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Last Sunday was unseasonably warm here in NC and the rain stopped, for the first day in a week. I had been doing Christmas duty with visiting family but everyone split on Sunday to visit friends. I had a shop day to myself! I had already started on a major weight loss program, which I'm not finished with yet. I had planned on painting the car in the spring, as the 3 year old orange paint job was getting pretty tatty. The track life is tough on paint jobs.
The previous job was done with regular Dupont 2K urethane paint. That stuff is getting really expensive, like $300 to $500 a gallon. This time I went for the budget job. Let me introduce: Rustoleum oil based enamel. $9 a quart. I bought 2 quarts just to make sure. And $18 of acetone to thin it with.
At 10 in the morning I started. Pulled the car out of the shop. Thorough wash down with Dawn detergent. One of the harder jobs was peeling off all the decals and advertising signage. Then I scuffed the entire area to be painted with 220 grit paper on a random orbital sander. Followed with a pass of 400 grit with water, i.e. wet sanding. Then another soapy wash, followed by a clean up pass with Dupont pre-prep, which removes sanding sludge. It was around 2 o'clock. The skies were getting cloudy again so I pulled the car back into the shop and raised it a few feet on my lift. My son and I spent about 2 hours masking. Newspaper is not recommended for a nice job. It throws off too much clag. But good enough for my $9 job. By 4 o'clock I was shooting paint, using my small touch up gun. The nozzle was just a tad small for enamel, even reduced with acetone. It was about the same as shooting from a rattle can. It took me well over an hour to shoot the car. Done by dinner time! One quart did the job. $9 in paint. Just don't ask my wife about the compressor, the spray gun, the acetone, the lift, the shop
It is by no means a perfect job. The coverage is very good but there is a lot of orange peel, dust, and the occasional bug. Unlike urethane, enamel cannot be sanded and buffed after the paint is applied. But it will look very good from 10 feet away and that is good enough for me and my track car. Note: the orange hood in the photos is going to be replaced as part of my weight loss program.
Agreed on materials costs.
Doing an 86 944T now and just the base color is $150/qt.
These days, 2-part epoxy is currently best for corrosion and water permeation prevention and just that will set you back a few hundred.
All materials, from the sandpaper, masking materials, primers, paint, clear, etc., etc., is $1500 easy.
That said, I am very biased towards single stage paints, enamel and synthetic urethanes, especially for track car. It's more easily repaired and matched (metallics required blending).
Under the BASF banner of paints is an inexpensive brand LIMCO.
Pretty darned high quality stuff for the price.
Comes in Alkyd, Acrylic Enamel and Synthetic Urethane as Limco 1-2-3.
If staying with basic colors like white, black, it's only $25-30 a quart, mixes 4:1:1, so 1 qt get you 1.5 qts of sprayable material wit the reducer and hardener.
I did an SP2 race car for my son that won best prepared race car at the 2015 MG Region PCA race at NOLA using all Limco products, so you don't have to spend a ton to achieve a good result.
In body and paint, quality and longevity are in the preparation.
I can easily have multiple days just in a single fender.....LOL...!
Have you wipe tested that oil based paint with gasoline or other fluids on a rag...?
Hopefully your $$ is in safety and mechanical reliability and maintenance.
It has a full cage, NASCAR style seat, fire suppression system, 6 point harness, everything mechanical rebuilt, Spec944 suspension. So yes, I did all the safety and reliability stuff first. Which is the way it should be.
As you can see from my website, I've done some high end paint jobs. That said, these jobs represent some big bucks and a lot of sweat equity. At the other end of the scale, someone could buy some sanding paper and a 1/2 dozen cans of Rustoleum enamel "rattle can" paint and probably do a similar low budget job in their driveway. It would be a "10 footer" but if you've currently got a car with the clear coat flaking off like a bad sunburn, this would be a modest improvement, for maybe a $100 all in. I actually think Maaco would do a better job because at least they paint in a booth.
When you run a track car, you have to ask, am I ready to stuff it into a little ball? From a safety standpoint, my answer is yes, although lets just say a large ball about the size of my cage! But financially, I could handle the loss. Having a high end paint job just doesn't make much sense to me on a track car or race car. Unless you have a wealthy sponsor.
There are low cost catalyzed urethane based paints out there. I'm familiar with Nason and other posters mentioned good options. They are certainly better than enamel from a durability standpoint. My problem with these is that there are chemicals involved that are not good for ones health. Google Isocyanate. So if you are going to shoot those paints you need to follow the health and safety rules rigorously and that means respirators that fit perfectly with the proper fresh cartridges. And when you shoot urethane, everyone on your block will be aware of the odor. It's not a skunk bad odor but if you tent your garage with plastic and shoot your car, it would be best to send the wife and the kids to the mother in law for the weekend, because the whole house will reek for a while. If you live in California, men in HazMat suits will probably be rappelling from black helicopters into your back yard to shut down your illegal operation
So "$9 Paint Job" was a little bit of click bait. It cost more than that and is an example of "you get what you pay for". There might be worse paint jobs out there but this one is definitely near the bottom of the scale. But for a guy on a budget this might be just the ticket.
The blue looks great! FWIW, you can also get decent results using a foam roller instead of spraying. I did the white on this car that way, diluted ~50% w/acetone.
It has a full cage, NASCAR style seat, fire suppression system, 6 point harness, everything mechanical rebuilt, Spec944 suspension. So yes, I did all the safety and reliability stuff first. Which is the way it should be.
As you can see from my website, I've done some high end paint jobs. That said, these jobs represent some big bucks and a lot of sweat equity.
Hey Harvey, rereading my own post, I'm glad you didn't take offence...., not intended.
It's just that I did in fact click on your garage link before I posted and there I found the header - 'Engineered Craftmanship,Performance, and Design' (btw, there are 2 s's in craftsmanship... ) so I found it ironic that you'd post a paint job with newspaper and home interior masking tape...
You are definitely correct in warning of the hazards of some of paint and body materials......some of the base coat products will even choke you just opening the gallon can.
Another plus in the column for epoxy primer, to the best of my knowledge, no isocyanates. I use this as my foundation for reasons mentioned in first post after all metal hammer and dolly work. Epoxy also allows for filler application right over itself without need for breaking the surface with rough grit down to metal as was traditionally accepted. I then proceed to 1-2 more coats of epoxy as it does build and is excellent at keeping intersections of varying finishes from causing problems in the top coat. I do my final spray right over this stage of epoxy after blocking with 600 wet as it serves as a sealer which negates the need for a 2k product just to seal, thus making another dangerous product obsolete.
Personally, I'm not a heavy user of paint products...., more that the average Joe but I'm not in the body business or anything like that. I only use a 3M respirator, generally spray small quantities at a time (3-6oz as all of my work is panel by panel) and I use spray equipment that puts high percentage of material on my work piece instead of the atmosphere....guns by Accuspray, Sharpe and C.A.T.
12-29-2015, 09:20 PM
$9 Paint Job
