Paint at Home Part 3: Spraying Those Topcoats

Since you never miss an issue of GRM, we know you’ve already read the previous two installments of our “Paint at Home” series. If not, here is part 1, and here is part 2. The first showed us stripping our BMW’s paint and fixing its imperfections with hammers and body filler. The second covered the iterative process of …

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Very pretty.

(the real reason for my post is that it is staying at the top of the Latest Topics page with a last post time of 0 minutes ago and I'm hoping that another post will put it back in its place :) )

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Edit: Issue fixed.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.

Sometimes when I time things to post they'll hang for a hot second. It's a weird glitch we're looking into. 

Nice job. Good tips. 

I worked part-time in a body shop during college, about 1200 hrs.  Enough that I've done nearly all of my own bodywork since then. 

One picture shows a common mistake... During cleaning the right rear quarter panel, all attention focused on gloved right hand, towel, solvent.... While ungloved oily-skinned left hand is making a nice palm print on the trunk lid. 

I would also consider hanging blankets or tarps around the car, as the overspray gets everywhere in your nice clean shop... Much less work to hang than to clean. 

Of course, if weather is good, consider spraying outside. 

Plus on tarps. Still finding things with red over spray on . Blue and White colors didn't have the hang time of the red.

Where was the prime, base coat, and clear sourced? Online or a local store? What brand was it?

what colour is that? looks amazing

Rushcanuck said:

what colour is that? looks amazing

It's the correct factory blue for the 1985 325e.  As I undersand, it's a fairly rare color.

iwannarace said:

Where was the prime, base coat, and clear sourced? Online or a local store? What brand was it?

We got it all at a local store.  We didn't get too much into those details for the story because state/local regulations seem to really affect availability of materials. We used a private label (lower priced) brand from our store called Montana.  We prefer local stores to the internet because we get great advice from them and want to keep them in business.  We had around $1000 in sandpaper, paint, primer, etc. in this job.  It's as nice in person as in the pictures and should last 20+ years.

BimmerMaven said:

Nice job. Good tips. 

I worked part-time in a body shop during college, about 1200 hrs.  Enough that I've done nearly all of my own bodywork since then. 

 

One picture shows a common mistake... During cleaning the right rear quarter panel, all attention focused on gloved right hand, towel, solvent.... While ungloved oily-skinned left hand is making a nice palm print on the trunk lid. 

 

I would also consider hanging blankets or tarps around the car, as the overspray gets everywhere in your nice clean shop... Much less work to hang than to clean. 

 

Of course, if weather is good, consider spraying outside. 

Good catch on the bare hand.  The behind the scene comment I'll give you about these stories is that I usually do the work, then bring in a "hand model" to take the pictures and we missed that detail.  Sloppy me.  Hint:  You'll find another sloppy detail in the first story.  Look at the color of the body filler we're mixing up and then look at the color of the body filler we're sanding off.  Sometimes I forget to take a picture and have to re-enact it.  Unlike movie producers, we don't have continuity checkers...

I've painted a lot of cars in my garages over the years and I do throw blankets or plastic over anything that I care about.  The floors stay body color for about a month, or until the next paint project, whichever comes first.  

I wondered about the pink / green color.... but wasn't sure about that.

This series has me thinking maybe I can paint my new 944S2 and save some money and learn something new in the process.  The problem is I don't have an air compressor or paint equipment that will do this job either which would add another 2K to the project.  I already want a compressor though for my future lift and air tools, so it's not all on this potential project. 

In reply to AnthonyGS :

One paint job will pay for the equipment, and you can do it for much less than $2K.  We've tried the $15 Harbor Freight guns, thinking we could throw them away cheaper than clean them.  We didn't throw them away.  They work very well.  

The bare minimum for equipment in my opinion is a 5" DA sander and a paint gun with enough compressor. 

These are great painting articles. 

My late brother was a bodyman-painter and we did several cars together like this at home, in particular when I was a teenager. I won't forget those.

One thing we used to do that helped keep paint off things in the garage also - was to hand large tarps from the rafters.

Carl Heideman said:

In reply to AnthonyGS :

One paint job will pay for the equipment, and you can do it for much less than $2K.  We've tried the $15 Harbor Freight guns, thinking we could throw them away cheaper than clean them.  We didn't throw them away.  They work very well.  

The bare minimum for equipment in my opinion is a 5" DA sander and a paint gun with enough compressor. 

You've convinced me.  I'm going to give it a go.  It'll be next year after mechanical stuff is sorted and my challenge entry competes and sells.  I have a nice clean new fully finished garage to work in.  Once the challenge car is gone, I can put this car in the garage by itself.

My 944 is guards red or india red (same code).  It was originally single stage paint, but was partially repainted in two stage and now that clear is flaking off.  Any recommendations on single vs dual stage?  It's a non-metallic color so my understanding is both are viable.  I'm in TX so I will probably just hit up my local Sherwin Williams store for materials.  I'm looking at 220V single state compressors rated at 10 cfm at 100 psi and 12 cfm at 40 psi.  My understanding is most spray guns are 10-12 cfm at 20 psi, so this too should be okay.  I could get a dual stage compressor but they are double the cost.  

What brand of rubberized undercoating is that? Gun settings, nozzle size? 

I am about to do this under my hot rod project. 

Before the actual painting can begin, the lower portions of the car need some extra protection. Start by spraying the wheel arches and underside of the front valance with rubberized undercoating. While most people buy this stuff in aerosol rattlers (around $8 to $12 apiece), we’ve found that it’s faster and less expensive to invest in a $30 sprayer and source the underrating in cans (typically $15 per quart).

The links to earlier articles are broken.

And since im doing exactly this.....

I'm curious if I can thin and spray it from a HF gun with 2.0mm nozzle. Looks like Eastwood has a good product, but they also want to sell you a special gun for it...

FYI I bought a couple spray cans of the Eastwood stuff. I don't have much surface area to cover, so I figured it's not worth buying the gun.

I'll put results in my hot rod build thread once I get to that step.

https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-rubberized-undercoating.html

I'm curious as to people's opinions about the isocyanates contained in car paint which absorb not just through your lungs but also through exposed skin and eyes. I painted my car in the garage and the amount of exposure, even with ventilation, kinda freaked me out. 

I always wear something like the Tyvek coveralls with the hood up.  That combined with rubber gloves, respirator and glasses covers about 99% of me (since I grew a beard, I wear an air supplied hood because a respirator won't seal on my hairy face).  I think that works well.  The only issue is that when it's hot, sweat will collect in the sleeves of the suit, run down the arms and try to drip out onto the paint at my wrists.  I generally use masking tape to tape the sleeves up at the wrist to prevent this. 

In reply to Kubotai :

Yeah, I feel like an air supplied hood is something I would invest in if I did my own paint again. Apparently even a p100 mask won't block iso's. I may be overreacting, but then again chemical exposure is no joke.  

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Paint on a rotisserie.  You can whip one up from a pair of engine stands or  build it like I did from scrap metal.  
     The ease of working makes it worth while for even one car.  

rattlecan said:

I'm curious as to people's opinions about the isocyanates contained in car paint which absorb not just through your lungs but also through exposed skin and eyes. I painted my car in the garage and the amount of exposure, even with ventilation, kinda freaked me out. 

They made me feel real sick for over a Week and hyper sensitive to them for 30 years.  I'm still to the point where I back out of any place where they've been sprayed in the past several days. 

rattlecan said:

In reply to Kubotai :

Apparently even a p100 mask won't block iso's. 

As I understand it, there are two issues with isocyanates.  The first is general toxicity.  It's not too hard for the activated carbon respirator to knock the isocyanates down to levels that are acceptable from this point of view.  The second issue is that people can become sensitized to them and have allergic reactions (like peanut allergy or bee stings).  For people that are very sensitive to this, the amount needed to cause a problem is very, very low and a respirator can't reliably get low enough.  This is why no activated carbon respirator will carry approval for isocyanates.