Painting a car at home part 3: Spraying the topcoats

WHAT ABOUT SUPPLIES?

As in previous chapters, we haven’t gone into too much detail about paint and materials. That’s because local and regional regulations may affect availability or practices in your area. We advise working with a paint supplier for recommendations about mixing ratios, dry times, and other factors that are specific to the paint you’re using.

We can tell you we spent about $1000 on filler, abrasives and private-label primer, paint and clearcoat. This job can be done for less and it can be done for much more, but we’ve found that products from a decent, mid-tier brand deliver great, long-lasting results.

As for tools, we offer this bit of wisdom: You can achieve these results with Harbor Freight-level equipment and keep your investment in the $300 to $500 range. We’ve purchased some higher-end tools, but most of them were in used condition and cost about a third of their original price.

Step 1:

Before the actual painting can begin, the lower portions of the car need some extra protection. Start by spraying the wheel arches and underside of the front valance with rubberized undercoating. While most people buy this stuff in aerosol rattlers (around $8 to $12 apiece), we’ve found that it’s faster and less expensive to invest in a $30 sprayer and source the underrating in cans (typically $15 per quart).

Step 2:

Next, use the same gun to spray textured rockerpanel coating on the front of the valance and on the rocker panels themselves. This stuff lends excellent chip resistance to the lower areas of a car. Once applied, it looks like the OEM coating.

Step 3:

Our garage is always pretty clean, so we didn’t bother to hang plastic sheets as many home painters do. We did make sure the garage was spotless, though. Start by clearing out as much dust and debris as possible with a leaf blower-an electric one, since a gas blower might contaminate the surfaces of the car and countertops. Next, wipe down every surface and mop the floor several times.

Step 4:

Time to clean the car again. Wipe it down with a paper towel dabbed in pre-paint solvent, then dry off the solvent with another clean paper towel. We recommend going over the car this way about three times, making sure to clean the cracks and crevices thoroughly.

Step 5:

Spotless garage, spotless car, all ready for paint.

Step 6:

Once you’ve changed into clothes that won’t dangle in the paint-we usually wear a tight T-shirt and keep it tucked in-it’s time for the first real painting step: “edging” the car. Apply enough paint around the edges that you won’t have to worry about achieving full coverage in these areas during the main painting pass. A full-size sprayer will work here, but a touch-up gun is a bit more accurate and a lot less messy.

Step 7:

Sometimes it’s easier to remove some body parts and hit them with the touch-up gun.

Step 8:

Now comes the stressful work. When laying down paint, it’s important to follow a very deliberate progression around the car to avoid “dry spray” and other pitfalls of moving without forethought. In general, the strategy is to fully paint a panel before moving on to the next one. To avoid literally painting yourself into a corner, try rehearsing these sequences before hooking up the air or putting paint in the gun:

At the front of the car, paint one fender before going across the hood to the next one.

At the center of the car, paint across the roof before coating the doors to avoid accidentally touching them while they’re wet.

Spray the rear quarter panels and trunk lid in a similar sequence to the front: one fender, then the deck lid, and finally the other fender.

Throughout the process, be very careful to keep the air hose out of the way. In fact, we recommend having an assistant maneuver the hose and warn you if your clothing is dangling too close.

Step 9:

For this job we used a basecoat/clearcoat paint. The basecoat is less stressful to work with since it goes on fairly dry and is less likely to run. After about three or four coats, it flash-dries to a semigloss finish. While waiting for the paint to flash-dry, we like to clean our guns in preparation for the clearcoat.

Step 10:

Following a similar painting sequence, put down about five coats of clearcoat. It’s okay to go heavier on the clear, especially on the horizontal surfaces, since a lot of it will be sanded and buffed off.

Our car photographed wonderfully at this step, but if you were in the garage with us you would’ve seen the fair amount of dust that settled on the horizontal surfaces–that’s what happens when you paint in a garage and not a booth. Wet sanding and buffing will solve this problem. (Make sure your painting space is equipped to remove fumes; our garage has a sparkless box fan mounted in a window.)

Step 11:

We usually sand the clearcoat by hand, but for this project we decided to try one of the new air sanders made for wet sanding. This is a higher-end Hutchins sander that we bought at the local paint supply store for about $150.

While keeping the car’s surface wet with a rag and clean water, start sanding with 1500-grit paper made specifically for this kind of work; then move on to 2000-and finally 3000-grit. Doing this step by hand would have taken us 5 to 10 hours for the hood alone. With the air sander, the job was done in about 30 minutes. We’re sold!

Step 12:

After air sanding, the surface has a subtle gloss to it. It’s too risky to go near the edges with the air sander, though, so sand them by hand with gradually finer-grit paper: 1000, then 1500, and finally 2000.

Step 13:

Just as you sanded the car three times, buff it three times as well, each time with a finer polish and finer buffing pad. Working roughly a square foot at a time, apply a few drops of polish and buff until the gloss comes up and the polish residue disappears. There’s an art to buffing: You need to move slowly enough to get some heat into the paint, but not so slowly that you burn it. Best to practice on something less important than your new paint job.

Step 14:

Buffing the whole car may not be necessary. We skipped the vertical surfaces since they looked great and didn’t really gather any dust. We did sand and buff the hood, trunk, roof and body sides above the beltline.

Step 15:

Final result: The paint pops, proving that you really can achieve high-quality paint results at home. If the car is kept clean, waxed and out of the sun as much as possible, paint jobs like this can last 20 years or more.