Technical Can paint jobs be too beautiful ?

I'd say NO? But driving is the best part of Hot Rodding for me. Yeah, I like a nice paint job. I also like rattle can suede too. lol I would never let my paint job keep me from driving them. But I don't drive in bad weather, for more reasons than just the paint. My old paint jobs are over 20 years old. Paint chips are an easy fix. The hardest thing on the paint is the heat, and SUN. Yeah paint is too expensive now days to paint them in the garage or backyard. But it's just part of owning a Hot Rod. When time comes for a new motor, paint job, or whever it needs? I'll just bite the bullet, and get'r done.

 

no

 

I love nice paint, but I love seeing flaws and wrinkles from use... a quality paintjob with a few years of real driving under its belt is prime stuff. I don't want to say I'm a 'patina guy' but a scuff here and a little ding there helps make a car seem more like a living thing than an assembly of very pretty parts.

 

I've never bought the idea that a car can be too nice to drive. After all, people buy new cars all the time and then proceed to drive them everywhere without much concern. I had my off topic daily driver painted some years back, and it was done to 'show quality'. I use a little bit of care about where I park the thing in public but I don't get worked up about it, and it still looks more or less the same now as it did when it was fresh out of the shop. It has picked up a couple minor chips but they're mostly my own fault, and they aren't obvious unless I point them out.

 

a faceless person has deleted my response

 

NO!!!!! Painted in HOK Candy Cobalt Blue, and Orion silver flake in 1987 or 88. Driven every year until around 2003, over 160K miles on it. NJ to Iowa, MI, AL, IN, OH, NY, FL, PA, MO, etc, often a couple times a season. Chipped a bit, faded in a couple spots, coupla cracks, but still looks decent.

 

Love it

 

I am with you , sir.

Ben

 

I love that deep dark metallic blue. That's the color I'm going for...except mine is going to House of Rust-Oleum.

 

Ive cleaned tire rubber off 7 figure builds.
The paint and body work for these probably cover 20-30% of that.
Big engines and “inadequate” tires is traditional. Called big and littles. Probably every period hot rod fits that description.
A rattle can under carriage affects performance the same as cut and buffed does.
What else ya got

 

AMBR judging. Hardly any points for originallity. 10,000 points for paint. I am real proud of my #525. Gary Meadors himself picked it for a TOP FIVE trophy. Charlotte Goodguys . I intentionally sanded through to the red oxide primer to make it look old. The 32 I am building now will get a killer paint job. BLACK cherry. $ You can't take it with you. PS; I forgot to mention the following year at Charlotte. Street Rodder magazine TOP TEN.

 

I've been under a high dollar build sitting on a lift while searching for the source of an elusive noise. Beautiful painted frame.....looked nicer than any car (body) I've ever owned. Shiny SS exhaust etc,etc. Could have eaten off its underside. Guy wanted me to pull the engine and fix it. I declined, because it was too perfect and I didn't want to take a chance on scratching that beautiful paint. While I'm sure that some builders actually take these multi-hundred thousand dollar cars outside and spin the tires a time or two, most of them are not going to actually drive them and use them and possibly even race them at a red lite. I do have to wonder why you were cleaning rubber off someone elses car. Do those people actually pay others to do that as well?

The big and little tire thing came about when engines were not producing high horsepower numbers and the tires of that time were able to harness the power available from most of those engines as well. As time went by though, the ability of normally used street tires to harness newer levels of power began to lessen. I'm the kind of hot rodder that thinks the best hot rods are ones in which all the mechanical components are selected to hopefully work in harmony with one another. That means building an engine that not only produces useable power, but complementing it with a transmission and rear end that lets you use that power. The suspension should also work to complement the other components, and the tires should hopefully be able to provide some semblance of traction for that power level. I think burnout contests are lame and tire smoke and excessive tire spin may impress some people, but it really isn't impressing anyone who ever raced and lost due to wheelspin.

So as the nostalgic look continued on, basically owners had to decide whether the tires they want will make a car that looks nostalgic or tires that can harness a powerful engine. If you ever watched Street Outlaws you can readily see that the high dollar cars don't always beat the lower dollar cars with less hp and cheap paint jobs, because they can't harness the power they have. I just have an appreciation for the effort a builder puts into making his car not only look reasonably nostalgic, but making his mechanical choices work . Sorry, but I find that more appealing than how shiny everything is, and how period correct everything is. That's just me.............

 

Here's a paint job I did to make it look like old lacquer. Even rust repair primer showing. 33 Willys. Won " Detroit Speed Builders Choice " Also at Charlotte Goodguys. 7 miles from my shop. I don't travel to win awards. Goodguys moved the N C show to Raliegh[. Less than 3 hours away. I don't go. ATTACH=full]5991132[/ATTACH]

 

Thats a perfect example of the type of car that I would gravitate to at a car show...............Well done! Apparently even the robot is admiring its mechanical attributes.

 

Love it

 

Yep. We got paid the clean em up. Even got paid to clean the salt from probably 6 figure worth of paint and body work on a salt flat ride.
road race courses, drag strips, the local industrial park and air strip. They got hammered.
Ya don’t have to like anything
And don’t even need a reason
But ya need better bumper sticker logic than “folks don’t drive or hammer crazy nice rides”

scared to pull an engine?
No way.
We pulled the engine and trans from one of these mega show rods 2 days before the show set up day. Didn’t scratch a thing.

I hate pickles. I just do.
I have no reasoning for it. Don’t need any

 

Sorry man, but this is a bad take.

There's nothing about a nice paint job that makes a car undrivable. And those show cars only stay fresh for so long, and then they get driven. And if a few chips happen or worse, then they get repainted.

And there is no grade on a curve for people who do their own work. I didn't paint my car, but I did beat the fuck out of some insurance company lawyer in a trial and got paid enough to hire a professional shop to do a good paint job on my car. The same way my client hired me because I'm a professional in my field, I hired a professional to achieve the ends I desired. We all do it, whether we're conscious of it or not.

 

Met a guy at the Street Rod Nationals last year . He had a really nice 32 Ford he drove down from Canada in......bout 800 miles with his wife/girlfriend. He told me that he had completed a high dollar build that had a very expensive paint job on it and that he had been paranoid about marring the paint if he drove it anywhere......so much so that he sold the car and built the one he drove from Canada. It was a nice car as well, but the paint was much more friendly to being repaired if needed..........and he was now enjoying the car as intended. You can tell me all you want about your experience with owners who throw fortunes at their paint and then drive them whenever and where ever they want and throw caution to the wind........but you will never convince me that the majority of these expensive show car owners do that. I believe you will find a lot more of them that don't.

 

I do nice paint jobs too but I would not consider it a $10,000.00 paint job. 2,500 cars entered Charlotte Goodguys. Won Meguires Magnificent Masterpiece and Custom Classics Trucks magazine TOP TEN. bs too.

 

Antony where do you get a job like that? I’m retired and that would be a perfect PT job for me!!!
Dan

 

I've owned a vehicle with expensive paintwork. There was this conflict of wanting to thrash on it and wanting to preserve the new/expensive paint.

 

Did European cars for 13-14 years. We were expected to test drive em.
fixed a lot of Porsches.
Fun fun fun
Got paid to do that as well.

 

Three chips in 75,000 miles, wow. You must drive on really clean roads. We get that in the first mile with the junk on our roads here.

 

Up here in Alberta, most of the bigger rocks to the paint or windshield I've got are from vehicles travelling the opposite direction. Even with summer-only vehicles, rocks to the paint and windshield are not a matter of if but when for us.

 

Just noticed that the picture I posted of the 32 Ford from Canada also has a "bug screen" in place. Never seen a bug screen on a hot rod before. Kool......

 

If they are too NICE, they become not fun anymore. Just mu 2.3 cents.

 

Pardon? They're very common up here. Our honey bees and grasshoppers in the late summer are legendary.