Newbie here.
I was looking for a used card and found a good one, but the paint is peeling off in a few areas - the trunk lid, one of the doors, hood.
Pic here - http://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/acurazine.c ... 3f548a.jpg

How much would it cost to fix this?
Should the whole car be repainted?

1) $3,000 +
2)Yes

You probably feel like this after David Edward's reply: Or maybe this:

You have a couple less expensive options. Buy the paint, borrow a compressor, paint gun, sander, find a buddy who has some experience, spend a lot of time reading this forum, watch a ton of youtube videos on the subject, and spend a few weekends doing it yourself. It's not going to be anywhere close to perfect, but it'd only cost you a few hundred dollars in materials, especially if you just repaint the trunk lid, roof, and hood, although a full repaint would take just a little more and look better effort.

If that's out of the question, take it to a Maaco and get one of those economy paint jobs. Again, it won't be as good as a $3000 paint job, and it won't last as long, but it'll look a whole lot better than what you have now. A contractor friend of mine had his work truck painted by Maaco. It looked fine. He just didn't want to drive around in what looked like an old beater.

It's hard to sink that kind of money into a used car. You and the seller should definitely be using the "rough" NADA pricing. Get a good enough deal and maybe it would be worth it to pay $3000.

Clear coat provides protection for the base coat. Once the clear has reached the stage of deterioration where it is peeling and flaking the base coat is also compromised and needs to come off.
The horizontal areas on the car usually go first. The remedy is to strip the horizontal surfaces and repaint them.

By the way, if someone tries to tell you it just needs new clear coat - they don't know what they are doing. Somewhere on here are pictures of what happens when you do that. The new clear was peeling off the car in sheets.

How much would it cost at Maaco?

hithesh wrote:How much would it cost at Maaco?

Depends on how much bodywork they need to do. My contractor friend paid, IIRC, about $1000, but he had some bodywork that needed to be done, and it was a full size pickup.

I'll find out for sure and update.

Update: he paid $1100.

Another option is to see if you have a vo-tech in your area, kids learning the autobody trade, some have you just pay for material and the kids get experience, I have one near me and their work actually wasn`t bad