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comments or feedback on those 1 day paint centers


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OK, you Guys got me all worked up to spray it myself. I have a good size compressor, 55 gallon. Me and my boys have done all the work so far (less machine shop stuff) so why don't we paint the freaking thing in our garage! I'm just a weekend mechanic by hobby, but that did not stop us from doing a pretty good job on the body work. So, I think I'll do a bit of researcher and turn the garage into a paint booth! Why not.

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in the topic of spraying your own car, whats a "decent" mid-grade gun to get?

 

pretty easy to assume harborfriend is junk, craftsman probably too, what about the napa ones, what to use? what features to look for?

or is a spray gun something thats pretty hard to mess up, and air condition / pressure / setup will have a bigger affect on it?

Devilbiss FLG-4 is a good gun for the money. $150-200 and you can get kits that come with multiple tip sizes to spray a variety of paint and primer. Even with primer I can tell a huge difference between this and a harbor freight gun. My HF gun sprays out with a screwed up pattern regardless of how clean the gun is. The FLG-4 sprays great for me. I'm no pro, but this handles the DIY chores for me.

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You want a nicer job , please pay someone to paint it , at a shop ,somebody that paints often ,you want it nice the first time and good single stage paint should lay nice and no buffing required , trying to be inexpensive cost more ,maybe rent me a booth 150 here in Whittier ,or wait , got three to paint here and my booth is not finished due to funds and electrical stuff needed ,220 single phase motor for fan ect.

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Huhboy.

Ryan family, I would do it yourself. Go get a Harbor Frieghts pancake compressor (60 bucks) a cheapie 2 stage spray gun (25 bucks), drape off a section of your driveway, get yourself some good paint, and shoot it.  I sprayed my first car by simply reading the instructions on the can. It is that simple, if you re a careful person who ready. Now, with the catalized paints, they make it super simple to get an outstanding result. You will spend another $450 on chemicals, but you will get an excellent result. I have never had any problems with modern auto finishes.

 

If you do it yourself, you will figure out the gu and compressor as you go, and te paint will tell you how it wants to spray on. 

 

Maaco, or any cheapy auto paint place will not do the prep work or the touch up that you will want to have. If you do it yourself, I can almost guarantee you that it will turn out many times better for essentially the same bucks, plus elbow grease. And you learn something, too!

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I find myself checking into this topic every few hours!!!! Lots of thoughts on this one, which is good. Gives us all plenty to think about. I'm hell bent on painting it ourselves and my boys are all in. My fenders arrive today, so I'm a few weeks out. I'll have updates tonight with picks of fenders and door panels. Let's paint the bitch and learn somethi !!!

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I painted my 510 in 1997 (first paint job in I've done since `85) PPG acrylic enamel `77 Corvett Yellow with no clear coat as the hardner provided the exceptional shine it has, hardner PPG Classic along with PPG medium reducer. Total for chemicals was, paint $75, hardener $17, reducer $20 talk about cheap and so was my gun but wasn't HVLP. Today that same paint job still looks great a side from the little chips from all the drives to Road Atlanta, Summit Point WV, Maryland and NC. Granted I garage my 510 and don't drive it in Winter but it gets HOT and Humid here and I drive it and park it at work in the blaze. A friend of mine in NC restored  `72 Celica the one you see with my discription and the yellow one is mine. Anyway he is not a painter and the Celica is a 2 stage with a white stripe. He used a Home Depot bought Cambell Hausfield gun and shot it in his garage. He did his research, and practiced with qt of acrylic enamel. That paint job came out beautiful so! research painting, and practice practice and I think anyone can do a quality job if you follow the laying down paint rules.

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It's not that hard to paint. Just take your time with the prep. Make sure your paint is mixed properly(especially when doing a whole car) move the gun in a smooth pattern. I suggest base clear as you will get better results and it's easier to polish out any runs you might have. Give it a go and learn something new in the process. Knowledge is never a bad thing plus it gives you more time with your kids. I've painted multiple cars in booths,driveways, and garages. The results are all pretty much the same (give or take a couple of bugs!) just be sure to keep the ground damp if doing it in the driveway or garage to keep any dust down so your not having to polish it out later.

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  • 2 months later...

we rigged up a great ventilation system.  fitted a fan to the top of a Lowes bucket and cut the bottom out then nailed the bucket to the corner of the man door, cracked the garage door about an inch.  Boom!  Paint booth.  Took a while to get everything set up, but we think we have a great product.

 

The entire body was media blasted and they epoxy primered.  we had a lot of body work to do and used rustoleom auto primer, which were were told by the paint supplier that was not a good idea.  Rather than sanding it all off we went ahead and sprayed a sealer over it.  not sure what's going to happen over the years to come.  but it looks great right now, just need to color sand and polish.

 

So, don't use rustoleom primer.  

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Looks great , great choice to clear ,please talk to paint supply , usually paint is applied two coats of color and two coats of clear with cure time between ,the early coats need to cure well , when I add extra clear coats , I wait a minimum of two weeks in hot weather ,sometimes a month even ,let slow cure , then color sand and buff should be ok , maybe not leave in hot sun for awhile , Shrinks for a bit , I would spray cars at a local college for students so they could learn and help mix products and ready paint ,for first timers.

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  • 4 weeks later...

So after wet sanding I realized a few more coats of clear would have been nice. I was not able to completely remove the orange peel. Instead of turning the garage into a paint booth again we decided to polish. I must say, from 2 feet out and further the paid t job looks amazing. Only when you get up close can you see that it has chicken pocks. Really not that bad. It was a hell of a lot of work, especially the wet sanding and polishing. But, for 600 bucks of sealer, paint and clear....totally worth it!!!! So do yourself a favor if you decide to paint on your own, go with a few extra coats of clear!!!!

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  • 3 weeks later...

A few years back i did a quick maaco job on my Gf's pontiac sun fire,

 

The main purpose for the respray was to get some resale value back, the clear was coming off all over.

 

 I did the prep work and brought them the car sprayed with 2 part epoxy primer and block sanded ready for paint. Primer sprayed with a harbor freight gun and no inline filter on the compressor and a bostitch compressor at that.

 

 They did it in one day it cost me 400 bucks and looked great and we sold the car 3 days later for 4,000.   I did have to negotiate on some masking they were trying to keep it to a minimum,  I specified I was not going to pay if there was over spray all over the radiator, they complied.

 

  For the quick job its great,  Personally I would not bring them my car that i have poured hours into. 

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So after wet sanding I realized a few more coats of clear would have been nice. I was not able to completely remove the orange peel. Instead of turning the garage into a paint booth again we decided to polish. I must say, from 2 feet out and further the paid t job looks amazing. Only when you get up close can you see that it has chicken pocks. Really not that bad. It was a hell of a lot of work, especially the wet sanding and polishing. But, for 600 bucks of sealer, paint and clear....totally worth it!!!! So do yourself a favor if you decide to paint on your own, go with a few extra coats of clear!!!!

The orange peel was caused by either too fast a reducer, or the Kobalt gun has a tip that is too large. With the reducer, you could go slower, or blend with a medium or fast, as temp dictates, Problem with a slow reducer is runs. You really need to lay light coats on and give it time to flash before the next coat. It will lay down smoother. Better option is to use the correct tip for you gun. Anything above 1.8 is a heavy primer/epoxy tip, 1.6-1.8 for thinned epoxy or 2K primer, and 1.2-1.4 for topcoat/clear. (these are just a baseline as you could spray topcoat with a large tip if you wanted) The finer tips atomize better and since the molecules are smaller, don't need as much time to lay down smooth before the reducer starts to evaporate. Good for you trying to do this yourself and now that you have one under your belt the next one will be that much better!

 

Mark

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  • 2 months later...

To continue here.  We are at the point where we would like to think about touching things up.  After the initial paint job I stated that we had some issues with the clear.  And now that we have been busy putting everything back together....including starting it and driving it around......we have decided its time.  We are going to take the trunk off and repaint it.  The blue is just too thin.  that will give us a bit more practice spraying clear.....wait for it....wait for it.......we want to re-clear the whole car.

 

So this is our question:

 

We painted in December and wet sanded a lot!  Then we polished just to see how it would look......it still has little zits all over it.  What grade sand paper should we use to scuff the clear that is remaining before we clear it again.  We plan on buying another gun that has a tip at the recommended 1.2-1.4.  I will also call the place we got the paint from and see what the recommend for the mix this next time around.

 

Anyway, I know it was mentioned earlier that we could always go back and re-spray the clear, I just want to make sure we prep it correctly.  Thanks for the help so far, looking forward to the advice moving forward.

 

Ryan Family 510- OUT 

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I've read through in bits at a time. Sorry if this has already been covered. How big of compressor are you using? To keep your spray pattern consistent, the compressor needs to be able to keep up. If you find the motor running most of the time or constant then this may be a problem. If so, keep the areas being covered small. After making a pass or a coat let the air preasure build back to full before next step. Have fun with it, it's all a learning curve.

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