RPSil13;1464100 said:
to OP please resize your sig,
FLATERIC: in your album are those 2 diff cars, it looks like you painted it white and then red over that, is that correct, if so why so many diff coats (Green, grey, white, red)?
Nope all the same car. I did alot of blending of my bodywork on my car. For instance in some of the other galleries in my profile you can see more clearly that I have, shaved my door handles, smoothed the seam out where the rear spoiler meets the rear fenders, deleted my rear wiper and antenna.
I had the car stripped down to the bare metal for the entire car. Then the body work was sealed with a duplicolor (sherwin williams) sealer. This is to prevent any possible problems or interactions through the various layers of paint. I did 2 solid built up coats of sealer.
Then I did a highbuild primer, and sanded it down. Followed by a high build primer, more sanding. Repeat....until I thought I had the most ideally smooth and imperfection free surface.
I followed that with a bright white color, which is also commonly called and undercoat. The purpose of the undercoat is to influence your color coat in different ways. In my case I wanted the color coat (red in my case) to be as bright as possible. So that it literally looks as if it is glowing in the sunlight. I did 2 layers of undercoat, 1 light coat and then 1 heavy coat.
I then finally sprayed my color coat (red) I did 4 layers of this,
** 1 extremely light pass, almost what I would call a heavy dusting, this gives the following coats something to adhere to and helps prevent sags and runs from happening so easily.
** 2nd pass a light coat but enough for coverage with no undercoat exposed. However this coat is not your final color. In my case the car of course looked fairly pink because of the light red over the white. You want this pass to be nice and even.
** 3rd coat was a medium pass with concentration being on even and moderate spray. You should be near your final color at this point.
** 4th pass, a heavy coverage pass, but no so heavy you start getting runs all over. But this is the pass that you want to achieve your final color result in. At this point it will be easier to finish with an even coverage of color because you 2 previous passes sort of act as a buffer smoothing it all together.
Now I went to a clear coat. Clearcoat for me was the easiest of all the passes once I got the hang of it. I made the mistake of trying to spray it with the same technic and gun settings as my color and undercoat passes. This resulted in a "dry" application of the clear coat which appears to be shiny but not GLOSSY and wet when dry.
Clearcoat also dries MUCH faster than the color coats and must also be sprayed on much thicker and more quickly to overcoming this.
Work in small to medium sized sections. Meaning, you should attempt to complete the whole fender before stopping. the whole hood, etc. You do not want to run out of clearcoat halfway through a panel. This is usually disasterous.
Clearcoat in should for sure be started with a light dusting for the next layers to grip to. No waiting period should be given between the light dusting and the first pass of medium thickness clear. By the time you finish the light dust pass you should be able to go back to the point where you started the dust pass and follow again with the medium pass.
Then give the paint it's recoat period (different for every clearcoat and grade of clearcoat, check instructions) and while still within the recoat period apply your next layer of clear (if you want to, you may be happy with 1 layer of clear).
I did atleast 3 layers of clear over my entire car because I was aware that I would be doing alot of wet sanding to further smooth the final finish. You don't want to have so little clear that you sand through you clear into your color coat at the finishing stage.
If you miss the recoat period for any steps of sealer/primer/paint you may have to wait 4 days and sand again before continuing. This sucks and if you try to ignore that you missed the recoat period and paint over anyways, it's not gonna stick in the long run. Meaning after a few months of nice summer days, cool evenings you paint will start to seperate at the layers where the recoat period was ignored. Could take a year, could take a week, but it WILL be way more work for you then over now. You can't be lazy and skip anything.
******** My absolute biggest tip for a smooth artifact free surface is to get yourself a "paint snake", it's a section of hose about twice the thickness of a regular air hose that is filled with a dissicant (sp?). It removes all moisture from the air as it passes through before your gun. The air must be absolutey positively dry before it hits your gun. If the air has the slightest moisture in it it will cause tons of problems. Fisheye's, craters, blobs in clearcoat. All of which are a nightmare to try to fix AFTER your done.
If while you are painting, a hair, fuzzy bit, fleck or whatever lands on the wet paint. DO NOT TRY TO PICK IT OFF, SMEAR IT, TOUCH IT OR ANYTHING. Leave it be. no matter how bad it looks now it will look much worse everytime if you try to "save" the part or "fix" the fuzzy thing. It will be much easier to correct towards the end of the recoat period when the paint is more set. Or even after you are done depending. I got this advice a few times, and still yet, I thought, well, I can tweeze this now and it will save me trying to in a bit. If you tweeze or correct anything there is going to be this big crater left behind that more than likely will be always there right through until the last clearcoat. Leave it, don't do it, I know your thinking about, just don't.
As you can see I painted in my garage, a far less then ideal location for dust and contaminents. However I minimized issues by spraying down my floor about 1/2 hour before paint with a mineraloil and water mix solution. Not really even enough to make it slippery or wet, just to moisten it. The mineral oil basically evaporates after a few days but works well to catch and hold any dust and prevents you from kicking up dust (or dried paint) from the floor with your feet or the airblast from the spray gun.
I sprayed my car in my heated garage in the wintertime when the outside temperature was -38c. The air was VERY dry and this helped more than I though at the time because when I tried to do some parts again near spring I noticed how much humidity affects the job.
Painting a color like black is both easier and harder in some ways. No undercoat to worry about, easier to match, but far better at showing through any lazy mistakes or steps you skipped over previously. Black shows imperfections better than any color.
Metallics are also hard to paint, hard to keep your color consistant and even harder to match to old colors that have more than likely faded or discolored in the sun.
Alot of poeple mix their clear and color coats together and paint them in one go. I have no experience doing this myself. But I do think a seperate color and clear coat makes the final effect "pop" more and look deeper and "wetter".
When buying your paint, be sure to by the correct reducer for the time of year and temperatures your painting under. Slow, medium and fast are the common designations and they help make your life easier by keeping the paint workable for a longer period of time in your conditions without over extending your dry times.
Hmm, if I can think of any other tips I will post em up too.
Paint is all about patience and being clean and consistent.
It took me 2 months to prep my car and less than 3 days to paint it. Then about 2 weeks of wet sanding and polishing. But I am of the mindset to do it right, or you'll be doing it again later. Or everytime you look at it, it will bug you just that little bit that you didn't take that extra 20 minutes to sand a little more and smooth that issue out, or whatever you halfassed.
Good luck!, It's super satisfying.
