get a new "clean/sticky" surface. Use light pressure with the tag rag to avoid getting sticky stuff on your car.