Auto Painting

[james_bond_007]

That's you garage at home?, very jealous.

I see what you mean. From the angle, it DOES look huge, but it is not.

The pictures make it look way bigger that what it is.
The "paint booth" was a 1-car slot. I only had 2' or so on each side of the car. (Remember it was a small Civic)
Not much room behind the car (I had a box fan taped into the rear piece of plastic) , and about 3' in front.
That's why I didn't want to paint it 'back to front', and keep jumping left/right.
The side where the car was being reassembled is a 2-slotter...but I have so much stuff, I only park 1 car there.
The area in between is about as wide (or a bit more) as a 10-speed bike is long.

PS
Thank's for taking time to call your buddy and get a 'very rough' estimate on doing the bumper/fender for me.
It was the best price I had gotten (yes, I understand it was only an estimate and not a guarantee, and may have changed once he saw the car).
But as I mentioned in my PM to you, after I saw the other issues, I needed to just 'do the right thing' and fix all the other things.
...I'm kind of funny that way.
Do it right, or don't do it at all.
(Blame my dad for teaching me that )

[james_bond_007]

Nice work!!
Wish I had the time to do stuff like that.

I don't have a lot of time either. That's why it took me 2-3 months.
Weekends and evenings, when one of the bands I'm in did not have a gig.

I hardly got out to the range this summer and did NO hiking.

As far as the Dillon's, I don't have any....just a single stage in the basement.
Let me know if you find a good deal on a Dillon...

[Great-Kazoo]

I see what you mean. From the angle, it DOES look huge, but it is not.

The pictures make it look way bigger that what it is.
The "paint booth" was a 1-car slot. I only had 2' or so on each side of the car. (Remember it was a small Civic)
Not much room behind the car (I had a box fan taped into the rear piece of plastic) , and about 3' in front.
That's why I didn't want to paint it 'back to front', and keep jumping left/right.
The side where the car was being reassembled is a 2-slotter...but I have so much stuff, I only park 1 car there.
The area in between is about as wide (or a bit more) as a 10-speed bike is long.

PS
Thank's for taking time to call your buddy and get a 'very rough' estimate on doing the bumper/fender for me.
It was the best price I had gotten (yes, I understand it was only an estimate and not a guarantee, and may have changed once he saw the car).
But as I mentioned in my PM to you, after I saw the other issues, I needed to just 'do the right thing' and fix all the other things.
...I'm kind of funny that way.
Do it right, or don't do it at all.
(Blame my dad for teaching me that )

Don't forget, you get what you pay for.. Those small projects can consume more time than one realizes, till it's done. The pride of workmanship and finished project negates everything else. Now hopefully the kid can keep this one intact.

[james_bond_007]

TIP #2 : When you use plastic to cover things from paint, use plastic sold as drop cloths

When I painted the car I covered the tires with clear plastic garbage bags, because the 33gal bags were just the right size.

For the first coat, everything worked great.

On the 2nd coat, all the overspray had dried on the bags from the first coat. When I hit it with paint and air on the 2nd coat, the paint came off of the bags and started flying around in flakes.

I stopped and removed the bags and used paper on the tires, tried to vacuum up all the loose flakes, re-tacked everything, and sprayed again.

Fortunately I caught it before I had dry paint flakes in my new paint.

I found that on the bumper covers (since I did them after the body) that using thin plastic painter's Drop Cloths to cover the saw horses worked well. The type of plastic they are made of seems to make paint adhere, so the second coat caused no undue 'flaking'.

I could have covered the tires with these if I knew about it ahead of time.

[zteknik]

Now did you use any circulating air through your paint booth? Meaning did you have an intake fan or /and exhaust fan?
I heard from a few guys that's what they did in their setups. I'm guessing that would keep unwanted particles from settling on the paint.
After seeing how yours came out I wouldn't mind trying on my own. I never got into the painting aspect-just the wrenching portion.

[james_bond_007]

Now did you use any circulating air through your paint booth? Meaning did you have an intake fan or /and exhaust fan?
I heard from a few guys that's what they did in their setups. I'm guessing that would keep unwanted particles from settling on the paint.
After seeing how yours came out I wouldn't mind trying on my own. I never got into the painting aspect-just the wrenching portion.

I did.

I bought 4 cheap furnace filters and installed them on the front end of the booth (by the hood), and put a box fax on the rear ( by the trunk), to pull air out and through.
I just taped the filters and fan onto the plastic from the outside of the booth, then cut the plastic off, from the inside. I had to make some 'wide feet' for the box fan to stabilize it from falling over when attached to the plastic. The booth 'moves' when the fan is turned on (gets sucked inward). With the fan directly attached, it had a tendency to fall over...so I added feet.

There are 2 camps: a) Fan on front, blowing in, and b) fan on rear, sucking out
(Probably could be a 3rd camp: fans on both ends, but I did not come across this- it was usually one end or the other)
This effects the booth. In (a) the booth will puff up, in (b) it will pull in, due to the partial vacuum.

I chose to to (b) as I felt the fan would be more efficient and under less load if it did not have to try and force air through a filter, directly on its output. Also If I did this, I would have needed one fan per filter, as it would make no sense to put a fan on one filter, and leave the other 3 open. The 3 would then be exhaust ports, not input ports, like the one with the fan. I would get NO airflow, front to back, then. By having the fan in the rear, sucking, I forced all 4 filters to be input ports, and at least defined the direction of airflow from front to back.

An issue with the booth was a 'door'. There are certainly better ways, but I just cut a slot in the side, so I could get in and out, overlapped the plastic, and re-taped it each time I got in an out. Not the easiest or most effective way. It needed to last for 12 in/outs, 1 in and 1 out for each coat of color and again for the clear. I had 3 coats color and 3 coats clear. Didthis for the body, and then repeated again for the plastic stuff (after the body was painted, I pulled the car out, and setup all the bumper covers and trim in the booth...and let in a batch of 'new' dirt).

I did not have a noticeable airflow (did not feel a breeze, but could see overspray being sucked slowly towards the fan), and probably should have used 1-2 more fans. But the booth DID suck in noticeably to where I had to re-tape some spots that came loose.
Likewise any places that were not taped well 'leaked' and brought in unfiltered air.

If you think that you can get a perfect dust-free environment like a real paint boot, you are sadly mistaken. IMHO it mostly provided an area to prevent overspray from getting all over the garage, and limited NEW dust from getting in. You never really got rid of the inherent dust that you 'trapped' into the booth or that you created from each coat's overspray.

The 'filtering' was minimal. In fact, the paint store and most online sources suggested to mist the whole booth down with water prior to painting. This was to try and keep the dirt and the over spray that had atomized, dried and settled on the booth to 'stick' in place, at least during spraying, until the new coat 'flashed'. This is another reason why you need to tack-off 'just' before painting the next coat. Most of what you tack-off is dried overspray that settled, from the last coat.

Another issue comes in on the next coats. Along with paint, you are blowing a lot of air around. The side effect is that you blow unwanted particles of dirt, dried paint, etc. around, as well. They have only one place to stick...onto the fresh paint. So try and minimize their ability to 'move around' by lightly wetting things down. Be careful not to wet (or lightly wet...I chose not to wet) the ceiling. You don't want drops forming and dripping onto your car's next coat.

The other BIG source of dirt is the car itself. You can wash and wet sand it, but as you often want paint to be spayed into edges, grooves, inside wheel well edges, and the bottom of rocker panels, the moving air is also going to loosen dirt particles from those areas, and blow them around....again landing in your wet paint.

This reminds me of another 'tip'

[james_bond_007]

TIP #3 : Sometimes you need to paper and tape areas to keep dirt down

Another source of dirt is the car itself. You can wash and wet sand it, but as you often want paint to be spayed into edges, grooves, inside wheel well edges, and the bottom of rocker panels, the moving air is also going to loosen dirt particles from those areas, and blow them around....again landing in your wet paint.

So sometime you need to do some papering and masking of areas, not to avoid overspray getting on them (you may not care if the inside of the wheel well gets painted or not), but rather to cover them and their dust/dirt, to prevent it from getting blown loose and getting in your paint.

If, when trying to tape off these areas, you have trouble getting paint to stick, it is because of the dirt that is present.

[james_bond_007]

...Now hopefully the kid can keep this one intact.

I'm more practical than that.
I drove it for a few weeks, because I thought it looked kind of 'cool' and to show it off to those that knew I was working on it.

During this time, I worked myself up to be comfortable that once I give it to him, it will NEVER be the same. He is not going to park in any distant spaces to avoid dings, like I did. Being on campus, it will probably get vandalized (keyed etc.) during someone's drunken stooper.

So, while I HOPE he will take care of it...I'm setting the bar low, for my own sanity.

Another thing that contributed to painting it was that he was on the "I need a new car" kick.
I made it clear that he wasn't getting one from me.
Tried to tell him his insurance would increase, he'd have bigger payments, etc.
But as he's in college, I would have gotten less frustrated talking to a 'potato'.

I told him I could spruce up this one (bumper/fender needed paint, headliner had dry-rotted and was hanging in pieces, seats were ripped/split).
That's all I was going to fix.
...until I saw the body damage (some was there when we bought the car new...but as I had not seen the car in a while, I had forgotten about it).
He really didn't do much damage to it since we bought it...so I've got more than 1/2 a chance he'll take care of it.

...and I got rid of his 'I need a new car' bug for well under a grand.
(I only wish I could do that as cheaply with my wife...)

[james_bond_007]

TIP #4 : Do some research online about what you should/should not get at Harbor Freight

Although Harbor Freight products are temptingly low-priced, be careful what you buy.

Some things are fine: Nitrile Gloves, Air Hose, Disposable Air Line Filters, paint suit, masking paper

Other Things are not : Sandpaper, some of the HVLP guns, tape, inline water/oil filter (leaked air)

I originally bought one of the Purple HVLP guns. I was unable to take it apart to clean the oil out of it (everything is oiled to prevent during transit) . When I took it back to the store, they exchanged it "No Questions Asked"; however, I asked the manager to 'test' it before I left. He was unable to disassemble it. He got a stocker (pretty good sized guy) to try...the guy bent the wrench trying to take off the fluid tip. We tried 3-4 others that were on the shelf...all the same. So the manager just gave me the best gun he had at the 'purple gun' price.

The 'chrome' HF gun I had worked pretty well. What I did not like was the fan-adjustment control. Although the pattern went from about 14/16" down to 1", it did so in only about 1/8 of a turn. Thus is wasn't very 'adjustment friendly'. The cup leaked (as attached to the gun) so I added some O-rings and teflon tape where the cup attached to the gun.

I tried to buy/rent/borrow a better gun, such as a Devilbis or SATA, but was not successful.

Sandpaper seemed a commodity item, and reasonable to buy at HF. The 64 grit paper-backed paper just crumbled when I tried it. The wet/dry paper lasted about 15 mins (wet) before turning to much. Contrast that with the 3M Wet/Dry (latex backed) paper that I left in a bucket of water for 2-3 weeks, and it still performed as if brand new.

Tape..tape is tape, right ? Wrong. The clear packing tape I used to seal the booth seemed to let go when the temp cooled off. The 'painting tape' just didn't stick well or prevent bleeding on the edges very well.
Likewise, the blue 3M tape (from Home depot) did a better job, but not as good as the Yellow 'automotive' tape from the paint store.

Also to mask off the rally stripes, I first used some vinyl FINELINE tape from 3M, for a crisp edge.

[james_bond_007]

Because I've gotten a few sarcastic messages from members about my "Self-Proclaiming to be an EXPERT after one job", I'd like to point readers to my statement at the bottom of POST #13

I know that others may disagree, but these will be my opinions.
I wasn't an expert when I started
...and I'm not one now
...but I HAVE LEARNED A LOT.

I'm just trying to pass along some things that I would have done differently, or that I found made a helpful difference.
Maybe they can help you NOT make some of the mistakes I did .

Again, I am NOT an expert...