6G Celicas Forums

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
You can't expect show quality paint for a few hundred bucks.
No paint job is gonna be 100% smooth, they will all have some degree of Orange peel, even factory paint does.
If you want show quality, your looking between 3-5k.

How does orange peel happen?
Is it part of the process of how they paint it? Cause I always thought you could polish out the orange peel look.

they dont spray it the right thickness. too little and it will do it, too much it will do it... i think. but if you do enough coats you can def sand it smooth and then polish it shiny again

at least 3000 will get you a pretty darn good paint job. i took mines into an auto collision and they wanted $3000, stripped down; doors taken apart, trunk out, takin' weatherstrips out, door handles apart, hood out, bumpers out, sunroof out, side mouldings out, front and rear windshield out, etc etc etc. it's a lot of work and well worth it because they'll take their time to make it right, not like maaco. i've had many friends who have gone to maaco and weren't too happy. overspray, parts of the car werent painted, blah blah. if you had a beater, 299 would be awesome for a paint job good luck man!

You have to understand the time you need to put into a paint job. Prep work is the key. I spend about 20hrs+ filling chips,small dents and wet sanding before the car gets primed. Then after primer you wet sand all over again and fill any dents/low spots you missed. Spray base, wet sand some more. Spray clear, little more wet sanding and buff to make it shine. Seriously it takes a total of 1hr to actually paint and about 40hrs of prep and sanding. The results you get are driectly related to the work you put in.

So is it a good or bad idea to have an original color spray if I've done the prep myself? Cause I have spent most of the last year on just body work while slowly ruining the other parts of the car

nope.
orange peel is on EVERY paint job in the world. there are varying degrees of it. the better the painter, the less youll notice it.
wet sanding and buffing removes it.
orange peel is the effect of the paint hitting the panel as you spray it.
holding the gun too far from the panel, too much pressure, moving to fast, wrong gun settings can all cause more of it.
we have a set of cards that depeict varying degrees of orange peel from 1 to 10, 1 being completely like the back of an orange, very heavy peel, 10 being perfectly flat.
as an example, check out your local GMC dealer, and look at hummers. the paint on them is horrible, ~ a 4 on the scale.
most new toyotas are ~ a 7...mercedes are generally 8 or better..(they are heavily detailed before delivery)
provided the painter put enough paint on, generally its not a huge deal to remove most orange peel, as long as its not from not putting enough paint (clear) on.
again, for maaco paint jobs, the general rule i reccomend is this:
if your car is a solid color, the single stage paint jobs can look great, provided the painter is half way decent.
for metallic colors, i always reccomend base coat clearcoat paint jobs, for a couple reasons.
#1, and most importantly, when you spray single stage paint, that is metallic, it is very difficult to get the paint to lay down smooth, and get the metallics and pearls to all lay down evenly.
#2 base coat clear coat jobs will always have more depth, and will match the original color, where single stage paints tend to be a hair darker.
the heavy orange peel effect you guys will see on alot of single stage metallic jobs is a result of the painter fighting with the metallics, trying to get them to all look even and smooth.

good info