51 Dragon

[Mr Manhattan]

http://rockford.craigslist.org/cto/5368327769.html

Nice interior ))

[Mr Manhattan]

Nice car for the money ,   it runs , nice interior  , looks like new WWW tires just needs some chrome and paint job .   On a different subject anybody ever get a Macco paint job ?

[Roadmaster49]

Lots of 51 Dragons all the sudden (3 or 4 in last 45 days = a lot)  That vinyl must be tooouuuggghh. 

[boatingbill]

Yes, I have used Maaco. I had a '51 Kaiser painted '51 Frazer metallic blue. I removed the chrome
and they painted the car and door jambs and floor sills for $1100. They did a good job and had no
runs or sags in the paint. This was 3 years ago. They also gave me touch up paint from that batch.

[51Deluxe]

Re: Maaco paint jobs- back in the day (the '70s as a teenager with no money trying to restore old cars) I used the local "production" body and paint shops. In Florida they were Fact-O-Bake and Econo-Bake. Paint jobs then were $75-$100. I removed all the chrome and sanded the car completely to my own picky standards (knowing they would use too heavy grit and get rotary sanding scratches in the finish). Then I went to each shop and examined recently painted cars. If I saw no runs or orange peel, that shop got the job. Even though they painted lots of cars daily, they employed some talented painters.

[Gordie]

We used to go to Earl Scheib who's paint jobs started at $29.95 and if you prepared the car yourself they were capable of doing a good job.  I remember seeing some taxis that were painted and Scheib did not bother to even clean the dirt off the cars and they just painted over everything.  We learned that if we went to the Beverly Hills shop that was where Earl hung out and you would get a much better paint job.  I had many cars painted there over the years when I was a used car dealer in Santa Monica.