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If painting a car was as easy as using a roller or a spray can I would be out of business. It kills me to think how much time and money people waste trying to save money. A simple paint job on a car with body work additional is a minimum of 5k. I run a shop that does mostly insurance work and some restoration work. There is a reason why spray cans and rollers dont work, they are CHEAP!!!!!!!!!

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I don't have 5K or more for a paint job. Does that mean I should just tow my car to the junk yard? Drive it with crappy paint until it rusts out? Take it to an inexpensive "professional" paint place? (Did that. Cost me $1000 and after a year the paint's oxidized and flaking.) Just give up and take the bus to work?

You're essentially posting on a thread that's somewhere around 160-170 pages long in three parts. Before you speak, go back through ALL the previous posts and look at the paint jobs. I've also seen hundreds of posts about rolling on the Honda Tech forum, the Miata forum, a couple of VW forums, RolledOn.com, and a couple of other individual websites. I'm sure there are many more forums with $50 Paint Job threads that I've never seen. There are many people with 200 hours to do the rolled on paint job to excellent results, that don't have 5K of free money laying around. That's the reason for the rolled-on/sprayed-on Rustoleum/Brightside/"name-your-favorite paint" method of painting. It's trading time for money. Simple logic.

When I read your post, all I saw was someone who makes his living painting cars, and is either: a) pissed that he's losing business to the Do-It-Yourselfers, b)afraid of losing business to DIYers, c) worried that people will see that painting a car isn't a job that only professionals with years of experience can perform for exorbitant amounts of money, or d) just a paint snob who looks down on anyone who doesn't do it the way HE thinks it must be done.

Over the four years and eight months since this thread started (on 01/23/06), I've read dozens of people say that this method is for cheap a**es, won't last, is stupid, is for people who don't care about their cars, is for....... I've also seen MANY excellent paint jobs done this way. Before you make negative comments on this thread, and nothing you've said hasn't been said many times on all the rolled-on paint threads, go back and look at all the previous posts. They'll tell you who reads this board, why they read it, and what they're capable of accomplishing. Your previous comments are, to me, the same as a Chevy person coming on here and saying that Mopar cars are crap. I'm 47, and I've seen a lot of Mopars in that time that WERE crap. But I don't call all Mopar crap. And I don't do it on a board or a thread that is for Mopar lovers.

You make your living painting cars. Good for you. In this economy I'm happy for anyone who is gainfully employed. But I have no patience or respect for someone crapping on other people's efforts.

'nuff said.

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Did you miss what he said? He spent 1k for a professional paint job with, I'm assuming, 2K paints. With adequate waxing and care, rustoleum can last 5 years, at LEAST 2 years. Auto paint, even a 5k paintjob, exposed to sun and rain and snow every day is likely to be fairly deteriorated after 10. Especially in the salt states. Now let's do the math.

Your paint job costs 5k. Looks great for 10 years and then will need another job(likely less than 10 years in my state).

My paint job costs $60. Looks great for 2 years at least. If I choose to repaint my car (which was made in 1992, guess the resale value on that) every 2 years:
Labor: 40 hours TOPS for a rustoleum paint job with my cheapo HVLP gun and rotary sander/buffer. Even at 20 dollars an hour (which is way more than I make), my labor cost would be 800 dollars.
If my paint job lasts roughly 1/5 the length of a professional paint job:
5x860=$4300. That's 700 dollars for gas, parts, and ect. The benefit becomes even MORE apparent when my transmission dies in 4 years. Rather than sticking a new transmission in a dieing car just because I spent 5K on the paint job, I can sell the car for parts and buy another car. Another benefit: I can repaint dents, dings, scratches and rust all myself for next to free.Just think about the other side of the argument before you try to tell everyone that it is a terrible idea.