For more than two decades, the old yet incredibly reliable Global Finishing Solutions (GFS) paint booth at Markquart Auto Body has hummed along. Of course, there have been mechanical problems over the years, and the booth’s motors have been rebuilt. Still, day after day, month after month, year after year, the booth just keeps running.
“The booth has held up really well,” said Jim Bielecki, body shop manager at Markquart’s sprawling facility in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
Routine maintenance on the Ultra Paint Booth — installed in 2000 — has been the driving force behind its longevity. Bielecki’s team regularly changes the booth’s intake and exhaust filters, replaces the ceiling filters once a year and protects the booth’s walls with Booth Shield peelable coatings.
“The filter maintenance is huge, and just maybe being a little resourceful. When our motors went out, we found an electrician in Chippewa Falls to rebuild stuff for us and keep it going,” Bielecki said. “When we had our control panel go out, GFS was good about finding a new one because it was tough to find old parts. Looking at the structure of the booth, it really didn’t pay to tear it all down.”
In fact, Markquart lengthened their Ultra booth by 4 feet following a 2025 hailstorm that flooded their shop with pickup trucks with damaged roofs and hoods. The more parts-off painting and the less masking Markquart performs translates to increased throughput. The extension enables their technicians to spray more parts in a cycle without worrying about overspray contaminating paint jobs, thanks to the booth’s downdraft airflow.
“The most valuable thing here is the painter’s time,” said Bielecki, whose shop averages 250 paint hours a week across all their booths and processes seven to 10 vehicles a day.
Reliable equipment has been crucial in helping Markquart reduce key-to-key times — and generate consistent repair work from insurance companies. “One day with your paint booth down throws a wrench in all that real quick,” Bielecki said.
Markquart also tries “to make sure the customers’ cars are like our own, that we can stand behind what we’ve done, and when we look at it before they pick it up that it’s something we would want to drive away with,” Bielecki added. “You give your painters the equipment they need, then just let them do their job and not worry about the equipment. Their attitude goes up, and the overall quality of the job goes up.”
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