Suggestions or tips for painting a car in the driveway?

Rad_Capz wrote: I like the single stage paints for outdoor paint jobs. You can cut/buff out most imperfections. Clearcoat will never peel if there isn't one. I have 5 vehicles with clear coat problems all of which were painted by different auto body shops in spray booths. No BC/CC for me thanks. I've used Lacquer, Acrylic Enamel and Urethane outdoors with no problems and prefer the enamel. I'm building 2 cars for people right now. Both want BC/CC paint jobs and I can't talk them out of it. A 69 Camaro and a Factory Five GTM so I may end up shooting them in BC/CC against my wishes. Here's one of my cars I painted outside. I painted it on a dirt driveway, got a cover/feature in PHR 15 years later, bottom pic is after 20 years.

what sidepipe kit did you use? I'd like something like that on my 72.

NOHOME wrote: People are going to tell you to roll it cause they read it on the internet. Ask to see the results of what they did themselves.

Challenge accepted. Painted myself with a foam roller and brushes, two quarts of boat paint and laughing to myself the whole time..."I can't believe I'm doing this."

Didn't sand/buff the final finish, either.

Conversely, I spray painted this one in a garage in a makeshift booth; still got yellow overspray all over everything--floor, walls, tools...

Nowhere near as smooth of a finish...needed sanded and buffed and lots of massaging to get rid of the 'issues'. Faster? Yes. Easier? Yes. Cheaper? No. Anything not needing a OEM color paint job, I'm seriously considering the roller option. Done right, it works better than even I could believe. With crappy prep work or a lackadaisical application, yeah, it'll look like ass. But so will a sprayed on job.

To be fair, the roller job is mostly white, a color that's hard to screw up because it never looks good to begin with.

I'd like to see what a rolled black paint job looks like. Just for comparison's sake. (Hell, most normally-painted black cars look horrible quality-wise. Awesome color, but horribly fault-intolerant)

One I'm about to do with my Nova:

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/ccrp_0812_project_car_paint_body_tips/viewall.html

From article:

Car Craft said: Like the ugly girl in beauty school, we have a plan. To improve the 100-yard opinion of the lowly Chevy, we coated the car in one color of cheap primer so we could slowly fix the body a piece at a time when we have the budget. When we're done with a panel, we can do a quick respray to get the car to match again. That way, we are neither driving a car with three different colors nor are we offending the neighbors with a junkyard-fresh pile. It won't be too nice, because we still need to use it as a tow truck and a hauler of engines and other greasy parts, but you won't want to gouge out your eyes when you see it either.

Andrew,

I'm not sure what your time-frame is, but at some point I have to do some rust repairs to my truck and after that it'll need paint - the hood and roof are in bad shape.

Considering the size of the beast, getting it into a garage is unlikely, so I'll probably be painting it outside. Maybe I'll get a temp garage and do it in my back yard. The current color is black with a silver middle section and I'm planning to do something similar - bed-liner on the bottom, silver in the middle and some dark color above (black, purple, dark green...).. I just want the truck to look passible, so I'm not terribly concerned about it.

My plan is to roll it. I'm concerned about excess fumes if I try to spray. While I live in a pretty tolerant blue-collar neighborhood, the houses are close together and I don't really want to test my neighbor's limits, especially with little kids living next to and behind me.

I think I still have your e-mail so I'll keep you posted.

if you built a decent booth and have good airflow you can have a water trap catch a lot of the excess over spray. I built a temporary booth, enclosed both sides, and used four box fans in a down draft configuration. I draped wet towels in front of the box fans blowing out to help catch overspray. Also use a good HVLP gun...it will help with overspray and waste.

I sprayed my CRX in the driveway with Rustoleum. 2 days of prep and about 2 hours spraying. I did a little wet sanding on the hood but said screw it because Racecar.

It looked OK for a racecar, but certainly wouldn't be the process I would use for a street machine I cared about.

Knurled wrote: To be fair, the roller job is mostly white, a color that's hard to screw up because it never looks good to begin with. I'd like to see what a rolled black paint job looks like. Just for comparison's sake. (Hell, most normally-painted black cars look horrible quality-wise. Awesome color, but horribly fault-intolerant)

I'll do the Googling for you.

Link to Brightside painted Holden wagon Link to roller painted Fiat X1/9

I know, in one of the many forums I read before I rolled my BMW, there was a guy who painted his 1970s Corvette black with Rustoleum, and it came out awesome. Now granted, it's not a color for the beginner paint prepper. It will be really, really difficult to get a perfect mirror finish. But it is possible.

This thread makes me LOVE this board, every time on any other board no one says one thing about the isocyanides, or says something like "I used a dust mask" . Everything I usually say about the plastic tent and fans is covered already too So much awesome!

The only thing left is get a palm sander for the prep and some 220 for it and keep it moving. This will cut your prep time in half and will some what save your arms.

motomoron wrote: The problem with isocyantes is not the respiratory stuff - it's the neurotoxin part. But I'm not a neurological researcher or a toxicologist, though I work with a slew of them at NIH.

That might be a crucual difference, as my job is with air toxics, and I'm familiar with the stuff.

Like I said, they're a heck of a problem, but they don't kill. They just wreck you and make you wish you were dead.

They ain't a neurotoxin. Research em and see. It is 100% respiratory stuff that is the problem.