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Introduction & History
Basically, this process is about painting a car using a roller. The basic steps include: - Preparing the car, and scratching the surface with some 400 grit (or so) paper or a scuff pad to prepare for paint
- Thinning and applying paint (various paints and thinners can be used)
- Wetsanding (to remove imperfections and any orange peel)
- More paint; more wetsanding
- Polishing
This idea of hand applying paint to cars, though it has been around for awhile in various forms, recently became very popular (online, anyway) due to a post by 69chargeryeehaa on the Moparts.com bulletin board. The original thread (some 43 pages) can be found . That thread was locked and placed into the tech archive, and 69chargeryeehaa started another thread, which was locked and placed in the tech archive in May 2007; it can be found . The newest thread as of May 2007 (part 3) is .
The process has benefits and drawbacks, I will try to summarize those here: Benefits Inexpensive Convenient Easy, after some practice Safe, compared to spraying catalyzed paints containing isocyanates Easy to repair/touch up Helps move slow projects along..
Drawbacks Can be time consuming May not be as durable as hardened automotive paint Shine typically not as refined as a basecoat/clearcoat job A metallic paint job may not be possible
I feel, as do the multitude of others who contributed to the above message threads, that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in many cases. Would I paint a Viper with this method? No. A daily driver? Maybe not. Would I paint a work truck with it? Yes! Would I paint a weekend cruiser with it? Sure!
Acknowledgements
A big THANK YOU to:
69chargeryeehaa (Martin) - the guy who introduced this method to the masses Countless folks who came to Moparts to share their experiences (you know who you are!) and helped to fine-tune this method Microsoft, for providing this website platform at no cost (you can get your own too, it's called Microsoft Office Live)
About
On Moparts, my name is Exit1965. In "real life", my name is Dave and I live near Sacramento, California. I initially became very interested in the process because I was (still am) restoring a 1967 Dodge Dart GT. I had been doing the bodywork myself, and was approaching the point of needing paint, but was dreading the fact that I would have to either shell out a minimum of $600 to several thousand dollars to have the car painted by a body shop. The $600 job would be/could be a crap-shoot quality-wise and the big $$ job was not something I wanted to shell out for.
When I read about this method on Moparts, I immediately began experimenting with it. On the threads linked above, you can see the results of experimentation. Through my experiments (though they were not very scientific!) I wavered back and forth over whether I'd end up painting my car with this method or not. I had concerns over shine and scratch resistance.
In the end, I decided to give it a whirl and painted my car red. Then I decided a red car wasn't right for me, so I painted it off white. Later, Marq, another long-time contributor to the Moparts thread, introduced the idea of using topside boat paint instead of the Rustoleum (or Tremclad if you're Canadian) that I and others had been using up to that point. I did some more experiments with the topside boat paint, then painted my car again using Brightside (a brand of topside paint).
The most significant part of this paint job process for me is that it helped move the whole project along. Since the paint was a (potentially very expensive) unknown part of the restoration of my car, I was dilly-dallying with the bodywork and the rest of the project. After painting it, I jumped whole hog into getting it running, and finally, it is running and driving, you can see video here. |
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