Ok, I know that some of yall do your own body work/paint ranging from track quality to show quality. I need some general advice and knowledge from you.

First a little about me and my situation:
I'm 24, live in Atlanta and work as an Engineer.
I've owned a 91/88 GMC/Chevy 1500 since I was 17 and bought my 968 two years ago. I bought a house a little over a year ago and have been building myself a 2 car garage for the last 8 months. I do all my own work on my cars and my house unless it is just something I can't do because I lack the equipment or time. I LOVE starting projects, however I have a hard time wrapping them up because I get distracted or want something PERFECT. (hence the 8 month long garage project).

Here is were you come in. I don't know how do to body work or paint cars. I know the general idea but have no practice in it. My truck needs a paint job and some minor dent/ding removal. It doesn't have to be perfect and I don't care if it takes me a year to finish it. I would probably do one panel/piece at a time (primer only at first) and really take my time with it. Then after everything is primed I'd look into doing the whole paint job in a weekend.

I need to know the proper procedure and tools required to do it.
Body work: most of what i have could be fixed by a paintless dent removal guy. should I bother? what tools would I need?
Prep: Do I need to take it down to bare metal or just scuff up the factory paint? what is the best tool? I have a hand held random orbit (5"), what grit paper is best?
Prime: Can I get away with rattle can primer? what Brand? I'd rather not invest in the expensive paint gun until I know that I could pull off this paint job and others down the road.
Sand: What process should I use for block sanding, wet sanding, sand paper grits.

At this point I'd be happy with getting it all primed and worry about the best gun/paint later.

Sorry for the novel, thanks for your help.

-A

 

Its the initial set-up that costs. Body work requires a slew of grits ranging from 80 to 1200! Theres many sanders as well for each process although maybe you can get by with a lot of hand sanding. A LOT of paint systems (PPG, Dupont, Matrix) are not compatible with rattle can paints. But you may get lucky. How long do you plan on driving the truck with primer?

Dings and dongs along the body require different tools. Theres no real way to say which youll need without seeing the damage. You shouldnt take it down to metal unless you really have some bucks. Its a total different story when you are painting a car from metal. Youd need an epoxy primer/surfacer/buliding primer/sealer/etc. and then you start with color! So youcan see where the money goes. If you are just starting out with painting and bodywork, it would be a real good estimate to say youll spend 600-800 in just the paint/chemicals and other things necessary to lay paint. With body work youre probably looking at around 100-200 dollars depending.

Theres alot of information you need that cant be given here. You really need to visit a paint specific forum to get these answers.

Visit http://www.leopardsystems.com/paintucationforum/

Thats all they discuss there....tools, paints, procedures, tricks and tips to save you money.

Good Luck!

 

if you just want to sand areas to be repainted, that orbital sander will do fine. start with 80 grit, then go to 180. if you wanna make sure its "smooth" enough, use 360. and spray can primer is fine, not the best, but it will work.
and unless you're using a light color, or you have bare metal, you dont need to prime the whole thing.

im currently an autobody student, so i kinda know what im talking about. lol

 

just have someone else do it! someone who is good at it.

 

See that's the thing, I HATE having other people do work on my cars. I hate paying for it and I generally think that people do shoddy work. It might take me longer, and maybe it doesn't turn out perfect, but I prefer knowing that I did the work. I figured doing this on my crappy truck would be a good learning experience. I'm not looking for a great paint job on this project. Hell, I'd be happy running primer for a year or two since it is just my run around truck.

Then once I have the experience and proper equipment I won't have to pay for future work on future cars. I like being self sufficient.

 

I empathize with wanting to do it yourself. Nothing but tragedy has happened, whenever I let shops even look at my car, from their incompetence.

I find this helpful for me, too. Previous owner used too high of a grit on my car, and ruined the new paint job they did, ugh! You can see the swirlies below it. Beautiful from the doors back, butt ugly forward, lol.

 

You are contradicting yourself. You like things perfect, but it doesn't have to be perfect.
Body work and painting is a skill that is best learned from someone that knows what they are doing. You can kill a lot of time and $$ and drive yourself nuts trying to learn and do this on your own just with pointers on the internet. You can read read read but I tink its better to have someone over your shoulders on this one.


Note** Modern urethane paints have isocynates in them and require supplied air hoods so that the nasty stuff doesn't go in your lungs or enter your system through your eyes, accumulate in your body and stay there forever.

 

this will buff out with the right buffing compound.

 

Go to a tech school and learn the body work on a short program. If its anything like what my dad did, you'll learn everything from dent removal or welding patches and finishing panels. Then you can learn painting too, but I don't know if you'd need to go to a tech school for that. If you've got a year to take for it, then tech would be perfect. If not, then read up on DIY books and practice technique like a mad man.

I'm a perfectionist too btw.

 

honestly, you don't want to go anywhere near these chemicals, even with masks and filters you always end up breathing some of it and it's really bad for you. I know long time paint guys who get light headed after comming out of a paint booth even with the respirator (this is after he already had brain cancer.) maybe he's addicted to it?

 

Thats called sensitized. The stuff builds up in you body. After a while what your body could handle it can't anymore.