Painting the my SL2 a different color...

[PlasticCarsRock]

Originally Posted by Mark T.

That would work too, but the easiest, and best way would be to mount them back on the car.

Ok. But how can I be sure to get all the edges? Particularly the sides of the hood, the seams between panels, edges of the trunk, etc?

[Mark T.]

Mask off the jamb's and paint them off the car, unmask, assemble, then paint the rest of the panels.

[Bill Murray]

FWIW when my Sat got punted by a semi, I wound up replacing the trunk/spoiler, rear bumper, and left quarter panel. These were dark green colored panels on a white car.

I put the panels on myself and had the entire car painted by MAACO for 300 bucks figuring how much money is justified on a 2000 dollar car? Contrary to my low expectations, the car turned out looking very nice.
This price included sanding the whole car and applying a base white and clear coat. The paint used was what they put on delivery trucks per the MAACO guy. It's like a construction site, they have a crew of Hispanics who work like demons probably for low wages but not necessarily poor quality labor.

After a year and being outside all winter, it still looks quite good. I'm sure every MAACO location is different, but I had a good outcome.

[PlasticCarsRock]

Originally Posted by Mark T.

Mask off the jamb's and paint them off the car, unmask, assemble, then paint the rest of the panels.

Ok. I give in--I'll do the final painting on the car. Is it really necessary to mask them, though--does over-spray really matter since I'll be putting at least three coats of the same color, over it? (I'm not saying I won't do it--I'm just curious what the reason is...)

I checked into the spray gun. Apparently it's not actually a HVLP gun, it's just a standard siphon spray gun. The brand is Universal Tools (made in Florida). It's almost 20 years old, but at the time, it was not a cheap or low-quality gun (well over $100 when you could get a cheap one for around $15).

I figured, in order to reduce dust as much as possible, I'm going to make a temporary outdoor structure, rather than doing it in my garage (too much dust, and not enough ventilation to spray the whole thing at once--too much paint settling, and too much to breath, even with a good respirator, which I have). It'll be something simple--wooden frame, with clear plastic over it. For ventilation, I figured I could use a squirl-cage blower with some sort of filter--will a furnace filter be good enough for what I'm doing, or do I need something better? This will be blowing in (not in the direction of the painting, though), which will keep the inside at a higher pressure than outside, to prevent other stuff from entering at the seams. Does this sound like a good idea?

[Signmaster]

Originally Posted by PlasticCarsRock

For ventilation, I figured I could use a squirl-cage blower with some sort of filter--will a furnace filter be good enough for what I'm doing, or do I need something better? This will be blowing in (not in the direction of the painting, though), which will keep the inside at a higher pressure than outside, to prevent other stuff from entering at the seams. Does this sound like a good idea?

Flip your air flow. All the big booths I've seen use filtered intakes, and use the blower at the exhaust side. Most have a large filter area, so you won't really pull a vacuum on the enclosure. Blowing the air out draws any overspray towards the blower. By blowing it in it will become turbulent and depending on the locations will loiter in the booth longer.

Often the intake side is fairly low, and the exhaust side higher. I think the main idea is to keep a flow path that passes the spray area. Spray starting at the intake side and work towards the exhaust side.

[PlasticCarsRock]

Originally Posted by Signmaster

Flip your air flow. All the big booths I've seen use filtered intakes, and use the blower at the exhaust side. Most have a large filter area, so you won't really pull a vacuum on the enclosure. Blowing the air out draws any overspray towards the blower. By blowing it in it will become turbulent and depending on the locations will loiter in the booth longer.

Often the intake side is fairly low, and the exhaust side higher. I think the main idea is to keep a flow path that passes the spray area. Spray starting at the intake side and work towards the exhaust side.

Thanks for the suggestion. Because my temporary "booth" will not be perfectly air tight, no matter how well I build it, I'll need to have both an intake and exhaust fan, then, right? Otherwise, the air would come in through the seams, and around the bottom, rather than through a filter.


I've used this (non-HVLP) gun in the past with decent results; is there any reason that I should get an HVLP gun, or should I just use the high pressure gun I have? I got the high pressure gun because I was told that an HVLP gun would spray too much paint into the air, making it difficult to use without good ventilation (and wasting paint), however, after doing some research it seems that a HVLP gun actually sprays less into the air than what I have. Which is true?

[Mark T.]

The HVLP has much less over spray than a High Pressure gun.
If you are going to get another gun, I recommend Iwata's lower end series
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...d=220546994973

You will need to mask off the jamb's because you only have a certain amount of re-coat time for the next layer of paint or clear.
I would base and clear the jambs first, mask them off, then paint the body.

[madpogue]

Why paint the jambs at all? I don't think the OP is intending to change the color of any part of the spaceframe.

[Mark T.]

I'm talking about the jamb's of the fenders. The parts that bolt under the hood/truck. You won't get good coverage on those parts with it all bolted up.

[cmpcpro]

If Macco did a 2 stage paint job for $300, I would think that would be just fine. What you want to stay away from is those single stage jobs, those are horrible. We used to get those on the cheap $1k cars we would sell on our lot and if you didn't leave them in the first night after they would deliver the car the moisture from the sky would stay on the paint no matter what you did.. Plus about 3 months down the road those paint jobs would just look horrible..

[Signmaster]

Originally Posted by PlasticCarsRock

Thanks for the suggestion. Because my temporary "booth" will not be perfectly air tight, no matter how well I build it, I'll need to have both an intake and exhaust fan, then, right? Otherwise, the air would come in through the seams, and around the bottom, rather than through a filter.

I would just use the exhaust fan myself. Since you need filters on the intake side, no sense in putting a fan right where it might propel anything that gets through those filters onto the car surface.

Being that you can't seal the temporary booth up much, I would try to make your filter surface fairly large. That should make the filter panel the area of least resistance and minimize air pulled in from other areas.

[Mark T.]

Macco $300 paint jobs are for 1 stage Enamel paint.