"Paint won't make your car go faster, won't help your reaction times, or increase cornering ability - but it will make you look at your car differently - it is money well spent, IMO. "

I agree and $1500 is the most I will spend on getting my RX7 repainted black. When I saw someone paid $8k for a paintjob I went LAWD! I then got in my maxima that currently books for around $8k. I started it up. I drove it and went LAWD again!

 

It's been appraised and insured for $17,500.

 

purple82: The car might be worth that much to you but insurance fraud is the only way you'll ever be able to recover your investment if you need to.

 

not if it's legally appraised and insured for the appraised amount. He may be making out the *** monthly payments, though...lol

 

It's not tough to get a car appraised and insured for a higher dollar value than you could ever sell it for.

 

It's also not that tough to get it insured for that dollar amount if your willing to pay the premiums.

What? Do you think someone driving a $50,000 fully restored GT500 is gonna settle for the $3000 the insurance company thinks it's worth?

 

Mine was insured for $19,500. When she crashed the insurance co. expected me to settle for $4,000.

 

For $1500, all they will do is tape up and paint. Any GOOD body shop will dissasemble a lot of the car - mouldings, window trim, bumpers, all the door jam items, etc. Then prep and paint. You won't get that for $1500. $8000 sounds correct. PM r71 and ask him - he owns a body shop.

 

It is legally insured at $17,500. No fraud involved. This still doesn't cover all the money I've sunk into it, but it's reasonable.

It's a third (right now fourth) car, it's in storage all winter and gets less than 3000 miles a year so premiums aren't too bad.

In any case, I feel the paint job is absolutely justified.

 

1 Day Auto Body & Paint chain's 'top of the line' $1400 paint job does include some bodywork and they will sand down the existing paint, prime, sand, mask off trim windows mirrors etc no removal of stuff, 3 coats paint, 1 coat clear. Including doorjambs.

That's the route I'm going for my REPU. I am removing everything including the rear window and will have them remove the windshield, paint, and put my new gasket in. I've done a TON of bodywork myself (see sig) using POR-15's top notch Straightline body filler. 40% stronger than BONDO and feathers better.

 

and like I said...my freakin MAXIMA books for $8k. I'll be damned if I spend that on paint. I have good friends that run bodyshops. I'll get it less than $1,500 and black isn't exactly exotic.

Heck, I had my Intrepid's door painted and blended for less than $200 and it looked like factory.

You just can't believe how much a couple of cases of beer will get you when you get bodywork done by friends.

Another friend painted a car that is on loan at the Corvette museum and he charged about $2k for the job.

This weekend my RX7 goes into the shop to have the underside sandblasted, new metal welded in in spots and undercoated. It's going to cost me $250 and two cases of beer. They don't get the beer until AFTER the work is done.

 

Performance Mazda here in town wants 4000 canadian pesos to do my car, bumper to bumper (not inside the engine bay or anything) with the original gold metallic-with-sunbeam-silver setup.... Hopefully that'll be a good paint job, I *know* I don't wanna spend 6k-8k on it, but I definitely want a showroom job, which I thought I could get for 4k!

Jon