Painting a car at home sounds so easy. You paint it, enjoy it, and then go about your merry way. The reality, though, is more involved–way more involved. So while readers keep asking us for a real “paint your car at home” story, to be honest, we’ve struggled a bit to come up with one.
Why? Because modern paints are …
Can't wait to see what materials equipment and methods used to apply sealer and color and topcoat clear. I have a 1992 325i cabriolet that I'm fitting a mtech2 body kit to (eventually) and need to venture into the body work and finishing. I have already welded in place a new core support and repaired minor rust and welded closed rocker moulding mounting holes. Looking forward to this series. Thanks.
My limited experience is that the metal (body) from most OEMs from the late 50s or early 60s on was dipped in some sort of metal prep /passivating that had the effect of preventing flash rust. Once this is removed by sanding or other mechanical means, the bare metal has a tendency to flash rust. I had my 61 Falcon plastic stripped to bare metal and did not get around to laying on an epoxy primer for about a 1/4 year. The bare metal did not have any flash rust except in the lower corners of the doors where I sandblasted around some pencil sized rust thru. On the sandblasted surfaces, the metal ended up with a very thick coating of rust. The owner of the plastic strip business at the time had stripped one half of some generic 10 yr old car from center line of the car (bare metal, no clear coat on one side of the car) and was using it as a summer daily driver.
Looking forward to part 3 - and how you deal with the paint fumes (how you avoid annoying the neighbors (if any)). I live in a major metro area and struggle with how to paint and not have someone report me.
We are doing a grandpa/father/daughter project on a 1987 Porsche 924S as her first car, and part of this process is to paint the car. We have acquired the car and will start on mechanical restoration/rebuild soon, with paint coming along with the car basically disassembled. We are looking forward to the entire process, which will take us about a year of weekends.
Can't wait until the next installment!
KRD
Wondering what would be different for prep and painting a fiberglass hardtop?
if you strip by sanding, be careful not to build up too much heat, i did a 87 pontiac that way and got the hood full of ripples, also i have seen some body guys thin out their "bondo" with laquer thinner and apply a thin coat to the entire body so nothing gets missed. I like you are taking everything off before doing the job!
Hours and hours of prep. 15 minutes of actually spraying.
And as a bonus, if you screw up the prep, your paint is screwed up as well.
That's why I seldom paint cars.
I got a quote from a good local body shop for my track car after changing to a fiberglass front end and a trunk lid - $3000. Instead, I had a 60 gallon air compressor already so I ordered a Starting Line DeVilbiss gun kit - 3 nozzles and a line pressure gauge (required for accurate pressure at the gun) from Eastwood and 2-part paint from a local body shop supply house. I built a quick spray booth from poly, furnace filters and a box fan for ventilation, and painted. It turned out great for a guy with no experience painting a car.
I used microbead/resin for filler on the fiberglass parts.
'66 Sprite
My 3 p's are procrastinate, procrastinate, PAINT!
In reply to Carl Heideman :
I love lacquer paint. It dries so fast. It's pretty benign, not requiring a lot of safety gear. And because it dries so fast it's easy to sand runs and drips off.
Finally the depth of lacquer paint cannot be duplicated by the plastic look of clear coats.
regarding durability of Lacquer, if you follow your prep guidelines you should have a really durable paint job. My first paint job has lasted since 1974. 47 years.
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