Here's the senerio,

I ended up buying Nassan/Dupont acrylic enamel single stage metallic paint as it was recommended by the paint store as a good performing yet slightly cheaper paint. (going on a 91 p/u truck that's just going to be an occasional work truck) .
I also ended up buying a new gun....it's a Vapor HLVP 1.4mm

I thought I had it tuned in fairly decent when I tested it on a piece of plywood.....spray about 7" wide holding it 7" from the board set at 35psi at the regulator directly under the gun. Paint valve about one turn from wide open. However, when I started to paint my brothers hood which is hanging from a rafter....it just started running like crazy. I dropped the pressure down to 30psi, opened up the pattern a couple inches, and closed the paint valve 1/2 turn and painted his tailgate. It didn't run, but then it started orange peeling and getting a little bit of a duller, sandpaper texture look. After the paint settled it looked and shined ok, but still pretty orange peely.

I've read and doubled checked a bunch of painting videos, looked at Duponts specs for the paint, and it sound like I have the proper size gun and the gun is tuned in ok, but I'm still confused on the PSI since I've heard so many different things. The fellow at the paint shop said 35psi, the gun say 20psi max, and Dupont says 8-12psi, but all of them might be reading the PSI at different spots maybe????. Again the regulator is directly attached to the bottom of the spray gun.....so any ideas or advice. Aside from it either running real bad or getting orange peel, the metallic seems to be spreading even, and the paint isn't cracking or peeling off. Thanks for hearing me out.

 

Try setting the pressure at 18psi with the trigger pulled(cup empty). If you are still getting orange peel, increase fluid, not pressure. I've used one of those guns when I first started painting, I hate hvlp guns.

 

Sorry, I didn't read your post in time. I stuck with 35psi. My first gun clogged up halfway through the paint job. Between the moisture that was getting pass the water separator and the metallic goop settling at the bottom, it just clogged up everything. I went to the 1.7mm gun and finished the job, however it too started clogging towards the end. This was my second full car paint job and it was tough. I've done a couple panels in the past with single stage urethane and they have come out good, but doing a whole car seems to be a lot trickier for some reason. Granted when I do a panel, it's normal just outside in good lighting, but I can't get away with painting a whole car outside in my neighborhood.


The painting was done in less then ideal conditions. I was painting a full size 2500 series p/u truck in a tight single car garage with horrible lighting. So the roof came out bad because I only had 2' worth of clearance to work with...and the hood came out bad because I didn't sand it down good enough. Other then that the paint is a pretty color, it stuck good, and the orange peel is not too bad and therefore it has a good shine. It's good enough for an old work truck...but I'd of like to of done better. I'm gonna redo the hood, but probably leave the roof alone since nobody except Shaq Oneil will ever see it.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. I'm gonna try 18 psi when I redo the hood in a few weeks. Any advice on the metallic goop problem would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

With metallics, you need to try and keep agitating the gun, to keep it mixed. That's why I got away from using the cups supplied with guns, I switched to dekups by devilbiss. You can shake them, paint upside down and cleaning the gun is easy.

 

Thanks for the advice..I'll look into that and see if that cup will fit my gun...if not, I'll at least give my cup a little shake now and then when I'm not next to the project. Thanks.