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Repainting car - any advice from those that have done it?
I have a 06 r53 jcw that I bought 6 months ago that needs a repaint. All the clear coat is failing. I’ve thought about wrapping it, but with the clear coat failing, I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and paint the car. I’d be interested to get some advice from those that have done this. The car is red and I plan to keep it red, though I may change the roof from red to black.
Since I have owned it, I’ve been mostly doing mechanical repairs and upgrades… and now I’m going to start tackling the cosmetics.
The car looked like this when I bought it, so I knew I’d have to address it one day.
Also, any ballpark prices for what to expect would be appreciated.
You'll need to sand the car whether you wrap it or paint it. Any imperfection in the base shows through either method. You're looking at $3,000+. You would think a wrap would be less expensive than paint but that's not always so.
I going to warn you that if you have a pro shop do it, you are looking at least $3500.00 for partial repaint and as much as or more than $10K for a complete paint job done correctly.
Paint vs Wrap ... a great Wrap is going to run about as much as good Paint job.
I have been looking into it as well; I have a couple of issues for a couple of my cars, and it is bothering me that I have not yet been able to get it sorted out.
Chiming in a bit late here, but other than the longevity of wrap vs paint, time is the big difference. Getting a paint job will take at least 1 month solid and I'm pretty sure that's if the shop starts grinding on it the same day you drop it off. Given the same circumstances, getting it wrapped could have your car back within 5 business days. This all depends on the shop and how busy/professional they are of course. If it were up to me, I'd just wrap it.
I had a vehicle painted top-to-bottom a couple decades ago, cost about $5000 (inflation calculator says $8597.14 in today's economy) and was without the car for almost 2 months.
If you're up for a challenge, you could have a paint shop grind it all down nice and smooth, then just bring it home and spend a weekend wrapping it yourself. Amazon has a surprising amount of 3M vinyl wrap varieties available.
