SHOW ME HOW TO PAINT A CAR

[SpiderJim]

Just so you know I'm into about $400 for pre-paint prep materials and just dumped another $450 today for the finish coat products which includes the pearl stuff. I stripped my car of all exterior and interior parts. Only thing left in is the gear lever and pedals. Si in an hour I'm meeting my painter who will shoot the car in his booth for another $200. So after several weeks of prep the day as arrived... I hope?. Cheers and best of luck

[Nick]

It cost us about $1000 to paint my Fiat. $500 of that was a high capacity air compressor that my dad wanted anyway, and was just waiting for an excuse to get it, so this worked out well. (He's restoring a '70 Cutlass that he's going to paint, so it'll come in handy there for sure too) One huge thing that I can suggest would be to get a paint booth to paint it. My car came out looking good, but up close it's a little rough. We put painters plastic all around it to make a mock paint booth in our garage, but we didn't make a ceiling, and during the clear coat application a lot of dust particles and a couple spiders fell onto the car (now there's one or two spiders on my spider) They've very small though, hard to notice, and I haven't buffed it yet so they may come out. If we had a ceiling or a proper booth it would've prevented this though. Also a proper booth is important because of the lighting. One issue we had was that we couldn't see very well what we'd painted and what we hadn't, or how thick the paint was applied. So if you're going to paint it in your barn, make sure you seal the entire area, with a ceiling, and get plenty of lighting. We also had a fan running to help suck air out of it and try to keep it relatively clean. For a first attempt it turned out well I think.

[SpiderJim]

Show car finishes are done by doing the base, then a couple or more coats of clear. Wait a week then wet sand with at least 800 plus grit being careful on the edges. This sequence will hopefully get your dust, runs and in your case baby spiders out of the clear coat then take it to a paint booth and apply another several coats of clear. Wait another couple of weeks then wet sand again with 1500 grit and finer then polish with buffer. This was advised to me by a super expensive painter who does the mega thousands of dollar paint jobs for collectors around here. It is tedious but well worth it as my finish is really looking like glass and I'm almost ready for the buffing stage then assembly.

[Nick]

Show car finishes are done by doing the base, then a couple or more coats of clear. Wait a week then wet sand with at least 800 plus grit being careful on the edges. This sequence will hopefully get your dust, runs and in your case baby spiders out of the clear coat then take it to a paint booth and apply another several coats of clear. Wait another couple of weeks then wet sand again with 1500 grit and finer then polish with buffer. This was advised to me by a super expensive painter who does the mega thousands of dollar paint jobs for collectors around here. It is tedious but well worth it as my finish is really looking like glass and I'm almost ready for the buffing stage then assembly.

Wow.. I thought you only had to buff once after you were done with the original clear coat layers. It's been about 8 months since I've painted my Fiat and I haven't buffed it yet. I hope I can still buff it with good results.

[pope]

What Nick is mentioning is called a FLOW COAT, and yes, the high end guys do it. The weekend painter usually just puts on a few extra coats of clear at paint time so he can sand a little deeper and polish nicely without having to re-apply clear.