So im thinking about painting my car and have a couple questions. 1 Can anyone give me a step by step on paint? 2 How much time does it take? I dont want a show paint job just a dd paint. There maybe more to come. Thanks

 

couple things, Lars has a paint paper and I recommend you email him for it. Also, the paint and body guys congregate on the paint and body forum here.

Now, how long does it take... Actually shooting the paint, a "scuff and squirt" could be done in a day. You can ask Macco how long that takes.

HOWEVER, you say this is a daily driver but it is still a Corvette and it will still be on display wherever you drive it. People will look at it and the paint is all that most people see and understand.

My philosophy when I painted my car was this: Aim for perfect, knowing that I will end up somewhere below that.

What condition is your body and paint now, any cracks, peeling panel damage? First, it is recommended to remove anything that you don't want painted and strip ALL the old paint off and start fresh.Next, make any repairs to the body using fiberglass and fillers. Then seal it and start priming and sanding it off and then prime and sand it off and so on using a guide coat between to show your low spots and nicks. This is the part that takes the most time and therefore money if you pay someone. I did all the body work myself and took it to a shop to shoot the final base coat clear coat. The whole thing cost about $2k. If I had taken it somewhere it would have been $12k

Get the best paint job you can.

 

Hi,
I think the length of time it takes depends on how much preparation you're going to do.
Do you have auto painting experience?
Will this be a learning process?
How much paint is on the car? Are you going to strip it?
Do you know what you're going to find under there?
Are you going to repair what you find under there?
Are you going to use primer and sealer coats?
Will it be a color change?
Do you have equipment and a place to paint? Will you need to rig up a paint booth in your garage or out side?
Do you have the safety equipment you'll need to wear?
From reading posts about home paint jobs it seems that very often the length of time estimated is found to be far too little once the old paint is coming off and the previous work done or not done on the body becomes more obvious.
Since paint has become pretty expensive it might not be a good idea to spray it on a poorly prepared body which might not have the result you're looking for.
Some things for you to think about.
Regards,
Alan

 

Besides the forum, I got a lot of good info out of "How to Paint Your Car on a Budget" subtitled "Paint your own car at Home, in your Garage". cartechbooks.com. One of their examples is a 67 coupe.

 

I never want to discourage someone from doing something their self just make sure that you have a good understanding with whats involved. Corvettes are really a unique car with all their curves making body work a little more challenging than most cars. When you sand a metal car you for the most part stop removing material once you hit metal but not with fiberglass it keeps going into the body and its very easy to remove the edges.
Some colors take more skill to apply. Getting metallic paint to lay even is more difficult than solid colors. My best advise to you right now is to read a book or two on painting and do internet searches here on CF and google it.

 

You can probably do a decent job of this if you own or can rent/borrow/improvise these things: You will NEED an air compressor which has enough CFM and storage to stay ahead of whatever tools/spray gun you end up using. You will NEED a capable HVLP primer gun, a decent or better HVLP color gun, a DA sander, some Durablock type sanding blocks,and about 6 months of off the road time to get the car ready for paint. You will NEED great attention to detail, a willingness to learn a new trade as you go through the steps required to repair your body, and a "never compromise, never quit" attitude about seeing the job through to completion. You will NEED to research the best techniques to strip, repair the body, apply whatever primers/fillers/surfacers that might be needed and determine for yourself which paint system is correct for your application. You will NEED at least 200 man hours of free time to get the car through a complete strip/repair/repaint/polish job. You PROBABLY will spend between $1000 and $2000 on all the materials, abrasives, and sundry other stuff you will require to do this right.

Still interested??? End this thread and come over to the "Paint and Body" section here... let's get started!

 

Good tip. Never visited that site before

 

Excellent tip! The guys on that section helped me through a touch up that was driving me crazy. Pretty much invisible now.

 

The scope if the project is incomprehensible if you have never done it before especially if it is going to be a color change. The majority of the work is very monotonous. Even now, years later I cringe when I hear a woman with an emery board. There is so much sanding, it is dirty and boring. For me it was real hard to stay motivated to finish it. I like things I can finish in a day or two, or maybe a couple weekends.

This is not that job. Not if you are going to remove all the glass, emblems, hardware and interior. Then Paint the jambs, hinges, hood channels, light bezels all separate.

The reason I wanted to do this job myself was because I could not afford $8k-$12k for a professional job. I thought that was outrageous! Now I think it is simply a fair price. 200 hours is a kind estimate of man hours. 196 of those hours is spent blocking and sanding. Then, after all the brutal labor, the final actual painting comes down to equipment and skill.

We have all seen that guy in the primer Nova driving around... Its not because they like grey, its because they hate sanding.

 

I custom painted vans half a life ago, completing about 400 vehicles some of which were shown in Kingdome auto shows in Seattle. I did lots of pearl, effects, metalflakes, etc.

A couple of tips about painting.

1. Be prepared for a long and dirty job as other posts have mentioned.
2. Fiberglass repair and primer layup/sanding is all-important. In order for the job to be high quality, the surface it's going on must be glass smooth. Any defects you feel or see on the substrate prior to final coat will stand out like a sore thumb. Sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, prime and on and on. No short cuts.
3. If you are going to do the final coat yourself do LOTS of test panels, especially if the topcoat is metallic or pearl, etc. This will get you up the learning curve. Solid topcoats are easier.
4. When painting the topcoat, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Make a tent to spray in or something. Lots of ventilation, screen out everything because one fly landing on the hood will ruin it.
5. Do lots of research in this forum on paint prep and application.
6. Pay attention to weather. warm dry conditions are best, high humidity can produce an effect called 'blooming' which is a cloudy topcoat appearance.
87 Good luck - if you do it right you'll feel immensely proud.

Hope this helps,

Phil

 

Painting a car is a funny thing. You hear some people say that their buddy painted their car for them for nothing but a couple of beers (and it looks pretty good to you), and then someone else says they spent $20,000 on their paint job.

There's a difference, really, between bodywork and paint. As was said earlier, you can scuff up a car, mask it, prime it and paint it in a day. That's not any bodywork at all, though. Body work can take days, weeks, or months.

Painting, to me, is two things. Not putting it on so wet that it runs, or too dry that it's orange peely (ripply like the surface of an orange). If you can figure out how to do that, you're going to have a good paint job. Sadly, there's a lot that determines this. The atmosphere itself, how thin you mix the paint, the controls on the gun (usually three or four), and your technique. They all have to be close to perfect to even get a decent paint job! A show car will usually have the paint job color sanded and buffed to a high gloss. Those that are painting a daily driver that they're not too concerned about aren't going to want to take the time to do that. This makes getting the paint job half decent right out of the gun even more important than if you were painting a show car in a way. Maddening, I know! But possible.

Again, though, a best-of-show winning paint job isn't going to amount to much if it's sprayed down over a wavy, cracked body with old paint chips or scratches under it. Just remember, you can spend a lot of time and get a pretty nice job in the end, or not much time and have a mediocre (or down right bad) job. It's only possible to regret one of those.

Best of luck!

Dan

 

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