Buy a spray gun and compressor and start learning how to paint. It will come in handy.

I am doing my hood, bumper, side skirts and covering holes to an old spoiler. I used the cheap Canadian tire primer, paint and clearcoat, sprayed it outside in the wind with little masking. I don't recommend any of this, but it came out mint and I am very happy with it.
If you eff it up, sand and repaint. Next time you get a rock chip in your paint you will be able to repair it yourself.

 

to add to Gorn's post when I restored the 3rd gen I used single stage vs base/clear.

I spent a lot of time sanding and filling and then primed, sanded again and then shot it. it actually looked pretty good when I shut the turbine (HVLP turbine vs compressor), took off my mask, left the garage and came back 30 minutes later to find love bugs everywhere stuck in the paint!!!!!

You want to talk about a head hanging moment. It wasn't the cost of more paint but that I had to sand down the bloody thing.

 

^lol. Had you known, you could have set off a bug bomb in the garage first. You probably knocked out all the bugs that were clinging to the ceiling, and they fell to their sticky death!

 

Just a warning about DIY jobs, I am all about that, I tent to do small areas at a time, maybe a 1/4 of the car at a time. That is fine for my dayily drivers but you are not going to get a glass like finish and prefect matching paint. Everytime you mix up a paint you get a different shade even the humitity level can alter the shade. What looks really good to one person is a joke to another. I keep thinking of peole who say there new car has perfect paint on it and my buddy who would fire a painter for a paint job that looked like a factory job.

Show paint jobs get so insane. My friend had one customer that was unhappy with his paint job because a judge point out a flaw during a show. They got it back to the shop and could not find it. After several weeks the customer was able to figure out the flaw only showed up when the car was parked in the sun for several hours. Turns out that at somepoint somone repaired the quarter with a over lapping seam. Then they hid the repair very well. When the sun heated the quater the seam was twice as thick and the rest of the quarter and reacted to the heat differently. This caused a wave to appear but only after sitting in direct sun light. That is the life of a show car painter.

 

Thanks for all the info and suggestions. As for paining it myself, that's not happening. Although I'm pretty handy, I just don't have the time to take on a project like this.

I asked my brother in law who is a car fanatic and has restored two old Mustangs to show (winning) condition what he thought of the quote of $4500. He said that it sounded about right if they remove the body parts and do a really good job and then reassemble. The problem is that I never asked the body shop if they were going to remove the body part before painting them. However, I suspect not based on several comments.

The other red flag I have is that the body shop didn't give me a written estimate even after I asked for one. Kinda wierd.

I think I'll keep looking.

 

Ya walk away, a good body shop will give you a written estimate but you will get a call if they uncover something that needs attension but was not in the quote. Check out some car shows or cruises, guys love to talk about who did a good job and who does not. Back when I was looking for someone to paint may 67 I saw an amazing looking 70 in a parking lot, I left my card on the windshield with "Who paint this car?" on the back of the card. About 2 hours later I got a phone call that turn into a hour long camaro talk and I got the scope on a half a dozen local places.

 

That is a great idea. I live near Foxboro, MA and every other Thursday night they have a car show at Gillette Stadium. I'm doin it.

 

$4.5K is not bad and it will prolly get you close to factory look but they are not going to go overboard with it. They may remove the bumper covers but that is not for certain.

Macco gets a bad rep but you get what you pay for. The paint products Macco uses are DuPont and are high quality no matter what level of job you pay for. The quality of the repair has to do with the prep. The cheap job will consist of a wash, degreasing, scuff and mask. If you want to pay more to get the chips filled/feathered, dings fixed and proper parts removed (like mirrors and bumper covers) then you pay more for added labor. A little trick with Macco, you prep the car for paint fixing all dings and feathering out the chips/body work get the car in primer (at least the repair areas) and sand smooth then the cheap $600 paint job comes out the same as the $4.5K job.

Massey

 

OH and one other thing. If they give you a written estimate they will have to honor it even if it costs them 2x the amount. Also most body shops are production shops when means they dont want to spend alot of time on a car. Get it in, get it fixed and get paid. Complete paint jobs dont go this way. A complete takes alot of time and that means one of 2 things. First a quick job gets put on the side while some one works on the complete. Or 2, the owner of the complete job gets upset because his car is in the shop for several weeks or maybe a couple of months. Neither option is all that welcome in a production shop.

Massey

 

Its ABSOLUTELY NOT orange peel. I know what orange peel looks like and what causes it. These bumps are from poor prep after primer. They are raised and can be popped!! Theyre kind of soft....