Painting a Car YOURSELF
So give me some past experiences and or stuff they do at shops that you cant do at home.
Thanks,
-Ry
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why do you care anyway?
cause he will bitch at me about it, and I want to tell him "I told you so" if he does do it and it turns out like ****. Plus maybe i could prevent him from ******* up.
and also tell him dust will prolly settle all over it, causing small pits.
if he take time, does great prep work, uses a hvlp gun, and good paint. it might turn out semi ok. but itll still prolly look like a homemade job. its gonna be a huge project thatll take him more then a day or two to do also.
**** might as well go to maaco and have them do it for 300 bucks, itll turn out the same
Coming from someone who works for a professional car painter: doing it yourself is better than a maaco job.
hes going to need a sander
paint guns
all the materials.
if he does it in his garage hes going to end up having to wetsand and buff the whole car especially if hes never painted anything before. theres alot more to painting something than just pulling the trigger on a paint gun.
PAINT WILL NOT COVER ANYTHING, Ive had friends say "oh paint will cover that" when they are lazy and dont do enough prep work prior to painting...
ALSO, painting is the easy part, prep work is what makes a good paint-job show though.
I am going to attempt this in the future, but not until I ahve experience and the proper tools.
Assuming the car is rust free, to do it RIGHT, most places I've seen do something along the lines of the following:
- Disassemble
- Media blast
- Re-assemble
- Align body panels
- Scuff/sand
- Fill in lows with filler
- Sand
- Sand
- Sand
- More sanding
- Clean surfaces with thinner/paint prep chemicals
- Tape off areas you don't want to overspray
- Spray hood and trunk lids
- Spray car
- Lay down any graphics/stripes/etc.
- Clear
-Mike


-Mike
I've never painted a car before either.But I've spent a lot of $$ on tools (compressor, watertraps/filters, HVLP guns). Heck, I just spent $200 on sandpaper. And I'm probably going to spend over $1000 on paint (which I lump together as surface cleaner, epoxy primer, primer-surfacer, reducer, basecoat, and clearcoat). The basecoat I'm looking at is $175+ a gallon (R-M Diamont metallic). And I'll need at least 3 (2 Navy Blue, 1 black).
But I have 5 cars that need paint, and am in no hurry. I'll start with the parts cars out back for practice, move up to the $400 car (Fiero - tripling its value with a paint job! LOL), and then start painting my Camaros.






