O.T. Automotive Paint Costs (2024)

Ohio_Ford_Farm said:

EPA and the million regulations on it all. Top that with the fact that is a store wants to add a paint room here in Ohio the cost is about 20 grand at-least with all the fire crap and all. Cost does vary by color as different pigments and if there is pearls mixed in. The days of the $100 pain job are gone. I know that PPG offers a cheaper line called Omni and it runs about a 3rd of the cost of there Deltron. However if your trying to color match it might be off a shade or two. Then couple that with the cost of primers, fillers, Hell even sandpaper has gotten $$$$. The 3M high grit DA paper can be almost 2 bucks a sheet. If a body shop is doing the work figure in the hours of sanding and prep work that go in to refinishing a auto.

Click to expand...

Yes, all of the other prep items are rising in cost as well. I'm talking about the paint cost ONLY!

It is interesting. I've bought Ditzler and PPG products and they can run (it seems, have not bought any for maybe 5 years) over $100/gal for epoxy primer and more for 2 part urethane top coat. Then I went and bought epoxy for doing some metal work and a man access for my residential water supply, and 2 gallons of epoxy (minimum order = 1 gal hardner + 1 gal resin) was around $60 plus shipping for 2 gallons, IIRC. This is the stuff that they use on the interior & exterior of stuff like your local water tower tank. So it is certainly EPA compliant and probably durable. (don't want sued by the city's attorney).

I was like "Only need a qt. but at that price, put it on the shelf and use it for all my primer jobs!" First time was a replacement gas tank. It took 8 or 10 hours to dry. Not necessarily a bad thing for toughness. But it does slow down work like machine or automotive painting. So that may be a factor: How to get tough paint that also sets fast.

smt

No part of automotive paint is reasonably priced. Back in the '70s, you could do a Dulux enamel paint job for $ 100, with enough left over for some beer to celebrate being done. Every part of the project these days has become sophisticated - abrasives, epoxy primer, thinners/reducers, sealers, catalyst, even the buffing compounds have changed. The end result is more durable, but the price has gone outta sight.

I had to paint some MIL equipment OD with a single component water based epoxy, at $ 190 per gallon. Naturally, it needed a water based epoxy primer, at $ 165 per gallon. Thankfully, the paint reducer was distilled water at $ 1 per gallon.

If you want an automotive finish, that's what we have to pay - but I have been going to Tractor Supply for paint whenever I can. My lathe was painted with enamel back when it was made, and I don't see any reason to use auto paint on it.

A friend of mine repairs and restores old tractors for a living. I can't remember him having anything good to say about paint in the last 5 or 10 years. He says that paint has less pigment in it than it used to so it takes more coats. Also, the constant changing of the paint means him having to re-adjust to the changes. I recall a few years ago he was complaining about not being able to get the same reducer as he had used for years. He said it made it easy for anyone to look like a pro.
He ended up finding it a few hundred miles away.

When I started driving gas was about 37 cents a gallon. Seems like paint was around $60 a gallon. Now gas is ten times that and so is paint. And so it goes.

Big B

Big B said:

A friend of mine repairs and restores old tractors for a living. I can't remember him having anything good to say about paint in the last 5 or 10 years. He says that paint has less pigment in it than it used to so it takes more coats. Also, the constant changing of the paint means him having to re-adjust to the changes. I recall a few years ago he was complaining about not being able to get the same reducer as he had used for years. He said it made it easy for anyone to look like a pro.
He ended up finding it a few hundred miles away.

When I started driving gas was about 37 cents a gallon. Seems like paint was around $60 a gallon. Now gas is ten times that and so is paint. And so it goes.

Big B

Click to expand...

The EPA has forced the deletion of the best covering pigments from paint formulas -- lead pigments are gone, chrome pigments are gone, and there are probably others that worked perfectly, but were judged as No-Nos. That's why yellow paint now needs about 6 coats to cover.

According to a man who was formerly a rep for one of the big automotive paint manufacturers and now owns his own automotive paint mfg company, one of the big cost drivers for small lot purchasers of major brands like PPG today is the fact that they have to recoup the cost of giving big body shops $20K paint mixing and tinting lines and little gifts like $40K bass boats to the owners, or whoever makes the paint purchasing decisions, for those shops.

Anyone who does quality paint work on a regular basis will tell you the Omni and other similar reduced price products from the other big mfgrs are garbage and not worth using if they were free. Poor coverage with all of them and basically impossible to get consistent apearance on metallics in particular.

OTOH, there are other lesser known automotive paint brands that will equal the performance of PPG or DuPont high end products for 1/3 the money, and other lesser knowns in the same price range that aren't worth much at all. Pro Spray is a european brand that gets consistent high marks from people doing high end base/clear work. Kirker, sold thru multiple mail order outlets like Eastwood or Speedway Automotive, who don't deal primarily in paint, seems to be at the other end of the quality spectrum.

One of the big lies is that you can't mix brands. There are some oddball formulations where that's true, but for the most part its perfectly fine to use one brand of base and another brand of clear. But the logic is simple. If we can convince you to use our $350/gal clear, that's much better for us than for you to use someone else's $150/gal clear whose performance equals, or in certain cases exceeds the performance of the more expensive product.

The old "you get what you pay for" doesn't apply in automotive paints. With some research based knowledge, you can get more for far less money. Or you can go in blind and buy strictly on brand name, and spend 3 to 4 times what you could've spent on equal quality products from other manufacturers.

If you plan to keep the machine tool outside in the sun and weather and the paint needs to be shiny and not flaking off for ten or twenty years, well yes, you need automotive paint.

If you plan to keep the machine tool inside out of the weather, why do you need such expensive and technical paint?

Again, probably EPA rules that apply specifically to body shops, but not to industrial applications... like good old machinery enamel. In order to spray fast and easy and dry quickly, good gloss, all that stuff, they use a lot of nasty and volatile components in auto paints, or used to. With millions of shops spraying millions of gallons of stuff every day, that's a bunch of chemicals in the air. Brushed on oil based enamel is very slow, will never give a Ferrari quality paint job and consequently isn't used by many shops at all. Big fab shops and shipyards may spray it, but that's about it. Last gallon of gray oil based enamel I bought to paint the non-visible parts of my steel tube front deck was about $30 at Lowe's.

I have painted every machine I reworked with a brush and enamel paint and had beautiful results. The trick is to lay it on heavy, don't go back over it, don't keep brushing until the surface tears, and wait exactly as long as they say for the 2nd coat. Work fast and deliberately. Brush it on heavy and leave it. The brush marks will flow out in an hour or two and three days later, it will be hard as glass. About a year later, you can wipe the surface down with laquer thinner and it won't even tint a white cloth. Enamel doesn't dry, it hardens like concrete and never stops hardening. That's why eventually, long after I am dead, the paint will start to split and crack and eventually peel. It will harden and shrink to where it no longer fits.

Now, for real fun with volatiles, try butyrate airplane dope! And yes, you can still get that.... again, due to limited use.

It was interesting to hear an account of old fashioned coach builder style body repair job: applying molten lead from a pot with a brass brush similar to a dustpan brush and building it up in layers. The black paint was applied with a fine haired paint brush from the UK that cost $150 and the enamel paint was applied unthinned from the can which kept in a pot of hot water to keep it flowing well and so it dried a bit faster with no solvents used. The paint was hand rubbed to remove any remaining brush marks with a final polish using rice starch only to bring it up to gloss.

The coach builder using lead fill and an oxy-acetylene torch comfortably beat a panel beater using polyester bog in a race the two had to see which was fastest to repair a door panel

I've used Omni paint with good results. In fact I have a hard time telling any difference between it and the more expensive brands.

The truth is most paints are kinda sucky in that they are fragile and don't last forever or even close to forever.

I second omrc. The original Q was why does PAINT cost so much?

I have had my black Audi painted in places ( deer hit side, back into side, drive into side, tow company mangled my front end, only parts not repainted are roof, trunk and roof).

Local friend's shop. I see the invoice for "black paint". Black is not "black". it is that co's code for black, and it can be 500 bucks for a quart. That is ridiculous, and you can't blame 20 thou to open a paint store. Most paint stores have been in business for many years. 20 thou was amortized years ago.

More likely greed. PPG is about 189 bucks a share, right now. Massive profits, but I don't know if they still have their auto paint business. (Somebody further down says they do.)

George

Out here in CA the ARB and EPA have almost eliminated any kind of solvent paints. About 15 years back I painted my Logan lathe with some Dupont Centari with a urethane hardener which did a nice job. Fast forward to a few years and went to paint my Bridgeport, "nope cant sell Centari anymore, try Omni" the sales guy tells me. I about fell off the stool at the price, then found out how bad the paint worked, "never again" not even close to the Centari in coverage or workability. Fast forward again to last year and another Logan. The guy suggests two stage Delthane or Imron, just couldn't justify the price. Well, after some net research I ended up using an epoxy that did a very nice job. Still was somewhat expensive but I could buy it in quarts (1/2gal mixed) instead of gallons. It had good coverage and was easy to spray or brush and no need for a primer over bare metal. It has a body similar to the old enamel paints, did a nice job.

Craig