They use bubble gum and used toilet paper to mask up the car, and as for the paint... Blind one legged monkeys apply finger paint with their asses... DO NOT BRING IT THERE!!!
I'm a MAACO victim. Whooo boy do these guys do GREAT work! Paint on my wheels... paint on my exhaust... paint on parts of my windsheild... pain on parts of my back window... runs on the drivers side door... it's thin as hell and chips pretty easy and also scratches real easy. And whatever you do if you DO get it painted at MAACO... be sure to park it in the garage for a week. They say not to wax it for a week, so we didn't and on the second day it rained... odd spotting job on my hood thats pretty much there for the duration of the paint. Wax it as soon as the paint hardens/and or is feasibly possible. All in all it's really shiny... I'll say that. It still shines really nice after three years. But when you're looking up close you can find the chips and small scratches all over the place. There are some good MAACOs... but you have to look to find them. Just my experience. Oh yeah... as soon as the timespan of the gurantee they give you passes, it seems your paint knows to start going straight to hell When I hit year three this year is when a lot of the chips and scratches are starting to come on strong
they don't spend shit prepping the surface. If you don't wetsand off all of the original clearcoat, the new paint will never adhere properly. It will LITERALLY flow off the car due to gravity. Wetsanding and other prepping accounts for more than half the time spent on the vehicle. The painting process itself doesn't take very long. Once the paint is cured, most shops will then wetsand out any dirt particles trapped in the painted, fix any fisheyes or overspray, etc. I doubt Maaco does any of that extra stuff... you get what you pay for.
I have a friend who has gotten two cars done at macco and it didnt look too bad, they have all the body work done at a professional place, sand down etc. then take it over to macco and have it painted, it comes out pretty good from what i've seen. I wouldnt take my car there though.
MY brother got an old Jeep Wagoneer painted there-they removed the rust along the bottom (it was originally an Illinois car) and painted it blue (originally white) for about $950 or so back in 1995. Didn't look too bad, although there was some orange peel, and too much overspray in the door jams and gas cap area. They obviously taped the trim instead of removing it, so eventually it will peel and chip near where the trim was taped off (but since my brother sold the truck less than a year later, I don't know how long before it would start to happen). It looked fine for what he paid for it and for the fact that the original paint was so shitty, anything was an improvement. Personally, on a car I want to keep, I would only take it to one body shop in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metromess, and that is Mister Collision in Dallas. The guy really knows hit shit-downdraft paint booth, Spies-Hecker paints, 3M prepping and buffing products, etc. He specializes in high end cars (Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche), so he is used to dealing with seriously picky people. He is not cheap, though. Paint jobs cost $2000 and up depending on size of the vehicle and prep needed. When he fixed my car (it was hit by some dumb chick who turned left in front of me), I was unable to find any overspray anywhere on the car (including the door jams or under the hood), and the paint was as close to orange peel free as you can get without hand rubbing the paint between each coat. If I keep my car for much longer, I am going to have the door dings taken out and have him paint my entire car.
I detailed an RX-7 that Maaco painted. Paint was chipping off the lower rocker panels and the paint was only 6 months old.
Tsk tsk tsk... You will officially be banned from calling yourself a "Nissan Freak" if you dare take it to Maaco!! Good god man! It's a Nissan, give it the respect it deserves.
I try Sean. Gotta keep these Nissan kids in line. Oh, and by the way, if I don't find a job soon, I think I will just become the NW Nismo advocate. I'll wear a sandwich board and wander down the streets of Seattle. Good god man! I NEED work!! Whew...ok....uhm..yeah...Maaco sucks.
alright well your not gonna straight answer from these dorks, god knows they always treat people like shit when they ask questions. so here is why they do a bad job: they dont put this treatment on your car first so the paint will stick or some shit like that. i have also heard they dont take off your old paint which is even worse. they dont care about stuff like windows, tires, rims, etc... they just let the paint go anywhere and everywhere. they use a shity type of paint aswell. dude if you want a quick and cheap paintjob and maybe you only need it to last for a week then go there but if you want quality then save up some cash and goto a pro.
damn, I got a deal then My dad had a friend that does body work for a living. Got an excellent body job and a "so-so" paint job (he hasn't painted a lot) Couple runs (only one major one) but they were in the clearcoat and he buffed them out for the most part. Got all that with the paint for $1k. The paint alone was $400 for half a gallon But he split the price since we specifically told him that if it was expensive paint, then we didn't want it (hell, it's going on my first car which is 19 years old to begin with) Looks pretty good now, though I think. Here are a couple of pics right after it got painted. It actually was shinier and looked better (minus the runs) before he buffed it But I'm not complaining. Ended up spending $2300 to get it to where it is now and that ain't bad. BEFORE AFTER
There prep sucks... Its not a bad idea to bring it to macco if you can do all the body work and prep work. and just have them spray it. (heck you might even want to ask them if you can mask the car) All they do is scuff (if your lucky) the surface and spray. Its not that they are "bad painters" but bad prepers. I wouldn't be surpised if there "painters" aren't actually to bad. They do nothing but spray all day. How can they help not getting half way good at it?
You can get a decen paint job there if you do everything yourself. I have had a couple of cars painted there that turned out great. I did all the prep though, and took the car over there with all the trim off, major stuff already taped, etc.