Bad paint job help?

So I have an alpine white e30 that is fairly straight.

mismatched paint job throughout the car.

i don’t want to rat rod it, but I am looking for creative ideas. On how to change the look of it without a full respray. 

Give it a more uniform or intentional look? On a limited budget 

What is your idea of a limited budget?

Any solution based on automotive paint is going to cost a few hundred just for the paint and require a lot of prep. By "prep" I mean time.

The other question is how long does this need to last? Scuff the current paint and shoot right over might start to flake after a couple of years. Good enough?

If it were me, with my shop already equipped to do the work, I would buy cheap single stage paint and paint the whole thing for about 1k out of pocket by the time I was done. I would expect a pretty good result and be nagged by the fact that I had to do all the prep hours anyway and for an extra $300 I could have done base clear.

If I were doing this in the driveway with no tools or experience, I would be looking at a single color wrap and teaching myself that skill. Cost of the wrap is all over the place, so no feel for how much it cost; $1000 all in maybe? ...50' roll of black is like $300 Cnd so like two-fiddy Usd. Lot less mess and prep.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Has anyone applied home painting techniques to a car, sponging dragging bagging?

or gun painting techniques?

In reply to steelynorm :

If you want to go that way have a paintballoon party and go all Jackson Pollock on the car. This video makes it look like child play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn5nSFg2e5Y

steelynorm said:

So I have an alpine white e30 that is fairly straight.

mismatched paint job throughout the car.

So there are non-alpine white panels on the car?

Assuming you want to keep it white, at least that's a pretty forgiving color that will be less prone to showing dents or other imperfections.

Maaco?  I have been happy with the results. I have has several white paint jobs come out nicely with them.

Wouldn't do it if you plan in keeping it long term though.  

If the paint doesn't scare you, use tractor and implement paint. Very similar to 70's single stage enamel paint, make sure to thin it properly and lay it on in large numbers of thin coats. Costs under 50 bucks a gallon, and can be made to look great with some spit and polish.

For a daily driver, I've heard it will dull after years in the sun(again, just like old single stage enamel) but if you lay it on thick, you can buff it back to a like-new shine many times.

Ive done a few driveway paint jobs with acceptable results. All with cheap harbor freight paint guns. Rustoleum, single stage, and base/clear. 

Key is in prep and expectations of the results. 

Give us some more information on desired outcome, budget, location, and tool availability and we can probably guide you. Or misguide you. Have you seen the builds forum? We're ALL a little misguided around here....

Here is my experience with vinyl.  

Gray van with blue vinyl added to the top portions:

This was Vvivid brand vinyl bought through Amazon.  My budget for the Challenge was about $100 in blue vinyl (and $75 for the side graphics)  That $100 of blue is the dollar amount of what went on the car.  I made some rookie errors on the hood and re-did it a couple of times.  With my re-order, I had spent about $150 on blue but it did not all stay on the car.  I was really close on having enough.  The reality is the roof is many smaller pieces and scraps that I pieced together to finish.  It a 20ft job.  It photographs well.  

I learned all I know from youtube videos.  There are tons of them.  

• Little to no prep required
• I applied all the vinyl outdoors, in my driveway, in either the cool summer mornings or cooler summer evenings.  
• I needed to be able to drive the van every day.  Some days had more vinyl than others but unlike paint, I did not have to take the car out of service for weeks
• Errors are easy to pull off and start over.  On small errors you could reuse the pice of vinyl.  on larger errors you could not but still easy to start over.  

This van is still on the road today with the half blue.  I sold it to a young family (friend of the family) with 3 kids

The real reason and inspiration for the half vinyl was to cover some incredibly bad sun damaged paint.  

Pic of sun damage on the roof: 

So... For you...

Whole body wraps like this exist:

Imagine LARGE pieces of color:

This is one of my ideas for a future Challenge car where the existing paint is bad with a lot of missing clearcoat.  I think I will choose my own color combos but leave the hunter green color the car is as the base.  I will then just add large swatches of color over the uglies of areas and they it all together with some sort of "random, rhythm"   

If you added large splotches of color like here would it break up the Alpine white enough to take away the fact that the whites are not the exact same color?  

Some bold colors that I was playing with...

Copper

Purple

To  apply splotches of color like this you wont even have to be good at applying vinyl.  Pre cut some angular shapes and apply.   

I just did my first wrap, also using vvivid purchased from Amazon. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out, and very happy that I was able to work on it for an hour and a half each night starting at 10:30 or so.  Mine was about $325 all in:

I did basically no prep, and that shows through the final product (like the mangled front bumper I didn't sand).

Overall, I'd do it again in probably about half the time.  Let's see how it holds up.

The two biggest tips:. Make sure you overlap about an inch.  I did a few in the 1/8th range and after heating and cooling, there's a bit of a gap in some places.  Do it when the temp is above 65 but less than 90.

rattle can, vinyl, stickers, whatever. It's an e30

In reply to John Welsh :

Yes! john that is the basic idea, do some paint technique to break up the inconsistency of the mismatched panels. Use the white as a base for digital camoesque pattern, or I thought of that concept car pattern that is supposed to make car design features, less distinguishable 

I've long thought 'projector art' is a cool idea. Basically find a neat design, use a projector to shine the design at your car, and then trace with a paint brush or sharpies or whatever. 

In reply to Robbie : I can still do a inexpensive DIY paint job in Lacquer.  I like Lacquer because it’s relatively benign compared to two part paints.  It dries very quickly.  Runs, drips , and errors can be sanded quickly, often not even needing a respray.  

For those who tell you Lacquer doesn’t hold up, please stop and look at my MGTD. I painted that in 1974, won an award and since then it’s traveled across country, been vintage raced at more race tracks than I can remember.  Well driven and used, yet is still not an embarrassment. 

My Black Jack Special was also painted in Shellac, won awards, raced heavily, and is currently on display at the Packard  museum. 

Order paint on line. I still like Ditzler. 

I buy supplies locally where I know which brands work and last and they will still discount me.  There is a serious  difference between list price and wholesale price on paint supplies, if you buy enough volume.