Thread: Garage Painting for Dummies

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Steve, I recently did "a driveway" paint job on my 32 high boy. I'm in California also so I had to go with the new waterborne paint. Here's some reference points from my experience.

I live in a metro area and needed to be sensative to the nieghborhood (dust, noise, paint smells, etc.). The best advice given to me was from Ken Thurm, to powdercoat everything that was in bare steel with powdercoat primer. This was less costly than paying for media blasting and also buying epoxy primer material. It was also quick, and gave me time to finish the metal work without eveything rusting. I just block sanded, filled, then epoxy primed over the powdercoat. They did a phosphate treatment after the media blast for rust and adhesion.

I did everything in my driveway from bare metal work, to final block sand and buff, everything "except for final shooting on the sealer, basecoat, clearcoat", which I hired out to a friend with a booth. I used PPG Envirobase ($350/gal). I painted 27 parts inside and out, and still had some of the original gallon of base color left over. I was very happy with the final results, but was worried going with the new waterborn paint for the first time. I would agree that on a street car you want to stay with a paint system that will allow you to make easy repairs in the future.

My single "most important" suggestion is to find a paint dealer that you are comfortable with and stick to their advice to the letter. It's not difficult, it was hard work but still interesting and fun project.

The cost of materials was way more costly than I expected. From sandpaper, to primer, sealer, clear, compound, etc., every trip to the paint store was $300 to $400. It's a very time consuming process, but if you take your time, don't rush any step, you will have a nice result and save many thousands of dollars. I completly understand why it costs $10 to $15K to have a nice paint job done. I worked almost every weekend for a year to do mine.

John brings up a point that Jay (Hotrodpaint) and others have mentioned.....you are going to spend more on supplies than you ever thought. Every time we walk out of the paint store we have a little box and a tab of several hundred dollars. Thank God they throw in the paint sticks and strainers!

I don't know if it has been mentioned in this thread, I may have missed it, but you want DRY air coming out of your compressor. Drain the tank before you start, if you have an inline dryer bleed it, and maybe even use one of those little ball dryers that screw right before the gun. With humidity in Summer you have to do all you can to keep moisture from getting into the paint.

Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

John brings up a point that Jay (Hotrodpaint) and others have mentioned.....you are going to spend more on supplies than you ever thought. Every time we walk out of the paint store we have a little box and a tab of several hundred dollars. Thank God they throw in the paint sticks and strainers!

I don't know if it has been mentioned in this thread, I may have missed it, but you want DRY air coming out of your compressor. Drain the tank before you start, if you have an inline dryer bleed it, and maybe even use one of those little ball dryers that screw right before the gun. With humidity in Summer you have to do all you can to keep moisture from getting into the paint.

Don

I didn't even touch on the cost of supplies. Just to spray paint cost me in the neighborhood of a thousand plus bucks - and that's only the equipment which included a 50' copper line and valving, two dryers, a supplied air personal safety system, two separate paint guns(primer and finish), shoot suits, face masks. Then there was the 7 quarts of DuPont BC paint at ~$150/quart, the 6 quarts of CC at $50/quart plus the required reducers for more $$. A gallon of Rage Gold plastic filler was ~$40 then the 4 quarts of epoxy primer at~$50 quart and the dozens of sheets of sandpapers at $1-$2 a sheet (80 - 2000 grit). Then there's the cut and buff materials - a 7" buffer at $250, pads at $12-$15 each and the Presta 1500 and swirl removers at $25 each. And of course 3-4 rolls of 3M 'green' masking tape at $7 each. And that's just the big stuff I can think of right now

Every time I walked into my supplier, his big smile told me that he was going to be able to pay the employees out of the gross that day instead of his pocket

Thanks guys for all the info. I have oscillated on this home paint job for over a year now.
Strategy 1 has been to strip everything to bare metal myself, hit it with Mar hyde rust converter, then bondo and primer as I go. When one section or panel is done, I hit it with epoxy primer. Next the plan was to get some of the color I want to paint with and do the interior or a fender and see how it goes.

Strategy 2 - is to stop after getting everything in primer and take it to a Maaco, or Miracle Auto paint place and pay more to have them clean up the body and paint using my brand of paint.(a couple of hot rodders around here have gone this route and ended up with beautiful paint jobs for under 5k.

I really appreciate the warnings about Candy and HOK. Not set in stone on this one.I think I can still buy paint from Summit that is non h2o based as well.

Lastly - I'd still love to hear the process for sanding and painting to give it a try on a small panel. Thanks everybody, Steve.

I guess you failed the 8:00am test then

Wow you guys seem to pay a lot more than we do for primers & paints, for example i pay £12 for a litre of epoxy primer which is about $15, straight colour is around £25 ($33) per litre

Originally Posted by IC2

I didn't even touch on the cost of supplies. Just to spray paint cost me in the neighborhood of a thousand plus bucks - and that's only the equipment which included a 50' copper line and valving, two dryers, a supplied air personal safety system, two separate paint guns(primer and finish), shoot suits, face masks. Then there was the 7 quarts of DuPont BC paint at ~$150/quart, the 6 quarts of CC at $50/quart plus the required reducers for more $$. A gallon of Rage Gold plastic filler was ~$40 then the 4 quarts of epoxy primer at~$50 quart and the dozens of sheets of sandpapers at $1-$2 a sheet (80 - 2000 grit). Then there's the cut and buff materials - a 7" buffer at $250, pads at $12-$15 each and the Presta 1500 and swirl removers at $25 each. And of course 3-4 rolls of 3M 'green' masking tape at $7 each. And that's just the big stuff I can think of right now

Every time I walked into my supplier, his big smile told me that he was going to be able to pay the employees out of the gross that day instead of his pocket

Originally Posted by roadster32

Wow you guys seem to pay a lot more than we do for primers & paints, for example i pay £12 for a litre of epoxy primer which is about $15, straight colour is around £25 ($33) per litre

Perhaps the California initiated low VOC laws that every other state seems to eventually adopt hasn't made the trip across the Atlantic. BC depends on color. Anything with red or pearl is out of sight. My Ford Venetian Orange color on my '31evidently has both. If it has 'flake, that's also an adder. We can buy white, gray or black in single stage fairly reasonably in off brands

Thanks Roadster32! Just the process I'm looking for, though I realize this changes for different paint types, it's close enough for me.

Dave I guess I did flunk the 8a.m. test. Last November I called summit to see if there was a problem with buying and shipping their one stage to California. They said no, and nothing they new of, so I held off buying paint for it. Called them today, and got the news you've already shared. So I guess non volatiles are now on the menu!

Originally Posted by roadster32

Wow you guys seem to pay a lot more than we do for primers & paints, for example i pay £12 for a litre of epoxy primer which is about $15, straight colour is around £25 ($33) per litre

Yep Steve, I just picked up a quart of DP90LF primer today so Dan can shoot some more parts this weekend, and the primer was $ 49.00 and the hardener was $ 49.00. (It would have been $28 for the hardener but they were out of the pint size so I had to get a quart.) We figure he will have about 6 quarts total of DP90 spraying the cab and bed, so that is about $ 600 in primer alone. Then we have to spray high build primer, and finally color. Even doing a paint job yourself, using good stuff, the tab is very high. Makes a person understand how Jay (Hotrodpaint) and others need to get $ 10 K or more to make any money painting one professionally.

The guys like Steve in California really have it tough as they are banned by law from buying and using products some of us in other States use. I watched a show where Jay Leno was having a Deusenberg (sp?) restored and the shop owner said he had to use modern paints that are ok to use in California. He said if they come in and find a trace of other stuff in his filters it is a $ 10K fine. Won't be too long those restrictions will migrate across the country...........everything starts in California and eventually happens everywhere else.

Don

Along a similar line, when I buy a new car in New York State, which is almost as far from CA as you can be in the US, it will have CA emissions controls, which of course somewhere in the price I pay extra for that 'privilege'.

So far NY doesn't require the water based paint, but they are on the way

The September 2010 Street Rodder Mag did several articles on painting prep and painting.