For a number of reasons, I haven’t gotten back into the garage this week to wrench. So you’re going to get the 14-year-old story of the best cheap paint job I ever got.
In 2011, I bought a Malaga (burgundy) 1985 635CSi for $500. It it had over 200k miles on it, and I was less than crazy about the big Federal-spec bumpers, but it had a 5-speed and sport seats and was completely rust free, as its longtime owner had moved it here from California. Its clearcoat, however, had been basically destroyed by decades in the California sun. The guy who owned it was a mechanical engineer with a young family.
He maintained it to the nines—it recently had the head off for a full valve train rebuild, valve job, and head gasket—but it had a mysterious problem that caused the car to suddenly die at inopportune moments. When it happened for the third time, his wife and baby were in it, and he knew that that was the threshold event that meant the car had to go. He had it towed back home, so when I saw it, it was dead as a doornail in his driveway. Because the problem was intermittent, he thought it might be due to something a bad solder joint in the ECU, and priced it at need-it-gone money.
I came, saw it, liked it, and bought it on the spot. We passed papers, and the seller pulled the plates off it. I called AAA to tow the car home, but drew the short straw of a lord-of-my-domain-I-will-cause-trouble-for-you driver who noted that the car had no plates, and threw the “AAA won’t tow unregistered cars” flag on the play. The seller said that I could stick his plates back on, but the AAA driver wouldn’t budge on the fact that, if he’d just sold it to me, it was still an unregistered car. Ridiculous, right?
For $500, you probably would’ve bought it too.
Even with the utterly destroyed clearcoat.
Rust-free, sport seats, and a stick for $500? Yes please!
I came back the next night with a borrowed truck and trailer. Because I had no winch to drag the car inside, I hopped in it to start it. The seller said “You know it’s completely dead, right?”
“I’m wondering if I can chug it with the starter motor up the ramp, but maybe I’ll get lucky,” I quipped.
The car started right up. I drove it right onto the trailer like a normal car, then shut it off. I could see steam rising from the seller’s ears.
“You know,” I said, “that this problem will reoccur on me, right?” He calmed down.
I brought the car home. It still started and ran. I drove it in circles around the block waiting for it to die. It eventually did. I traced the problem to a voltage regulator whose brushes were worn down to nubs. I contacted the seller, told him what I found, and offered him the sort of kindness I hoped someone would give to me in the same circumstance—that he could buy the car back if he wanted it. He was extremely grateful, but said that the car needed to go, so whether it was to me for $500 or to someone else for a more reasonable price with it running didn’t really matter.
After replacing the voltage regulator, I began driving the car. It didn’t really need much. At startup, the oil pressure light stayed on for longer than usual, and flickered at idle. I sighed and thought that the mileage on the engine was catching up with it. But when I changed the oil, I found that the filter looked crushed like a put-out cigarette. Clearly it was the wrong filter. I installed the correct one, and the problem went away. After that, I swapped out the driveshaft to cure a driveline vibration. That was about it for the sort-out.
Amazing, right?
I didn’t like the faded gold BBS basketweaves it came with, and swapped on a set of E12 turbines I had from another car. These eventually ceded ground to a set of well-priced Style 17s with good rubber I found for peanuts. It ran so well and had such Shark presence that its paint was beginning to bother me. Me, the Prince of Patina.
Not bad, right?
Until you see this.
There’s no getting around the fact that having a car painted is expensive, due both to the amount of preparation and the cost of the paint. Back in the day, I actually had a car—a Euro E21 323i of all things—shot at Earl Scheib for $99.95. When I say they did zero prep, they did ZERO PREP—they literally painted over dirt. I also had a few cars shot at Maaco. While there was no mistaking those results for an expensive down-to-metal-glass-out prep job, they came out looking okay, but if they said that a certain body panel needed to be stripped prior to painting, and you declined their plus-up in their basic estimate, the result was predictable.
This was 2011, in the midst of the subprime-mortgage-fueled recession that began in late 2008. With a lot of businesses closed, I wondered if I could find someone shooting cars out of their garage. I looked on Craigslist and found a guy advertising $750 paint jobs. I called and learned that he used to run the body shop at a Ford dealership until he got laid off. I was curious enough that I drove the 635CSi to the address he gave me. It turned out to be warehouse space associated with an Enterprise rental car dealership that he was borrowing at no cost from a friend who was helping him out.
He looked at the clearcoat peel on the trunk lid and roof, and immediately said “Wow, that’s a lot of flaking. That’s all going to need to come off.”
“You’ll take it down to bare metal?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed, “not at that price. I’ll just smooth out what I need to.”
I asked him about pulling the trim off. He said that I could do that myself and reattach it afterward if I wanted to, but honestly, it would work out fine if it was just masked and painted around. Besides, as he pointed out, the rear spoiler had a rubber portion and a section that was painted body color. He said that sanding it and shooting it on the car was the easiest thing to do.
I hadn’t noticed the rubber-and-paint composition of the rear spoiler.
I took the car home, pulled the trim off the doors and fenders, brought it back to him, and waited.
He wasn’t great about keeping in touch with me. Several weeks passed. When he finally contacted me and my wife drove me over to pick up the car, I was less than thrilled. There was a fair amount of dust and orange peel in the paint, and a visible paint run on the left rear quarter panel. Even for a $750 paint job, I expected better, and told him so.
“Yeah,” he said, “there’s only so much I can do in this space without filtration and proper lighting. But I tell you what. Give me another hundred bucks and I’ll wet-sand it. It’ll take most of that out. It’ll look much better. But be realistic—it’s still not going to look like a five grand paint job.”
So I did.
And he was right. When I picked up the car a few days later, it absolutely popped in the sun. It was the best $850 paint job a BMW had probably gotten in the past 25 years.
Kapow.
Those are clouds reflected in that trunk lid, not peeling clearcoat.
Ditto with the roof.
I was so pleased with the job that I had him do some work on a ’92 Toyota FJZ80 Land Cruiser I was readying for sale. It had seam rust at the bottoms of the doors. He cut it out, welded in new metal, and painted the work, all for $500. I thought, man, I am going to bring a stream of cars to this guy.
Unfortunately, when I wanted to have a 2002 shot, his phone number was reported as disconnected. I went back to the warehouse, and there was no sign of painting activity.
14 years have passed. Maaco is still in business doing you-get-what-you-pay-for paint jobs, but it’s getting harder to find places that’ll both prep and shoot cars inexpensively. If they need any body work at all, body shops tend to want to either do by-the-book accident work on modern cars, or open-checkbook restorations on classics. And, of course, expectations do need to be realistic. If you’re shopping at the shallow end of the pool, you’re extremely unlikely to find a bare-metal glass-out wet-sanded job that includes spraying the engine compartment for less than five figures, even if it’s out of someone’s off-the-books facility.
But, mister shooting-cars-out-of-my-buddy’s-free-warehouse-space-and-wetsanding-them-for-$850, you did great. If you’re still out there, let’s talk.
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books, including Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
