Ok Bruzilla,
Im 30 years old
Because i'm 30 i'm bullet proof
I enjoy working on cars and have rebuilt a couple of corvettes and if you look up "440 ****" here on bbodys you will see the motor I have built for it (Bruzilla you commented on it). As far as body work I have not done much, this is why I would like someone who knows what they are doing. I am happy to do the tear down and pull apart etc.
Yes i'm married, (and she loves cars)
I have the car in my head all the details and things I want done, Im not a dreamer its not going to have the best of the best but it will be done right, I plan to keep the car
What it costs, I don't know, it will not be a 100 grand car but to do it my way it will be more than what you can buy a restored one for. Some of the things I am planing will be expensive, an example I plan on doing the seats the same as a Eurocopter EC130 that I used to fly, these seats in turn were copied out of a ferrari 250GTO (see pictures below)
I want the paint to turn heads but not to sit in a garage because I don't want it to get wet. I hate cars that don't get driven. The body MUST BE RIGHT
The color is to be gold (same as the gold corvette in the picture) which will be similar like it was factory with some matt black stripes on the hood
I am patient - 7 out of 10
Great answers. Now we've got something to work with.
You're 30, which is great because you're not a 18 year old dreamer, and you're not 55 or older or in bad health so you won't likely be one of those folks who has to sell off their uncompleted project due to health issues (one of the leading causes of project failure unfortunately).
You're married and your wife loves cars. Not as good as being single, but the next best thing.
You're not a money is no object guy, but you want the car to look nice. As for the seats, that would be a separate issue all together.
You want the paint to turn heads, so I'm guessing you're going to want a two-stage paint job vice a factory enamel job, which will double your costs.
You're wanting to do a color change, which means all the trim will have to be removed and reinstalled, door jambs, trunk, under the hood, etc., all painted, and that drives up the costs as well. On the plus side, the color is fairly light, and I've found that prices go up the darker the color due to increased amount of bodywork needed to make say a dark blue, purple, or black paint job look perfect.
Lastly, you're going to need to be patient because this project probably isn't going to be something that an in-and-out paint & body will be able to do, and you're going to be going to a resto shop, and I know guys who've had their cars in places like that for a year or more.
I'm thinking you're probably going to be looking at $4,000 to $7,000 for the paint (depending on what paint you end up selecting). As for the body work, Cranky hit the nail on the head. The only damage you're seeing now is what's visible above the paint. If you want the body to be perfect, the shop is going to strip away all that old paint and there's going to likely be a whole lot of warts that you didn't know were there underneath. Also, if you want sheet metal repair and not Bondo or fiberglass, that's going to get real expensive real fast and you could be $10,000-$20,000 in body work in no time.
Case in point. I bought a 73 Road Runner in 1985, and the body looked okay except for a horrid squash yellow/beige paint job. I was sanding down the paint to get it ready for a repaint, and there was a good sized chip on the fender that I wanted to smooth out. I started sanding and as the chip got bigger, the color changed from beige, to green, to blue, brown, to red. I started sanding more and discovered there were seven layers of paint on that car, and that was above the factory enamel and primer! And some previous owner had just painted right over the stripes as they were still on there buried under all the paint. Needless to say there was a whole lot of rust issues that were exposed once all the paint was off.
So my best guess would be, based on what you said you want, you're looking at $20,000 in P&B and that's very likely going to go up. Yes, you could save a few dollars by removing some parts yourself, but in the grand scheme of things that isn't going to make much of an impact. Doing things like pulling trim and sanding yourself are things that cut costs for lower-end paint jobs.
