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Thread: paint your car

  1. #1
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    Default paint your car

    hi guys .

    its come for that time for me to paint my car .bing that it is summer and all with the nice hot days helping the drying time of the paint and all, i wanna give it a go myself.. i pretty good with the spray can hehehe ...

    i was hoping some one who has done it successfully ... (i thinking steriodchicken , seeing that i have been following his build thread )... to provide me with a list of specific tools ... like air compressor size . air gun , what sort of paint to use , garage or car port ..all those little tips and tricks.

    i know its a big ask , but if someone can provide me with steps and the specific tools to use when and where it would be much appreacited.

    john.

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    Senior Member superbmobile's Avatar
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    Go to this site for everything you need to know.

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    Veteran Vance's Avatar
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    unless youre certain that this isnt going to be a once off type thing you might be better off paying someone. after you buy all the gear and the paint you will be looking at a few bucks less than a professional job.


    Quote Originally Posted by ae86 View Post
    ive come to the conclusion dan has more STi's than a Subaru Dealership, yeah i went there

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    i dunno work it out....

    i painted my car and it didnt cost anywhere near the money it would cost to get it done professionally. having said that it didnt turn out anywhere near as good as a pro, but its shiny and blue...

    me and a mate painted my car in 1 week about a year ago.

    we started taking the thing appart on monday morning and completed the clear coat on sunday arvo.

    bloody terrible job

    my car had stacks of small dents so spent monday-friday bogging and sanding. but the actual paint turned out very nice though (big up to my mate greg he was the one behind the gun).

    i can give you a more detailed idea on what you need to do but you only asked for a list.

    -DECENT compressor, borrow or hire one, you need a big one that can withstand a whole pot of paint without needing to recharge. like 1.5m long type of thing....big.... cost: hopefully free or cheap, prolly 700$ if you were to buy it with all the fittings though.

    -go to a proper paint shop and buy a decent top feed gun, cost us around 80$, you can go way more expensive or you can spend 15$, but mine came out ok.

    -get a water trap for your compressor, cheap as, like 50$

    basically 3 types of paints.

    acrylic: best all rounder (what i used), easy to spray, cheaper than 2-pak, you need to use a clear on metalics and you need to rub it back with really fine sandpaper and buff it to make it shiny, its really dull when you finished spraying. cost me around 400$ for all the paint for my ke70.

    2-pak: tough as nails paint, more expensive than acrylic, illegal to spray if you dont have a proper booth, bloody toxic, very hard to paint perfect, orange peel is hard to get rid of it, but if you get it right, unbeliveably awesome finish.

    enamel: cheapest paint, shine off the gun, dont use a dark colour or it will fade easy.


    dont spray in high humidity or it will turn out crap (my bonnet). needs to be quite cool and dryish.

    use a closed in area, i used a carport and put up the plastic sheets up, worked great but its easier for the heat to up the area as the sun can get in.

    there are some nice pics in my thread on the old forums,

    shows some pics of the setup we had and how it turned out.

    your best bet is to show up to a place where they sell paint aand ask. the guy who sold the paint to me gave me a lesson in how to use a gun, showed me what to do. explained everythign in great detail. much better job than im doin thats for sure.

    btw your looking at like 3k+ for a professional job, and if your not after a show finish...i dont think its worth it.

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    I've painted a couple now at home in acrylic, the last one was an old Liberty for a mate which came out really well.

    I'm doing my mrs's Levin in Iso-free 2-pack when the weather starts to cool down a bit to see how that paint goes. Acrylic needs a lot more effort to keep it looking good.

    I use a tradetools RP17 (from memory) 3cyl single phase compressor, basically the biggest mobile single-phase compressor they sell. With this I use a good quality water trap and then another water separator further down the line. I made a dedicated spraying airline which is only as long as it needs to be to get around the car so you have less pressure drop. I'm now using the more expensive Devilbiss guns but previosly used the cheap $80 top-feed star guns. I have separate guns for primer and colour/clear. I've found the Devilbiss guns to be much nicer for spraying metallics and easier to setup the fan pattern etc.

    The prep-work is the most time-consuming part of the job, the actual spraying of paint takes no time at all. The quality of the job really comes down to how much prep-work you do.

    For lung protection I use a Sundstrom half-mask with gas and particle filters, the auto-paint shops sell these too, about $80-100 for the kit.

    Here's two pics of the last car I sprayed in Acrylic, 1st pic is the paint straight off the gun, second pic is after a rub-back with 2000grit wet/dry and a buff with cutting compound. No polish/wax on it yet.


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    thanks guys.

    cant wait till i got some money saved up and get stuck into it.

    i wanna do a full re-spray including the inside and underneath ... how do you go about preping the inside of the car with all those bumps and grooves.... is just alot of elbow grease ?

    oh how do you guys find painting it inside a closed area say a garage ? does the paint get all over the walls ? im renting at the moment and i dont wanna be pissing of the landlord ... and car is atm in a single garage ... imo looks like this is enough space to do it ... what do you guys reckon?

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    tons and tons of elbow grease :p takes forever.

    If you're not spraying at rediculous airpressure there's not THAT much overspray, it will still cover everything in the area you're spraying but cleans off pretty easily.

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    use an HVLP gun, bugger all overspray, less paint wastage, and yeah .. awesome results

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    i paint my cars but if you dont have any gear already it is pricey.

    compressor $200
    gun (cheap) $40
    paint $500 (for primer, thinners, colour, clear, hardener)
    sanding gear $100 (depending on what you get)
    easy sand filler $30
    other (paper, tape etc) $20

    so thats about $900 do get the gear. a decent spraypainter would only quote about $2000 to do it all (on average) and you might get away with cheaper if you shop around.



    if you do decide to do it yourself:

    i would highly suggest getting a good gun. a star evo-t gravity fed is what i would suggest



    make sure the gun you get has correct nozzel size for your application.

    i use iso-free 2pak so i like 1.2-1.4 nozzels

    speaking of which im gonna start a thread (or look for one in the tools section) for spray guns and see what you guys use


    Quote Originally Posted by ae86 View Post
    ive come to the conclusion dan has more STi's than a Subaru Dealership, yeah i went there

  10. #10
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    this is a home job I did myself (with some help)



    Slightly bigger car, but Riojin is just about spot on with the costings.

    I forked out $400 for a good gun and spent a bit more than $500 on paints (2 packs)
    being 3 colours, paid a little extra for proper masking paper & a few other things that I needed.

    Already had a whopping big 3phase compressor and 2 water traps, so that made life easy.

    Dont spray if its too hot, it will flash off before it hits & be super hard and grainy on the bodywork, makes it a pain to sand, if you dont sand it will give a rough finish. 25-35 degrees at around 60-75% humidity is good, especially if you are in an area which is not too far effected by the weather.

    If you're painting in flats (ie non metallics) dont be too worried about doing it all in 1 big hit, do the doors and small things one day, then come back for body the next. Even with the metallics if you mix up enough base to do it all and make sure its well agitated before you paint it will come up matching fine.

    I Would do it a different way next time, but its nothing really I can suggest here - except for the fact that prep is everything: bog, sand, check, bog, sand, check, clean, prime, sand, check, clean, bog, sand, check, prime, sand, clean, urrgh!

    I've also painted in Acrylics but they're not brilliant for cars, they chip quite easily unless they're baked.

    Number 1 rule is Be paitent, if you stuff up, wait, let it dry fully, sand it and try again!

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