From what i've found, the regular 3M cotton masks (like the ones the Japanese were using for the SARS outbreak) work great for the dusting side, but MAKE SURE you get charcoal canister ones (probably like the one described above) for the painting.. . trust me, you can't even breathe without it, and that's a bad thing (tm).

 

i painted my car myself also with single stage which means the clear is in the paint not on top. personaly i wouldnt go single stage again because it needs to be waxed quite often otherwise my car turns a flat red. go get a nice d/a sander and start out with a rougher sand paper and work your way up to around a 600 grit and it wont leave scratches when you paint over it. Also WonkoTheSane did you thin the primer down before you primed your car so it would shoot out of the gun because you were saying it was to thick to spray?

 

The primer was thinned properly (mine was a 3:1:1 mixture), but remember, it is supposed to be thicker than normal paint. The Primer gun has a slightly larger hole, plus, primer dries a tad quicker, so it has a tendancy to build up in or around the nozzel.. You can run it through a regular gun, but the primer gun just makes your life a lot easier, especially for the 18 bucks or whatever it is it costs

 

if your going to paint it in your garage make shure you get like a hose or something and like do a mist all around your parts like wetting everything but not soaking it just putting a layer of water so that the paint doesnt stick to any "important" things....
TwEaK

 

18 bucks isnt bad i will keep that in mind the next time i paint my car. yeah also wet the floor of your shop when you're painting to prevent dust from flying around and getting onto the freshly painted items

 

What we did was went to a surplus store (surplus city is the name of one around me), and bought a 100X10' section of plastic for 10 bucks or so, perfect drapes for anything i felt was important or a source of dust..

Good suggestion with the wetting the floor down thing, I forgot to mention that

 

yeah i found out masks are a good idea. i painted a bumper in my closed garage, too many damn bugs in florida to open it up, for 3 hours without a mask..... when i was done my nostrils were filled with GIANT white boogers, and i think i killed most of my brain....

 

do i need to get a diff kinda of primer for my bumper? i got a sw primer for bare metal for the hood, fenders, but im geussing i wont be able to use this on the front bumper cause its plastic.

 

damn i wanna paint something...i can't wait till i get my compressor and toosl :p...
ps: take pics =D

 

dude take alot of pics for us guys who are thinking about doing this.

maybe u make a write up

maybe the force be with you

 

dude! your car looked damn nice in red with the old wheels

Good luck, I'm glad you're doing it right.

you don't need to ubersand everything.. the bodyshop that did the work on my car sanded but didn't go down to the primer anywhere except where it had been peeling.

 

wonko, i looked for a primer gun but i couldnt find one were did you pick yours up?

 

Russ - I got mine at a place called Grizzly Industrial. You can check it out online ( www.grizzly.com ), or the phone number is 1800-523-4777. The part number is H3254, and they list the price as 9.95, so I overestimated a bit... It works well, though

And no, I don't know this stuff off the top of my head, but I do have a catalogue here

Like I said earlier, they're not required, but they make your job a HELLUVA lot easier, and you can shoot thicker primer than if you didn't have one.. lemme know if you have any other questions.

Their other air tools are pretty good (and fairly cheap!), I used their guns and such to paint my car...

edit: Here's a link: http://www.grizzly.com/products/item...emnumber=H3254

 

looks good, what are the pros/cons to sanding all the way down to the metal? i heard it gives a better deeper look to the paint is that true?

 

theres no turning back now!





60-120-220 thats the sand paper i used. in that order with an electric sander. I need to go pickup a fitting for my hvlp gun now... ill post more pics when i get back. one quick question...theres alot of dust left on the fenders/hood from sanding what should i use to get it off? or doesnt it matter?

 

i almost forgot...
i also picked up some bling bling for the engine bay once i get her back together.

 

It's definately important to get it all off, I used a mixture of mild detergent (dawn), and water, first, then washed it off with normal water, then dried it thouroghly.. The key is that I did this in Febuary, when the relative humidity was ~ 15%... Yours is now ~80%, so make sure you run some of the (acetate?) "metal rust remover" style solution over it, there's going to be microrust on it since the metal has been exposed to our overly humid PA air... It's cheap, you can pick it up at your paint store, I forgot the name of it,just ask one of the guys at the store, they'll know what i'm talking about. Your exposed metal will thank you.

 

dawn and metal rust remover...gotcha. its so damn humid here right now...last week it was nice but right now it just sucks...horrible timing.

 

woot! keep up the good work...can't wait to see it fully painted =)

 

*update* after dealing with a few spray guns. and trial and failure ive come to finally get my fenders and hood in primer.



ill post more tomorrow and what i screwed up so nobody else has too. im just too tired to write i worked 12hours today then i came home and painted. so im gunna get a shower and hit the sack


***one more thing, spraying and very very easy once you get the right gun. its prep thats a bitch.***

 

That was said all throughout it Remember: Every layer of paint you put down is going to need prepped for the next one. So make sure you prep the primer just as well as you did the old paint before you slap down the top coat.

 

ill take some some 260grit to the primer and get her nice and smooth then put down a nice basecoat

 

*Drool* I wish I had a garage or somewhere to paint next year... I don't think my roommate will let me turn the living room into a paint booth... plus it'd be hard to get the car in there. :-)

I'm looking forward to seeing the results, since my car is currently grey (repainted top half, factory lower half) and looks... like crap. I'd love a beautiful metallic black (or maybe not even metallic - just gloss black).

Best of luck with the painting. I've done some limited computer case painting, and it's very similar - royal pain in the rear to prepare.

-=Russ=-

 

Im curiouse to what gun you went with?

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...temnumber=7901 i'm using that for the primer. it was on sale at the time for $30. sprays good and the tip doesnt clog from the thicker primer.