rattle can paint jobs

so… ive been sanding down my car and im going to be using a friends garage to spray paint my car in. im going to be taking the car apart to paint it. im just going to use krylon gloss white, but i know that rattle can paint jobs get dirty quick so i was going to use a high temp clear coat becuase they seem stronger and what not. i just want to see what other people have experienced in spay painting, what do you think would be the best rattle can base coat and clear coat?

Please for the love of all things holy don’t do it. Take it from someone that knows. I did it once, had to redo it the next spring. By that fall I gave it a $150 Macco Special paint job and called it a day. I used some expensive spray paint too.

I have an alternative suggestion. White Spray on Truck Bedliner
It will definitely set your car apart and get attention.

There is a badass looking WRX in my area that did it. The effect is unique up close, hard to explain. From far away it looks like a black primer job. It can be washed with a power hose. You never ever need to polish or wax either.
Its pricier than spray paint but the durability can’t be matched. I found this with a quick google search to give you an idea.

If my dad wasn’t out of town I’d show you a pic of his truck. I redid the inside of the tailgate with Duplicolor White bedliner. You can play around with the angle, speed and distance of the tip while spraying to adjust the texture. Try it on some cardboard first before you start on the car.

It comes in cans or by the gallon if you prefer to use a roller to apply it. Its cheaper by the gallon.
Please don’t laugh this idea off because it really is unique, looks better than spraypaint and will last for years.

lol! ive actually heard about bed liner paint jobs, its hard for me to get used to them though. i was actually thinking about doing a macco special after i finish sanding down and preping the car myself. problem is though, i dont know how good of a painjob they do. because ive been going to school for auto body for 4 years, i just dont have the money to paint it myself or the place to do it. id feel alot better just paying someone to do it (im lazy lol!)

does macco do a good job of taping up and preping? i dont want over spray on my new lights and stuff… thats what im worried about.

No, maaco sucks at prepping a car. If you want a “quality” maaco paint job, I would do all the prep work first. Have the car all wetsanded, degreased, and taped up before you bring it in.

depends on the shop but typically NO they don’t do a good job taping off or prepping it for that matter. Do all prep work yourself and if there are pieces on your car you don’t want painted then you better take them off before hand. If you do the prep work yourself and let them shoot a basic color then you should be ok for a while. When you start getting into pearls and metallics with Maaco it won’t turn out good.

As for the bedliner, I have never seen it in person on a car but I have a buddy at work with a black 2002 S-10 ZR1 that has a 6 inch lift on 37 inch Mickey Thompson’s with custom bumpers and rocker rails. On the rocker rails and bumpers and all of the plastic on the truck he shot it with the bedliner and it is bad ass. it looks awesome far away and then when you get up close you see the texture and it is amazing. I think its worth a chance but if you don’t end up liking it then how hard is that stuff to get off?

yup… bad idea… i went that way once on my motorcycle and to actually do it the right way we had to strip all the old paint off and it sucked… you cant just paint over it or it will start to wrinkle… so just do the body work yourself and leave the paint to the people who know and have the right equipment… i’ll never do rattle can again.

It really depends on your patience and your ability to paint. Always the most important thing is prep. Maaco sucks at prepping if you go that route so if that is what you do take of your lights and anything else you dont want painted. Or tape and prep it all yourself. I had a pint job from them that lasted more than two years later until I sold the car. Don’t know after that. I also did a front end on my old maxima with rattle can and it looked fine. Granted I couldn’t blend it to the dorrs exactly but it was more that good enough and most people couldn’t tell the difference when looking closely at it. Bedliner paint jobs do look cool but if you dont like it I hear they are horrible to remove.

Rattle can is going to be worse in the long run than whatever you have now. Plus if you use a gloss it’s going to look like shit. It’s virtually impossible to apply that paint to a large surface like a car and get an even finish. You could spend a lot of time sanding and it might turn out OK. And why high temp clear? You gonna put your car in an oven?

Two rattle can jobs I’ve done:

:smiley:

yea, i dont have a trailer or anything so ill have to drive down to macco with no tail lights or head lights ect… its not too far if i just take the back roads. im sanding down my car right now so im prepping it but im not afraid of my window triming getting messed up. it already is, because my car is rattle canned before i bought it and the window trim is all messed up, like the black trim is flaking and you can see the chrome and stuff. but hey, i only bought it for 800 bucks. does anyone here have a macco paint job? i wanna see some pics

do you know what the part numbers are for all of the window moldings and trims that go around the side windows and windshield? i think im just going to take my car into my autobody class and paint it there. im going to use a single stage white.

You were asking about a rattle can paint job yet willing to spend hundreds of dollars on stock moldings? :shrug:

If you have AAA you can have them tow your car to the paint shop, first 7 miles free! Or 100mi if you have the premium package.

We had our rally-x car painted at Maaco or Earl Schieb, I forget which. We did all the prep ourselves and trailered it to them. Turned out really good actually. The only downsides:

  • a bit of overspray here and there, seriously don’t trust those assholes to mask unless you are willing to deal w/ overspray.
  • paint was not very durable, chipped fairly easily. But it chipped, it didn’t peel, so that’s good. Maybe our prep was a bit lacking?
  • slight orange peel in some areas, but really not bad at all, I’ve seen MUCH MUCH worse

Pics aren’t great since they’re a bit blown out

You can see full size versions HERE by clicking on a thumbnail then clicking the “View All Sizes” link above the picture. These pics were taken about 4yrs after we had it painted. Car never got finished or saw all that much use so it was still in great condition, and it was garaged most of the time so I can’t say how it’d hold up to sun.

I personally wouldn’t do this for me “personal” car but I’d do it for a race car in a heartbeat!

Macco doesn’t factor much prep into the cost so the painters are on a time pinch and are known to cut corners.

The shop I was at was pretty laid back, a friend of a friend ran it at the time. I pulled most of the trim and molding myself at home. I degreased and wetsanded before driving it over there. When I got to the shop I taped off the lighting and door seals myself. I spent over an hour behind the shop prepping it. By the time I handed the keys over all they had to do was mask the windows and wheels and do a final wipedown. I did do the edges of the glass myself with tape to make sure there wouldn’t be overspray. when it was done the only overspray was in the wheel wells.

After letting it bake for an extra hour they let me pull off all the masking. It came out very even with only a few runs. After a month I wet sanded and polished the hell out of it with Meguiars. If It wasn’t for a hard drive crash I’d have a few pics to share. If it wasn’t for the paint job I would have never sold the car for 2 grand, I doubt I would have got $500 for it. The kid I sold it to crashed it a few weeks later.

Its all in the prep.

they have a thread on this on honda-tech in the appearance and cosmetic section. some of the rattle can jobs came out actually good.

That S4 in the first pic is from AZ and is pretty fast, he did notice a big difference after he sprayed it with bedliner, the wheels are also sprayed bedliner.

exactly what i think^^

usually, paint shops cant really cheap out too much on the actual paint. they need stuff that sticks, and lasts long enough for their warranty. and in a paint job, im sure you’ve heard it before, that prep work is 80% or so of the paint job.

i had several friends help me with my DA years back. we sanded the whole car down, pulled off every moulding, removed every light, and loosend the bumpers, and tightened them down as far down as they can go. and brought my car to them the next morning.

as soon as i got there, i left 1 nut on each light to hold them on, and had my simple 10mm & a 1/4 rachet with me. pulled off all the lights, mirror glass, etc. and handed it over to them.

good enough quality paint job that got the job done. i had a cheap base & clear mix paint job though, and it chipped very easily. you should give up a little more cash for the 2 stage paint job. where it’s a base layer, then a seperate clear layer.

dont bother asking for “more clear” it doesnt do anything with these paint jobs unless you wetsand between each clearcoat.

and if you do end up spraypainting the car cause you’re super excited to do something new. as i did, 3 or 4 times, to the same car. you should know this now.

when painting a car with the new legal bar paint standard in california, waterborne, having aerosol paints under the waterborne paints can cause problems & discoloring. then you’ll have to take the rattle can paint all the way off.

and, also. thinking about it a while after i got my first “paint job” all the money spent in buying rattle can paint, the time it took, the masking tape i bought, and all the different times i did paintjobs on the car, im sure would’ve covered for a decent paint job at maaco or some other cheap paint shop

:lol: I love the 211 cars. And I wouldn’t recommend the rattle can job. I paint and I possibly could do it that way, but really…not everyone is gonna be good at doing that. At least get good can paint and watch the pattern or throw the cans in hot water to build pressure. A paint gun costs around 60-80 at northern tool for a good one and single stage paint is not that expensive at the paint store. or just buy the ready to shoot paint at the nearest advance auto which is the same thing. Just do that if u have a air compressor and it’s cheaper than going to maaco. Trust me on this cause I paint. If u have a garage and compressor that’s all u need. Just prep and pour it in and shoot.

im just gonna rattle can my side molding coz my dumb friend doesnt know how to drive. haha

why don’t u use trim paint?

because my moldings match my paint, they arent black.

oh lol. How bad did he jack it up?