Painting your own Car??

i repainted the frontend on my car after it was wrecked. i did it in the garage of my house. you will at very least need a strong 40gal compressor with a dual stage motor on it. you can go to a place like carquest and talk to the counter person about what quality of paint to purchase and how much. you will need to buy a cup gun i perfer the gravity fed one. an hvlp gun will have better quality than a regular gun as far as finish. you can do a base clear which is most common or a single stage coating. most of them are urethane based paints. i would just recommend going to a carquest or any automotive paint store and talking with someone who works there to set you up with what you will need.

I painted my car at my house. I used urethane base coat paint. I bought my supplies from tcpglobal.com

Did the bodywork and painted a 66 chevy that was basicly a learner. It came out very straight and for doing it without a welder I learned a lot. A buddy and I painted it. We used PPG primer/paint and it came out ok, we later realized we did not use enough paint/primer but only just almost and in a few areas. The whole purpose of the car was learning it was a friggan land barge hoopty but had some nice stuff.

Spend the time prepping and taking care of any and all parts. Use plenty of light and let your hands feel what you can not see. I found it best to go panel by panel, like front drivers side fender, then the drivers door, and so on. Then go back over and over...and over when you think your done...do it two more times. The more you sand and pay attention to getting things right the better it will be. I did not have any guide coat after priming/sealing so I used some rattle can black primer worked well enough for me.

You do not have to sand all the way down to bare if the panel is fine, a good scuff pad and sanding down to the base coat will be enough to let the primer/sealer get a grip and paint over. Invest in some sanding blocks and either an electric sander (if you dont have air) or air sander/DA sander.

If your going to paint the car in a home garage/ect. Get some large plastic sheeting/tarp type stuff and cover the walls and roof and tape off the edges. Wet the floor down (not puddles but damp) even after cleaning the floor very well, this keeps dust and dirt down while spraying. Also if you can use a box fan in a window/door do it for air circ. but put it blowing out of the room and even use a wet towel hung over the fan itself it will help keep out dust, you can also use another towel to cover a hole for fresh air coming in...but the room will not be air tight either way.

The next biggest thing is water in the air lines of the gun. With a compressor working it will have hot air in the tank. When it comes out it will cool and water will form. You can use water sep. and filters. My father-in-law knows of shops that have huge coils running in tanks of cold water then several filters/water sep. to help keep out water. You can practice with the sealer/primer on how to get good coverage/feel of it. It would be a good idea to spray a test panel to get the feel for the paint/clear before you spray. I have always heard to spray and then the next pass spray about 1/2 way over what you already sprayed. This helps with build/coverage/even paint thickness.

There are a ton of threads on type of and paper and prep for what step. Dont fear it, your probably not going to get a 10k paint job...but take your time and you will get something better than the 13-15yr old stuff you probably have now.

I just started prepping mine for paint yesterday... I am planning to use a single stage enamel paint... Then if I need to I will clear coat over it for gloss...

Like you I am hoping to got from a 200' paint job to someing in th 10-20' range... I am not looking for a miracle...

yobi1kanobi said:

Yeah I am not going to expect a miracle but, It should look better than it does now.

And to my disappointment I was drilling out my broken antenna, the bit broke and I scratch the hell out of the panel...

3 1/2 year of working on the car and no scratches . doing something so stupid I scratch the hell of of it.

Paint was looking really rough anyways tho..

Click to expand...

Is it dented in from the bit? You can do wonders with some touch up paint and wet sanding.

If the body is straight right there, I would paint it in with the touch up pen, wet sand it down with 1500 and then 2000. Buff it with a foam pad (Orielly's has one that attaches to a regular drill) and Mequire's step 2 polish. I did my whole car this way it brought the crappy 1998, fadded, chipped, and swirled paint back to life. I spent less than $20 for the whole car. Took me about 2 days of off and on work.

It's A LOT of work. The main thing is having a perfect base before the first layer of paint is laid. People think the paint makes the job but it is actually the base behind the paint. When I did my 66', it took about a year to do body work (replacing panels, welding, etc.. ) and only a few days to paint it. I used PPG BC/CC paint and never looked back. Do quality work, use quality supplies, and have a great turn out. Best of luck.

Call me if you need a local place to buy stuff from. There's a place in Hialeah that you can purchase from if you dont want to buy online.

RC