How to Paint Your Car

Painting a car is generally a task best left to a professional painter and collision repair shop, but if your good with your hands and have a garage it can be a considerable savings for your check book. Depending on the condition of your factory paint your going to need a few supplies and some tools. These supplies and tools include: A gravity feed paint gun with a 1.3 to 1.4mm tip, a siphon feed cupped primer gun (these two types of guns can be found affordably at places such as harbor freight), a face mask (not a dust shield, because paint can give you lung cancer), a roll of 18 inch green masking paper, masking tape (either 2 inch or ¾ inch wide), a palm sander, 400 and 240 grit sticky back sand paper for the palm sander, a catalyzed primer (a three part primer with reducer, primer, and activator), acrylic sealer (no activator or reducer needed), paint (basecoat and clear coat with activator and reducer or single stage paint ( paint, activator, reducer), some contractors plastic, an air compressor (at least 2hp and 8 gallon, this can also be found at harbor freight), latex gloves, old clothes, a good old box fan or high powered fan for doing floor waxing work such as a janitor uses), tack clothes, mixing cups, virgin thinner or gun cleaner, scat paint degreaser, grey scotch brite pads, air hose, and a water hose.

If you've managed to gather all these things together than you're own your way to painting a car. Painting and preparing a car isn't rocket science, however it is time consuming with many steps to doing it correctly. I will generally describe the sequence of events in this article. When you decide to paint your car you need to first examine the condition of the paint, if you have cracked or chalky looking paint on certain areas such as the top surfaces then you will need to use your palm sander with the 240 grit paper (or a close equivalent such as 120 grit being the lowest to use) to sand down the paint to it substrate (sealer, which is the first coat of material put on a car, normally grey in color-if you go down to the metal you went to far), make sure that you hold the pneumatic palm sander flat on these sun damaged surfaces. If you do not hold it flat then you will create something called a bullseye where the sander is put at to great of an angle causing a small valley to form that will most likely only be seen after the car is painted. Sand the affected areas down to the sealer and then mask off the car with the green paper and masking tape for the areas you intend to prime before your you begin the other steps to paint your car. Use contractors plastic to cover all the surfaces of good paint that you do not wish to prime.

When going to the paint supply store and buying you materials: paint, primer, sealer, green masking paper, and 3m masking tape; make sure to ask the person behind the counter what the mixing ratio is for each of the products. Write it down and keep it handy. Now depending on the temperature or the weather where you live your going to have a choice of reducers (thinners for the paint to thin it down so that you have more of it and it comes out of the gun not to thick). If it's summer time your going to want a slow reducer (or warm weather reducer-this is used so that the paint does not dry to quickly and create an orange peel looking effect), if it's winter you want a fat reducer ( a cold weather reducer that allows the paint to dry quickly so it doesn't for runs in the paint), and if it's spring or early fall then you want a medium reducer. DO NOT TRY AND PAINT IN DEAD WINTER WITHOUT A WAY TO CONTROL THE CLIMATE IN THE ROOM, IT WILL NOT WORK.

Now that you have your materials and mixing cups it's time to prime the rough surfaces of the car that you sanded down to get ready for painting the car. This is the first step in actually going about painting a car so pat yourself on the back. Mix the primer per directions in the mixing cups, do not mix a whole gallon of primer if you are not going to use it; once it's catalyzed it's no good unless you are putting it on the car. Pour the virgin thinner into your primer gun cup to clean it out, even if it's brand new. Try and play around with the fan pattern and the pressure on the regulator to make an even spray pattern that is about 8 inches vertical when about 12 inches way from the wall using the thinner like paint (use a piece of cardboard on the wall that you can test spray materials on) with your mask on pour the primer in the primer cup gun and test spray against the wall making sure it's coming out of the gun right and you have a good spray pattern. If nothing or little is coming out of the gun then you need to add more reducer to thin it down. Now that you have it spraying right your going to need to put on three wet coats of primer on the desired surfaces. Wait at least 4 hours for it to dry before going to the next step which is sanding.

Sanding a car before paint is a the most time consuming part of painting a car. Your going to do what's called "sanding the edges" of the car, this means by hand you need to go to all of the painted surfaces on the car that will not be able to be reached carefully with the palm sander and sand them by hand. Do this by folding the circular sand paper (400 grit) into making a half moon shape and sand the surface of the paint until it becomes a chalky white color or a chalky powder color of the car; when you've done this then you need to go to the next step which is to sand down the large surfaces of the car with the 400 grit on the palm sander remembering to keep it as flat as possible. Don't forget to sand down the primer until it is smooth and chalky yellow or gray in color, it should not be shiny and try not to break through to the original surface. Now that you have all the painted surfaces sanded down it's time to go to the next step.

Your going to want to paper and tape every part of the car that you do not wish to be painted such as headlights, tail lights, trim, door handles, and windows. Don't forget about the antenna or to take off the license plates. Carefully outline all these components with the ¾ inch tape making sure not to overlap onto the intended paint surfaces. Use razor blades to cut the paper into the proper shape and use the 2 inch tape to over lap between the outline tape and the paper. Once you have successfully completed this task which is one of the most important to ensure that you don't over spray onto trim or other unwanted surfaces your ready to paint.

Position your fan in a way where it will pull the fumes from the room, fumes are hazardous to your health and can also make it hard to see when you are painting. If you have a back door to your garage you can put the fan there or slightly lift the garage door to let the air be drawn out under it. Take the grey scotch brite pad that you bought at the paint store to scuff the whole car making sure to rough up any shiny spots of paint you may have left. The next thing you will do is blow off the dust from the car and wipe it down (the car) with the scat paint degreaser soaked into a clean cloth, preferably linen free. After all the surfaces have dried from the degreaser residue is gone then you need to use your tack cloth (which is a little sticky for a reason) to wipe down the entire car from left over dust residue and make sure to flip to a new clean side of the tack cloth after wiping down every two body panels or so. Now your ready to paint.

Make sure you have anything in your garage covered in the contractors plastic to protect it from over spray. Kick on the fan and use a water hose to wet down the floor approximately an hour before you intend to spray (this is to make sure that you don't blow dust or dirt from the ground into the paint when you spray the lowest portions of the car. Get on your mask and mix up that paint. Always make sure to do a test spray on the piece of cardboard before you try it on the car to make sure you have a good spray pattern when you begin to paint the car. Remember when your painting that your first step is going to be to put on one coat of grey sealer (this is pre-mixed), lay it on wet and spray it just like you intend to spray the car; each spray path should overlap the next in order to keep it wet and prevent it from being dry sprayed. Now that you have the sealer on it's time to paint the car. Every coat of paint should go on wet, no matter what you might of heard do not dry spray your first coat it does not make the paint adhere better. If your spraying base/ clear you're going to want to put on 3 coats of base coat, make sure that you keep the gone far enough from the panels of the car to prevent tiger striping (tiger striping is when your spraying a metallic base coat and you have the gun too close to the car or you have the width of the fan pattern to thin, remember your fan pattern should be 8-10 inches. When spraying metallic's (either base coat or single stage metallic's it's important to cross coat, which means that if you start spraying horizontally in your pattern your going to want to go back over that pattern lightly in a vertical direction; this help to make sure that the metallic flakes are laid out evenly over the panels. Make sure you have 10-15 minute flash times between coats, flash time are the amount of time it takes for the paint to kick off before applying the next coat. Painting single stage and spraying clear coat are used the same way when you paint a car, ones just clear and the other is color. You want to put on three coats of either one that you are spraying. Cross coating on either is not necessary unless your spraying a single stage metallic. Make sure to wait your flash times, you should always use your finger to check if the paint or clear has begun to tack off. Put your finger on an area where there is tape that has over spray on it and feel it with your finger to see if it's beginning to dry; if it's still wet, wait for it to setup before applying another coat. The flash times are still 10-15 minutes with single stage and clear, if you do not wait the flash times then you will have runs. Also, always use paint strainers to strain the paint into the paint and primer guns to make sure you don't have chunks of material that didn't mix well that might clog up your guns.

Now that your done, wait about 4 hours and carefully unmask the car making sure to not touch the fresh paint, you want to unmask the car before it's completely dry because it can be very hard and time consuming to do it later after it's already dried. Other things to take note of, make sure you don't have any dust on your arms or your clothes before you start to paint the car, you will get what's called trash (dust) in the paint. Wear form fitting clothes so that when you lean over the top surfaces you don't get your clothes in the paint by accident. Always wear gloves and a mask when mixing or spraying paint. The car should be dry in about 24-48 hours to drive. So, if you've followed these simple yet time consuming steps you're on your way to having that project car painted. If you decide that you don't want to paint the car yourself and your trying to do it affordably then go to a discount car painting shop. After you get your quote and decide to have them paint your car remember to tell them that you want good close sanding, no trash, minimal orange peel, and good clean taping. This will ensure that you get the best paint job for the money, good luck with all of your paining endeavors.