Need help with paint questions.

[rghouse]

Agreed, cheep is bad news and not advised. If you search I think you can get there for more like 6k.

If you have another rig, a garage (or tent), and some motivation you can do it yourself for under 16. I painted mine with no experience for about 1000$ including supplies ground up. Small dents can be sucked out with harbor freight tool or bondo’d. Nobody sees the roof, but I’d stay away from fiberglass. Have a proper metal sheet tacked on. It took me 6 mo in my spare time, it is a lot of sanding and prep work, attention to detail, googling, ups and downs, but well worth the hard work. If you screw up (or when) you can fix it, just like construction. You can look up “cement gray 80” if you want to see some of the process I followed or PM me. GL

 

[Kernal]

In my area a good paint job (with minimal body work) starts at $7k and goes up from there. This is using quality paint supplies, clear coat, and additives. A good job includes removing the roof rack and rear dust deflector, fender flares, door handles, interior door panels (to prevent overspray getting on them) all lights, grill, mirrors, front and rear glass, door moldings, weatherstrips, drip rail moldings, etc.

Many shops cut corners IME if you don't specify EXACTLY what will be done
and how it will be done and what materials will be used. They will cheap out on the quality of the paint/clear coat and tape things off instead of correctly removing them and painting those by themselves, like the door handles, mirrors, and flares. Quicker for them to just tape and paint.

 

[cheeese]

that's true, and another budget conscious strategy could be to pull the glass, trim, interior etc at home and trailer the truck to the body shop for repair and paint only— then you're applying your $ to the real specialty work and your time to save the labour.