PAINT YOUR CAR ^^May 17th^^ **Signup!**

[PDenbigh]

**Date will be weekend of May 17th!!!**



This is an "out there" idea but most of us are a little "out there" anyhow.

I need to paint the XR. Several of us need to paint our pieces. So why don't we combine resources and get our stuff painted?

I know nothing about painting so feel free to shoot holes in my theories.


Goal: Paint our rides as cheaply as possible while learning and having fun.
Anti-Goal: Have a 100% Perfect, flawless, $5000 paint job.


The way I see it, we have two options.

1. I'll build a shower-curtain booth (with Dave's ideas and help - poke) at my house for a weekend. I already have a 30gal compressor, a basic air-line dryer, two paintbooth-rated masks, and a big HVLP gun. What's left is the booth, and I have enough construction skills to make something last a weekend.

2. We all go together and rent a booth for a weekend. Don't know where, don't know how much, but I would think it'd be possible?


Challenges that I see:

Timing. We'd have to have our car's bodywork done in advance. We'd then spray it, let it tack, spray it again, let it dry enough, and then get it out of the "booth" where it could cure, wetsand, or whatever is next.

Quality. It will likely be an outside paint job and our first itme painting. All I Can promise is that my car will be 99% black :-).


My logic is that I can paint my car with single stage black for UNDER $150 for paint. That beats a $400 Maaco job, and it sure as hell beats a $1000+ job elsewhere. Plus I like doing my own work.

Keep in mind that for me, it's for my racecar and I don't need it to be beautiful.

Anyone else interested?

[Evan]

cool idea, I may be in. Ive been thinking of doing something similar in my garage to paint my beater (and now my racecar too....)

[CaptainHenreh]

You may want to shoot jeff an email and see if the garage's paint booth is available for use? It's entirely possible that it's not, but...

And if you get this shower curtain booth thing going, document it well, please. A small-scale setup could definitely be beneficial to YT...

[ViPER1313]

I need to paint the Talon (as well as do some body work) - I don't have any experience with this kind of thing. It looks so shitty at the moment that it can't get much worse. If you would like to use the Talon as a test car for your painting skills I will buy the paint and do all the prep work to it. Otherwise I'm gonna rattle bomb that bad boy.

[white_2kgt]

leave the car in the booth and setup some heaters inside it, that will help it cure, and don't forget to soak down the ground/walls just prior to painting.

[HAULN-SS]

Is 30 gallons enouhg to keep up painting a whole car? I always heard you need to have at least a 60 gallon to paint a car, otherwise the motor runs the whole time. What's your compressors HP?

[white_2kgt]

Is 30 gallons enouhg to keep up painting a whole car? I always heard you need to have at least a 60 gallon to paint a car, otherwise the motor runs the whole time. What's your compressors HP?

It's an HVLP gun, 30 gal is plenty.

[jongp3]

I used to work in a body shop, we also did some "garage" painting as well.
First, its alot harder then you think. You will need more then just paint, you need Primer, Base Coat, Clear Coat.. 2 guns usually works best, 1 for primer 1 for base/clear coat. You'll need some gas masks (unless you wanna be to high you can't finish half way through it). There are little things like filters and activators and hardeners, anti-fish eye solution and a few other things im sure i'm forgetting.
The primer and color isn't the hard part (assuming you can do decent body work). The clear is the part that takes the longest to perfect. To do it right, you need about 2-3 coats of clear, the hard part is spraying just enough to where it doesn't run, but if you don't put enough it will fish eye and look like orange peel when your done.
If you do Base coat/clear coat expect to spend 1 day wet sanding and buffing once its painted.

Your other option is a Enamel (sp?) based paint, which is a 1 stage paint job, you shoot the car 1 time and its colored and shiny. The down fall to these types of paints is they last 3-5 years tops if you wax them and keep the car indoors. 1-2 years if the car sits outside and you don't wax it. They also lack, the "metallic" look that most cars have. This type of paint job is what you get for the Macco 400 dollar special.

Some people can naturally paint, and some people need tons of practice and some people can never paint decent no matter how hard you try. I'm terrible at painting, so I did the body work. So unless we have a natural painter among us, expect the first couple of cars to look pretty crappy, or expect to spend alot of time wet sanding to take out the imperfections.

My car needs painting too, so i'll be happy to help anyway i can. I need like 2 weeks worth of body work to get all the dings out

[Goodspeed]

I'd be down for stopping by and helping out/watching....my car doesn't need to be painted but I would like to flat-black my exhaust. I have one can with me, and will go buy more if I can get the exhaust off to paint. If anyone would be willing to lend a hand in that department if this goes down I'd greatly appreciate it!

[PDenbigh]

JongP - thanks for the feedback. I do have two gas masks (complete with dual filters and the works). Also, I was definatley planning on single-staging my car. One-2 coats of primer, then a good coat or two of singlestage black.

Good food for thought though. Those interested please keep posting your interest. Heck, three cars is pleanty to justify it for me.

Chad - you coming over to help!?

[white_2kgt]

Chad - you coming over to help!?

You doing it the night before the wedding? I'm in! I'll bring my gun and mask .

[Dave]

I dunno if I'll have a vehicle to paint, but I'm game for helping out and learning.
I'd totally do single stage here, but that's the rat rod/beater/track car mindset.


Since we're talking about low-buck paintjobs, is anybody else intrigued about the Nason spray can jobs that GRM has been doing lately? I've been thinking about trying that out, maybe this would be a good chance...

[Ryan T]

I'd be in for this. I'm going to paint the jeep OD Green. Also start to get in mind what color paint you want because I can get the paint ordered through the dealership and get it for much cheaper than retail.

[Chris]

I'm not sure if it makes sense for me to trailer my car to H-burg for this, but I am planning on painting it one of these days...

It seems to me you would need a whole weekend just for one car in the paint booth- with drying time and all the coats.

[Ryan T]

Talked to our general manager today and he may be in to paint his truck. Also, we may be able to set up in the corner or the lot at the dealership so we would have room to set up multiple boothes if we needed too....one for primer, one for paint, one for drying, or whatever we needed to do.

[jongp3]

Does Bob Wade have a paint booth we can rent out or use? Honestly painting is 10 times easier in a booth. You don't have to wait for the fog/fumes to dissipate since they are ventilated. Not to mention the flying bugs, nothing worse then a small fly or nat landing on your wet fresh paint, and then the bug tries to save it self by dragging itself an inch down making it 10 times worse.

[Ryan T]

No, we don't have a paint booth in house. We send all our paintwork cars to a local bodyshop on 42 or we have a touchup guy that comes and does little stuff in the parking lot on nice days.

[PDenbigh]

Ryan, that's an interesting idea. Can we get compressed air to the corners of the lot? It would be cool to have multiple booths, but that also means more construction and expense. If someone else wants to build one I'm cool with the idea. Personally though I'm trying to keep it simple.

Thoughts?

[PDenbigh]

Guys,

I'm planning on the weekend of May 10th OR May 17th being the paint weekend for the XR. Is anyone else up for some painting?

[balactm]

i'm down. although, like a few other people, i still need a good 5-6 straight days (8 hrs every day) before my car can be ready for paint... so it depends on the time. but i'm definitely down.