Rusto-roller paint tutorial

[HAULN-SS]

IM not worried about the work, I'm worried about that layer of mud all over the car in places it needn't be...Unless you're going to sand the whole car twice...thats a LOT of extra work

[.RJ]

IM not worried about the work...

thats a LOT of extra work

So... which is it?

I cant imagine you can see all the low spots visually.

[HAULN-SS]

omg.

I'm just saying from personal experience, you dont need to smear mud over the entire car. When I got my SS painted, the guy did the method I'm telling you about (mind you, this car had plenty of door dings, had the front end all fucked up hitting a bear, and was 16 years old)...and when I got it back it was as smooth as glass all over. I was down there all the time checking on it, and he did NOT smear mud all over it to get it that way. I went down there one day and there was probably 25 pieces of tape stuck to the car identifying trouble spots and he was taking pictures. after the car was stripped, he used the pics to get a feel(with his hands literally) for where there needed to be some work, and smoothed it out.

[white_2kgt]

omg.

I'm just saying from personal experience, you dont need to smear mud over the entire car. When I got my SS painted, the guy did the method I'm telling you about (mind you, this car had plenty of door dings, had the front end all fucked up hitting a bear, and was 16 years old)...and when I got it back it was as smooth as glass all over. I was down there all the time checking on it, and he did NOT smear mud all over it to get it that way. I went down there one day and there was probably 25 pieces of tape stuck to the car identifying trouble spots and he was taking pictures. after the car was stripped, he used the pics to get a feel(with his hands literally) for where there needed to be some work, and smoothed it out.

you WILL NOT find a single show quality paint job that hasn't had mud all over the entire surface. Sure, you don't _need_ to do it, but that is the ONLY way you are going to fill in gaps. I have no idea what color you got painted but try it on black, it will show every single low spot.

[HAULN-SS]

White

[Dave]

time for the next installment...
when I left you guys last time on page 1, the fenders had been sanded up to 400 grit and primered where bare metal was showing. The next step is to start applying the paint! I put down one coat then after it dried I realized that there had been some dust and trash left on the fender from the sanding and priming, so I had to sand again in those areas, DOH! I didn't get any pictures of the first coat or this sanding, but it really isn't that critical. After I finished sanding, I wiped it off a with a rag and some mineral spirits to get off any other debris and sust particles.
All of these pictures are taken of the paint after it is dry. I get down 2 coats a day: one right before I leave for work, one right after dinner. The pics are taken right before I lay down a fresh coat.
After #2. Thin coats = takes a few layers to cover the primer and old paint


Then came coat #3


And coat 4


The next step is to wetsand to area to level out the paint and pull off contaminants. I skipped the 600 grit and did this with 800 grit sandpaper. Normally, I'd run through the whole list, but I'm under a severe time crunch here.


There was definitely some orange peel present... Keep sanding till it's smooth, if you care


Wipe off all the dust from the sanding, then rub it down with some mineral spirits to make sure you got it all. It will evaporate very quickly, so go ahead and put down coat #5


Let it dry, put down coat 6



That's where I'm at right now. I've got 4 more coats of paint I'm going to try to get on there, and I'll be wetsanding with 1000 and 1500, plus polish and wax. The goal is to have this all done and going on the truck on Monday :twisted:

[Dave]

nearing the end now, after these steps you're on the home stretch of my abbreviated paintjob detailed here.

A few hints that I've picked up:
-Wiping surfaces off with mineral spirits before painting is a great practice. I've been doing it after I sand and I feel it gets the area really clean and removes any contaminants. It might be a little extreme to do it for every coat, but I can see the benefits.
-Change your roller every time you wetsand. I'm averaging 4-5 coats between sanding events, and I feel like my roller has collected some trash over time and is putting it into the paint as I roll it. No worries, since it gets sanded off, but would be better if it never made it in there.
-Something I didn't mention earlier on saving your supplies. I put my roller in a plastic baggie between uses, it keeps it moist and reduces its exposure to trash and dust. I also have been mixing my paint and mineral spirits in an old, throughly cleaned, plastic spaghetti sauce bottle. It's perfect and I really wish I had done it with the SE-R. It gives me the ability to adjust the thickness of the mixture until I reach exactly how I want it, and every time I'm done painting, I just dump the leftover back in to be used later. Definitely reducing the amount of waste and is giving me better results I feel.
Now, on with the pics!

I've really just been putting down more and more layers of paint.
Coat 7


Coat 8


Coat 10 (coat 9 was put on it 20 minutes, rushing off to work this morning and forgot to take pics)


I wetsanded at 1000 grit tonight, wiped off all the sludge from the wet dust, wiped off again with mineral spirits to get up anything left and help evaporate the water.


Finally, tonight I put down my last layer of paint, making a grand total of 11 coats of paint. After the sanding, probably 2-3 coats have actually been removed. There is definitely some orange peel on these, but I didn't really put the effort into not getting it out b/c this is a work truck and a little orange peel doesn't look so bad when there is rust everywhere else :-).

This job should be finished up tomorrow morning, so look for the final installment of this tomorrow evening as well as an overall reveiw with before and after pics. Not too shabby in terms of timeframe IMO, considering I started painting it last Tuesday night, and started prep work on it last Sunday :-).

[Dave]

final installment...
coat #11


wetsanded at 1500 grit


then I hit it a couple times with my Porter Cable and Turtle wax polishing compound


then I put a layer of wax down


installed and pretty


old n busted/rusty vs. new bling!



I finished it yesterday but have been busy dealing with tow hitch and trailer drama so posting this got put on the back burner. The final product is not show quality, I'll be the first to admit. However that was never my intentions either. There no runs on the paint and it feels very smooth. From a distance it looks terrific, however the orange peel becomes apparent as you get close to it. This would be pretty easy to fix if I wanted, but my time frame just didn't allow for it b/c it would have involved sanding until the ripple effect was no longer there, then putting on more layers and sanding each time until you were done. If I had been more careful and worked in more sanding sessions, I may have never even gotten any in the first place. However, my goal was to give it a green color with as many coats as possible in my time frame and a durable color that will not fade too badly and will hold up to being in the weather and the abuse of a work truck. It was cheap, looks good in my opinion, didn't take long (30 minutes or less for a coat of paint, 30 more minutes if I had to wetsand that night), and is a metric shit-ton better than it was.
If somebody is interested in doing this, please feel free to ask questions. I'm going to do the hood when I get back from VIR, if for no other reason than to make the front one color. I'm going to try to do it with no peel and be "perfect" for anybody who wants to see what it can look like.

[HAULN-SS]

shit you might as well do the rest, except maybe not the inside of the bed/doorframes

[ScottyB]

wow....that's progress!

this is the first time i've seen your truck, that's some serious junkyard dawg style stuff right there -- i dig. i love the old trucks with the yellow markers on the roof 8)

[Dave]

hahaha, yeah, he's a beast. Sounds rough, looks rough, rides rough. He's definitely the most anly vehicle I've ever driven; I feel like I should rip open a shirt Hulk style every time I get out of it.
I'm not real keen on doing the rest b/c I don't think the paint will hold very well in the 20 degree weather, and I'm not really interested in standing outside in the dark in 20 degree weather to finish it. The fenders were replaced out of necessity (before the battery fell through) and the hood's getting done for continuity. The next step is selling the truck so I can get something a little nicer.

[Jewels]

Dave you should send those pictures to Rex's dad, I think he'd be impressed with how the truck is finally looking. He always talked about getting new fenders for the "beast". Oh and to prove how awesome of a truck this is, when Rex and I moved, his dad packed every piece of furniture we had on it and hauled it from H'burg to Manassas, and it got the exact same fuel economy that it did when it wasn't hauling anything.

And then he sold it to Dave.

[HAULN-SS]

Lol - then why green? If I was going to do that, I'd at least have painted them some shade of blue I think

[PDenbigh]

Uh, maybe he likes green?

[Jewels]

Lol - then why green? If I was going to do that, I'd at least have painted them some shade of blue I think

Maybe cause the rest of the truck is green. It may not match greens, but at least its still all green

[HAULN-SS]

truck looks blue to me

[white_2kgt]

man dave, that seems like a SHIT load of work. Why don't you get a couple cans of krylon and spray the other fender and compare the difference.

[CaptainHenreh]

truck looks blue to me

Trust me dude, it's green.

[Mike]

truck looks blue to me

somebody is color bliiind.

[CaptainHenreh]

In that lighting, it does look a more Cyan/Teal/Cerulean than a green.

But it's the lighting..in more bright sunlight, it's definitely green.