Rustoleum Paint Job

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Onefine88 said:

Well since you asked
I've seen these threads before.
I don't care what you've read on other sites. I wish I could give you a vote of confidence as others have in this thread but I can't.
I'm gonna be honest.
I've been painting cars for 35 years. Contrary to popular belief Rustoleum is not an automotive finish grade product. I use it alot myself. Its great for small engine parts, deck chairs, bbq grills, kids toys, industrial tools, ect, ect, ect.
If you paint your Mustang with it:
#1 It's gonna look like poop.
#2 It's gonna take alot of product and multiple coats to achieve gloss and a "Decent" looking overall finish at best.
#3 After applying massive amounts in hopes to achieve a decent appearance, Durability will be compromised!
-Rustoleum gets softer and softer when multiple coats are applied and takes longer and longer to dry.
-It may never totally dry.
After a month or even two you will be able to use your finger nail and scratch the finish with little effort. If you should spill gas on it while fueling your car it will damage the sheen or cause it to craze and/wrinkle. On a hot sunny day you will be able to mash a thumb print in the hot finish.
Bottom line its not up to the task and I hate to see anyone waste time, effort and money going down the wrong path.

Trust me do yourself a favor, save your money and buy real automotive finishing materials or take it to a body shop and do it right.

good luck

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85rkyboby said:

I agree with everything @Onefine88 says. The thicker/more layers you do the worse it will get, it may never dry, and it will be shotty work at best. I agree with all that but I wouldn't try and stop you as I'm sure there's no changing your mind. So I give you my experience with it. This is coming from a body collision repair graduate. Just not as experienced as @Onefine88.

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It's kind of funny, this is the same response this sort of thing always drives from auto body guys. I know it seems completely blasphemous, but when the right techniques are used, you can actually get really decent results. There are dozens of examples out there of guys doing this sort of thing with oddly fantastic outcomes. The better ones seem to use the "TopSide" paint like I mentioned above, plus they mix the paint with stuff like Penetrol, which alters the surface tension.

Hot Rod magazine even did one of these paint jobs once, and even those guys were pleasantly surprised. They went the cheapest way possible too, and just used basic Rustoleum, no Penetrol or anything fancy.

The catch is you have to thin it way out, do SEVERAL coats, and wet sand pretty much every other one. Just laying the paint is a 2-week process of some sort of work every single day. That's the sole reason I backed out of it- there is just plain too much work involved to get good results, for me at least.

I'm gonna paint the monster w/ the lacquer paint that comes by the quart branded by Duplicolor. It's called paint shop. There are several color choices available including solids, metallics, candies, pearls, primers and clears.
It dries super fast, comes premixed in the can (no thinner required) and costs about 22-24.00 per qt.
It is specifically formulated for DIY's, and as stated above, can be recoated at any time. Because of that, you could do a panel at a time, w/ a pretty basic, cheap HVLP HF gun, and a shop compressor. There are however just a few "little" things that require noting:

It's lacquer. You will have to wetsand and buff the paint to get the depth and final luster that most expect in an automotive finish.
It's lacquer. NOT resistant to most chemicals that are common to owning a car. That includes gas, and brake fluid( especially brake fluid)
It's lacquer. Available only in a qt can. If you plan on painting an entire car, and intend to use any color other than black, or white, you'll need to buy the paint from the same supplier (i.e jegs/summit) and specify that you want all of your qts from the same "lot" number labeled on top of the cans. For a one color paint job, I'd expect 6 qts minimum. Since it is already mixed, it's actually about half the material you'd have had you bought a single stage/base coat instead.
It's lacquer. Not the greatest UV resistance when exposed to the big orange ball in the sky as opposed to other automotive finishes.
It's lacquer. Dries fast, hard, and brittle. Rocks love this stuff, they win EVERY SINGLE TIME in the rock vs paint war. In other words, highly susceptible to rock chipping.

So you gotta be asking yourself,.......all that seems like a bad thing, why would you even consider the stuff if its likely to fade from the sun, wrinkle/craze/melt if you slosh gas on it, have to be wetsanded and buffed to look acceptable, and end up looking like hell after 1 mile behind a dump truck hauling dirt.?

All of that becomes a mute point as soon as you top coat it in a standard high solids polyurethane clear. The clear adds back the solvent, and UV resistance, the durability to survive a short exposure behind the guy haulin' dirt in front of you.
One gallon can also be bought from Jegs/Summit, along w/ the requisite activator, and reducer for about 100.00 additional dollars.
All in, you'll have about 300.00 in materials if you include some sort of primer.

Poly clear's are not w/o their own evils. The clear coat contains the isocyanates that make for a really bad case of central nervous disorder if your respirator isn't rated for it. Breathing isocyanates is bad. It's says so on the side of your super glue tube, ( no huffing Super glue) Or you can ask any dead ex-con that had to sit in the room w/ the cyanide air freshener what breathing that stuff was like.
That said, I painted my Cobra bumper last year, and chose to proceed anyway w/ only a Home Depot standard cartridge style respirator. It was a standard base clear, and it was only a bumper. The clear floats in the air and sticks to everything it lands on. You have to remember that not only do you breathe through your nose and mouth but your skin, and eyes also tend to need fresh air as well. While you can cover your nose and mouth w/ a home depot respirator, your eyes will soon remind you that they need some fresh air as well, because they'll seem "just got up" sticky as well. Despite my total disregard for my own advice, I think I'm O.K.,...I'm O.K., I'm O.K.

The pro's using the paint is since it's lacquer, and not a base coat product, the "lesser important " areas i.e under hood, trunk, interior floors, and jambs can be painted, and you're done. Unlike a base coat, where I'd have to topcoat it.
It dries almost immediately, and the overspray usually ends up as a sweepable dust that you can sweep/blow off everything that it lands on.

So in retrospect, rolling on a gallon of rustoleum might not be so bad.

NIKwoaC said:

It's kind of funny, this is the same response this sort of thing always drives from auto body guys. I know it seems completely blasphemous, but when the right techniques are used, you can actually get really decent results. There are dozens of examples out there of guys doing this sort of thing with oddly fantastic outcomes. The better ones seem to use the "TopSide" paint like I mentioned above, plus they mix the paint with stuff like Penetrol, which alters the surface tension.

Hot Rod magazine even did one of these paint jobs once, and even those guys were pleasantly surprised. They went the cheapest way possible too, and just used basic Rustoleum, no Penetrol or anything fancy.

The catch is you have to thin it way out, do SEVERAL coats, and wet sand pretty much every other one. Just laying the paint is a 2-week process of some sort of work every single day. That's the sole reason I backed out of it- there is just plain too much work involved to get good results, for me at least.

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I was thinking the same thing. That link goes to a 20+ page thread where the guy details every step of the process, and displays examples of the paint jobs he says have been done for 5+ years. And he's one of a hundred examples out there.

They're not the same guys that come on and dispute LS JY in fox swaps for under 2 grand are they?

madmike1157 said:

I was thinking the same thing. That link goes to a 20+ page thread where the guy details every step of the process, and displays examples of the paint jobs he says have been done for 5+ years. And he's one of a hundred examples out there.

They're not the same guys that come on and dispute LS JY in fox swaps for under 2 grand are they?

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Haha I dunno... By definition, the JY LS guys might be too lazy for a good roll on paint job.

NIKwoaC said:

Haha I dunno... By definition, the JY LS guys might be too lazy for a good roll on paint job.

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Oh I don't know, I've contemplated doing both. Looking back I wish I had went w/ the JY LS. (that part would be done, instead of having to buy a flat tappet cam from Australia, having to make intake and exhaust, sleeving the block, custom pistons, blah-blah-blah) for the sake of keeping it all ford.
If Rustoleum came in any color silver that I could even pull off the 79 pace car color scheme I intend to use on the GM, then I'd do that too.
And,.....I'm far from lazy.

@madmike1157 I like that idea more than the rustoleum. I want to paint my car myself, but the thought of spending $3k in material terrifies me for a first time job. I'll buy the cheap stuff and get the technique down first.

yeah, but is it lacquer??

madspeed said:

yeah, but is it lacquer??

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it IS lacquer. I ckd into this stuff in '07, and have done so several times since then. It is a cheaper formulation than the old standard acrylic lacquer, ( matter of fact Duplicolor refers to it as synthetic lacquer)
it's probably has something to do w/getting around certain EPA restrictions on chemicals used in the product.Either way, I could give a rats' bunion hole.

All I know is that I can buy the stuff at any auto parts store for cheapie-degreapie, and I'll be able to do it myself. After the poor job I paid for last time. I'll take matters into my own hands to guarantee that won't happen again.

The engine compartment will be my " guinea pig", as I intend to use a qt of the silver there first. I'll be able to testify as to how it looks/ works after I get it done.

I don't think I saw you write it off, but why not just shoot it in a cheap single stage urethane? Is it because you want to spray a metallic color? I did my car is single stage years ago and it was good enough to win shows. I had $400 in materials in that paint job.