[gtomike72]

Originally Posted by NeighborsComplaint

Took the shop up on the $1200 deal. The shop was a local Maaco who did some specialty work out of the back. The shop owner showed me a couple cars they were doing "mini-restorations" on and the work looked really good. They metal patched my hood pin holes, straightened the kinks in the hood, block sanded and primed the whole car. It looked great in primer. Then they painted the car with a base/clear and it was not so good. Lots of orange peel and some obvious prep flaws. They left chips in the paint on the edges of the hood and did a sloppy cut-in with masking tape along the lower window bright moldings and left the surface very rough pn the doors from the body lines up where they couldn't machine sand. They drop filled the chips and shot some kind of "speed-clear" over the rough paint and buffed it out.

I felt that I got my money's worth and the car looked good for a cruise night driver. The first hot day, the paint blistered in multiple spots. The paint was not adhering and of course the shop claimed claimed no responsibility for "prior body work". Shortly thereafter, the paint begain blistering over the filled in hood pins. I went back to the shop and they were out of business. To make a long story short, I threw away $1200.

I wound up having the car stripped to bare metal and completely redone by a highly recommended independant shop. The paint literally came off in sheets because there was no adhesion between the new paint and the old.

Sounds like the Maaco I used to work at, was it the McHenry one by any chance? Those scumbags still owe me my last months check from 3 years ago!! They would rush us to get the cars in the paint booth when the car still needed more work and could have been done right if an extra couple minutes where allowed. Half the cars we rushed ended up coming back. I guess the owner was ok with that as long as he got the money and if it came back, it came back. No wonder why they went out of business.