Paint prices

[94touring]

Was at the paint store the other day in need of 3 different shades of red.  Anyone with experience buying paint knows reds are expensive.  Two of the ones I needed were $190 a quart and that was after my discount.  A discussion came up about where prices will be in 30 years and I said yeah probably 1k a quart for red, to which the paint guy said hang on be right back.  Brought up a quart of chameleon paint that goes for 2k a quart!  Bare in mind it takes about 3 quarts to do a bare shell top to bottom inside and out, not even counting primers and clears.

[MiniDave]

It's not just paint, all chemicals are going thru the roof, which is interesting because they're all petroleum based and oil is at a 10 year or more low.

I think it's the old "because they can " excuse......

Are the water based paints any less expensive?

[Nicholasupton]

I use PPG envirobase waterborne in the shop and the price is equavilant to the old DBC base coat I was using before. As for costs typical mini through my shop runs about $1300 in paint, and sanding, and polishing materials.

[jeff10049]

we mostly spray diamont or sikkins base coat at the shop and pay as much as $125 a pint for some reds its so expensive I often charge cost to the customer and then hope to sell the left over as a ground coat on another job for cost again this how i get my mark up I can order a pint of gold when it would take a quart and use a leftover close color gold for the first 2 coats to get some coverage.  Customers get sticker shock at the price of paint all the time. clear is near $300 for 6 quarts sprayable in lessonal or good ole diamont dc92 these days. I'm glad painting is not our main business we just do small repairs as a service to our customers so they don't have to go elsewhere.


Nick ever spray DCC single stage? I tried to use some and it was either spray it dry or solvent pop no matter temp or reducer combination the stuff was shit as far i'm concerned had a painter friend try it and same result just could not make it work we ended up with a good job by sanding out dry spray and buffing our ass off just wondering if I got a bad batch or something.  I wanted del star acrylic enamel but got talked into DCC and was pissed Del star has always been easy to use and holds up forever even outside and you can sand and buff it so easy even months later. That was the last time I ever went to the ppg store here as the guy blamed me for the dcc I spray all kinds of paint all the time and never ever used such crap as the dcc.

[Jims5543]

How is this even possible?  (I suspect the PO of my E30 used a place like this BTW)

[MiniDave]

Hey, 10 rattle cans will paint any car!   ;D

[94touring]

I honestly don't know how they do it. 

[Nicholasupton]

Jeff,

I have used DCC and loved it, except they would now throw me in jail for having it in my cabinet. I suspect you had the wrong temp reducer, or catalyst, as I always had excellent results. The other trick is to use a 1.3 tip for the first coats, then switch to a 1.4 so you end up with more solvent transfer to flow everything out.

[jeff10049]

I had read online the alot of folks loved it and several stories like mine it must be very temperamental. We were trying to use a 1.3 for all coats still should of worked I think. Who knows I don't do much single stage anyway. I am glad you liked it I couldn't imagine it was that bad for everyone maybe we did get bad catalyst or something.

Here we can still buy any paint we want Is it really so bad in CA you can't even have it? I thought you had special booth filters to spray what you want?

The rules don't make much sense to me as the clear is still solvent based anyway. I wonder what makes them think it's better safer than a low voc single stage like DCC. even Diamont has low voc reducers and hardeners for there single stage. I thought that was for CA customers can you use single stage paints at all anymore?  Are there any special provisions for a custom/correct job? Like a NCRS corvette that has to have proper type paint.

When we started doing paint stuff here I called the city to see what we needed to do the answer was nothing the fire marshal has some guidelines but deq could care less for our size operation and the small restoration shops can paint 6 or 8 cars a year can't remember exactly without any systems in place at all just go for it right in the shop.  Bedliner guys have an outright variance where they can do the same just spray it no conditions at all no limit.

One state away and totally laid back rules vs going to jail for using/having a paint they don't like WOW.
CA is effed up I'm all for clean air but they seem to be extream with the rules. I don't know how paint shops do it.