budofbama31313

I took my wife's 2000 Malibu to Maaco in 2006 and got there best job and it turned out great. They stripped the hood down to metal (due to a prior poor insurance repair), had very little orange peel, and it held up really good over the years. But in 2008 we took our daughter's 97 Camaro to the same shop that still had the same owners and got the exact same paint job. The lady at the front desk even remembered me from before with my wife's car. I had prepped the fenders, hood, and front bumper cover, shot them with gray primer and my daughter and I installed them prior to taking it to the shop. Well when we went to pick it up it looked horrible from 20 feet away. Orange peel all over, fog lights painted over but worst was cracks in the paint on the bumper cover. They claimed it was due to my prep work, I claimed it was on them. Well we split the difference and I parted ways with them. Took my 91Z else where and am very happy.

dtk132

i dont like maaco at all, and dont want to give them any credit here. But i have to say cracks in the front bumper is in the prep work. old plastic urethane bumpers have a tendency to "spider crack" when flexed, also with the plastic drying out too much. Once they start they wont stop spreading. Using body filler wont do anything besides make matters worse, you never put body filler on raw plastic or paint anyways, only bare metal. To repair the spider cracks the bumper has to be down to complete raw plastic, and every little crack has to be V'ed out using a dremel or something similar. Then heated with a heat gun and apply a good product such as rigid red to the crack, sand and prime with a flexible 3 part primer.

Now they probably never used a flexible primer. In fact no body shops take the time to do that anymore, usually only the slow paced and expensive shops. Theres actually a lot of short cuts you all dont realize that a shop will do on your car that may look pretty in the end, but if you knew anything of what they are actually doing you would be pretty upset.

Fog lights and moldings shouldnt have had overspray on it, at all.. They shouldnt have even been taped up, because they shouldnt have been on the car in the first place prior to paint. Youll learn what the term "hard lines" means besides the orange peel and overspray.

You may be able to wetsand and buff their finish on your daughters car to get it ooking better, but be carefull not to burn through, its probably single stage and does not have a lot of layers to it