PROPERLY painting a car?

xerostatus · Post by **xerostatus** » July 18th, 2005, 1:25 am

When i first got my MX-3 almost a year ago, it had lots of nasty oxidation on the hood and the roof, with various patches here and there. I've always planned on repainting the whole car, and a cheap quick job at somewhere like earl scheib seemed tempting but in the end i feared i would regret whenever i open my door and i see green door jams inside a diff/ colored car =/

So i considered maybe painting the car myself, with a little TLC. With some informal research, i basically learned that you gotta sand off the original paint, primer it, sand it, paint, then clearcoat. I actually went through with the procedure on my hood, with custom mixed paint i got at a local shop. and its a vast improvement but i dont get the glossiness of a real paint job, even though i did the top clear coat.

Anyone have extensive knowledge on how to paint a car properly? is it suggested that i try to do this myself? If not the entire car, how would one go about repainting a certain body part after it was repaired to match the rest of the car? right now my hood is pretty much the same color but it doesnt "match" the rest of car.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(the color matches, but its not reflective like the stock paint)

mitmaks · Post by **mitmaks** » July 18th, 2005, 2:34 am

I would go through training like at local community college to handle painting cars, even with tips/reading you wont get as good as you would with training Ive done. By the time you get out youll be set to paint car better than factory. there's too many factors that you need to learn about painting a car
heres some info on bodywork/paint

http://www.hotrodders.com/f19

Gro Harlem · Post by **Gro Harlem** » July 18th, 2005, 10:02 am

how many coats of clear did you put on that hood exactly? and how much orange peel did you get?

I have painted my car myself twice....the latest result much better than the first but still not to my liking. There are a lot of things you should and shouldn't do, LOTS. The research I did (and i did a lot too) proved to f--- me more than help me. If i had just used common sense and did it how i thought it should've been done i probably would have much better results to begin with

hgallegos915 · Post by **hgallegos915** » July 18th, 2005, 9:39 pm

you have to sand the clear coat down with thin sand paper to get it shiny. I woiuld suggest more cotas. I did mny carbon fiber hood and it came out awesome.

xerostatus · Post by **xerostatus** » July 22nd, 2005, 7:04 am

Gro Harlem wrote:how many coats of clear did you put on that hood exactly? and how much orange peel did you get?

I have painted my car myself twice....the latest result much better than the first but still not to my liking. There are a lot of things you should and shouldn't do, LOTS. The research I did (and i did a lot too) proved to f--- me more than help me. If i had just used common sense and did it how i thought it should've been done i probably would have much better results to begin with

That is exactly what happened to me, haha. It seemed like the more research i did the more it screwed me. Maybe ill try more coats of clear. I only did like 2-3 coats really.

And did you mean that you painted the entire car yourself? How long did that take, and approximately how much paint did you have to use for the entire thing? Just concentrating on my hood took like a few days, so i dunno.

Over the summer I might just go all out and try painting the whole thing. and meanwhile I always got my FC to drive around while the mx is outta comission =P

Gro Harlem · Post by **Gro Harlem** » July 22nd, 2005, 6:57 pm

WHen I painted my car the first time, the actual painting went by quick b/c I was using a gun that sprayed out too much material for my skill level.

The key to painting GOOD on your first try is to adjust the nozzle to spray a smaller area than a big one. On my last job I used about a spray-can sized spray pattern, so the actual painting took at least 4 hours for all 3 coats of base & 2 of clear on top of the 1 coat of sealer which was the first coat that screwed the whole job up.

Prepwork takes as long as you want it to take. Depends on what you want to do properly. The last paintjob I did didn't take as long as the first time. Sanding was the most time consuming. Taping everything off went by fast b/c i didn't open the doors & tape off the interior and s--- (i still have yet to spray the doorjambs and underhood/underhatch areas).

Devote at least 5 days to the entire paintjob including prep. I spent probably 8 total doing my first job and 6 or so for the green job.

mx3TT · Post by **mx3TT** » July 22nd, 2005, 8:10 pm

You wont have to put more then 2 or 3 coats of clear, thats plenty. IF you are not getting a shine then there is something else wrong. Try wet sanding a panel thats not shiny. Sand it with like 1500 or 2000 and just take off the orange peel. Then get a buffer and the shine will come back better then before. But like stated before, you are better off to have knowledge about the things you are doing no matter what anyone else says. You try to buff your car and you dont know what you are doing, you will either burn thru the clear or leave it dull. Read up, take a class, do the job right.

EDIT - possibly you sprayed it to dry and thats why its not showing shine. Does your clear have a lot of texture? if it does then thats your problem right there.

mitmaks · Post by **mitmaks** » July 22nd, 2005, 8:20 pm

reading throught all these replies just makes me kinda laugh.
I will say this again. If you never sprayed car or have not even technical idea on how to do not attempt this as you'll fail and will just ask why this, why that while you still will be screwing up.
Theres too many factors to paint job like gun size, air pressure/cfm, was paint properly mixed, did you follow flash time, did you use same company's paint ie PPG, DuPont, etc.
from picture it looks like dry spray, either you went too fast or paint gun was too far from surface, by the time paint hit the surface, solvent already evaporated and only dry pigment hits the surface and stacks on top of each other creating uneven dry surface.

GregoryChristian · Post by **GregoryChristian** » July 22nd, 2005, 9:18 pm

yeah it also looks like dry spray to me , you can also see lines in the clear coat where you used a small spray pattern & didn't properly overlap ... what kind of clear did you use ? where I work we use DuPont and have different types of clear for Exteriors that are High Gloss and for door jambs, underhood, engine compartment we use a clear that is like semi gloss or satin finish ... not such a good idea to spray Clear with a small airbrush like pattern ....you need to open up the Paint gun throttle and use a wide fanning motion , but like Mitmarks said there are too many factors that go into properly painting a car.

Gro Harlem · Post by **Gro Harlem** » July 23rd, 2005, 5:52 am

If you are a beginner simply "opening up" the pattern will prove disasterous.

Too much material is too hard to spray properly for a newbie.

The pattern I used on my last job on the acura integra I sprayed (which came out show-quality btw) was about 5 or 6" tall. I adjusted it way down b/c it would be easier to manage and evenly spray if it were smaller.

Turned out being the right way to do it. We didn't sand between coats either. We did 2 coats of primer, 3 of basecoat (charcoal metallic color) and 2 of clear.

There is so little orange peel that my buddy who owns the integra decided not to sand it. If we chose to sand the clear it wouldn't take long b/c of how smooth it is, and it would come out looking like glass.

The only "bad" thing i could think of that I did with that paintjob was using the same spraygun for primer as for base & clear. I did immediately flush the living hell out of it with solvent, including letting the nozzle soak in a thing of solvent for a little bit before going on to the next paint stage, but everyone has always told me thats a no-no.

Whats even funnier, the paintgun I used was a campbell-hausfield (sold at walmart) non HVLP, regular gun. Only requires like 5.5cfm so I was able to spray it with my shitty 21gallon tank non-stop without having to wait for it to charge. It cost $60 lol

The original paintjob (the titanium metallic MSP color) I used a HVLP gun and that proved disasterous. Unless you own a helluva hardcore compressor (one that costs at least 400 dollars) you can't support the CFM required by a HVLP properly. + That "high volumE" part of its name isn't good if you are a newb anyways. Too much material to properly handle for a first-timer IMVHO

mx3TT · Post by **mx3TT** » July 23rd, 2005, 2:04 pm

Well you keep commenting on your first time this your first time that. But, like mitmaks is saying, if you take a quick course and learn a little bit, you will be able to use the proper settings on the gun and get the proper results. The clear is the hardest part to spray, you need to spray it wet and overlap it a lot to get it to flow. If you are spraying it way to fast and not putting out enough material, its going to come out dry and dull. Everyone seems to think painting a car is easy but its not. To get a better then factory finish isnt something youre going to pick up in 2 spray jobs. Takes time and practice to get it right.

GregoryChristian · Post by **GregoryChristian** » July 23rd, 2005, 4:04 pm

I couldn't have said it any better !

Jacbs2007 · Post by **Jacbs2007** » August 14th, 2005, 2:06 am

Well I've been working on painting my Car and Alls i have to say it... Practice practice practice! if you want to figure out how to do this right..take a spare fender you've got paying around if you do or practice on your mudgaurds etc...Spray as slow as you can without getting the paint/clear coat to run. and it really helps if you Ground your car...keeps the dust off it because when you paitn it creats alot of static energy and that attracts dust. I'm no proffessional but as long as you ground your car and a half decent gun and a little comment sense and knowhow you'll be just fine!