Since you never miss an issue of GRM, we know you’ve already read the previous two installments of our “Paint at Home” series. If not, here is part 1, and here is part 2. The first showed us stripping our BMW’s paint and fixing its imperfections with hammers and body filler. The second covered the iterative process of priming and block sanding.
These two chapters represent about 100 hours of work leading up to about 4 hours of actual painting. And after that, we spent another 20 hours sanding and buffing the car to remove the dirt and imperfections left behind from our less-than-perfect garage-cum-spray booth. The resulting paint job may not win Pebble Beach, but it sure gets us big compliments everywhere else.
Now, watch as we take our E30 from gray primer to an eye-popping blue.
WHAT ABOUT SUPPLIES?
As in previous chapters, we haven’t gone into too much detail about paint and materials. That’s because local and regional regulations may affect availability or practices in your area. We advise working with a paint supplier for recommendations about mixing ratios, dry times, and other factors that are specific to the paint you’re using.
We can tell you we spent about $1000 on filler, abrasives and private-label primer, paint and clearcoat. This job can be done for less and it can be done for much more, but we’ve found that products from a decent, mid-tier brand deliver great, long-lasting results.
As for tools, we offer this bit of wisdom: You can achieve these results with Harbor Freight-level equipment and keep your investment in the $300 to $500 range. We’ve purchased some higher-end tools, but most of them were in used condition and cost about a third of their original price.
Step 1:
Before the actual painting can begin, the lower portions of the car need some extra protection. Start by spraying the wheel arches and underside of the front valance with rubberized undercoating. While most people buy this stuff in aerosol rattlers (around $8 to $12 apiece), we’ve found that it’s faster and less expensive to invest in a $30 sprayer and source the underrating in cans (typically $15 per quart).
Step 2:
Next, use the same gun to spray textured rockerpanel coating on the front of the valance and on the rocker panels themselves. This stuff lends excellent chip resistance to the lower areas of a car. Once applied, it looks like the OEM coating.
Step 3:
Our garage is always pretty clean, so we didn’t bother to hang plastic sheets as many home painters do. We did make sure the garage was spotless, though. Start by clearing out as much dust and debris as possible with a leaf blower-an electric one, since a gas blower might contaminate the surfaces of the car and countertops. Next, wipe down every surface and mop the floor several times.
Step 4:
Time to clean the car again. Wipe it down with a paper towel dabbed in pre-paint solvent, then dry off the solvent with another clean paper towel. We recommend going over the car this way about three times, making sure to clean the cracks and crevices thoroughly.
Step 5:
Spotless garage, spotless car, all ready for paint.
Step 6:
Once you’ve changed into clothes that won’t dangle in the paint-we usually wear a tight T-shirt and keep it tucked in-it’s time for the first real painting step: “edging” the car. Apply enough paint around the edges that you won’t have to worry about achieving full coverage in these areas during the main painting pass. A full-size sprayer will work here, but a touch-up gun is a bit more accurate and a lot less messy.
Step 7:
Sometimes it’s easier to remove some body parts and hit them with the touch-up gun.
Step 8:
Now comes the stressful work. When laying down paint, it’s important to follow a very deliberate progression around the car to avoid “dry spray” and other pitfalls of moving without forethought. In general, the strategy is to fully paint a panel before moving on to the next one. To avoid literally painting yourself into a corner, try rehearsing these sequences before hooking up the air or putting paint in the gun:
At the front of the car, paint one fender before going across the hood to the next one.
At the center of the car, paint across the roof before coating the doors to avoid accidentally touching them while they’re wet.
Spray the rear quarter panels and trunk lid in a similar sequence to the front: one fender, then the deck lid, and finally the other fender.
Throughout the process, be very careful to keep the air hose out of the way. In fact, we recommend having an assistant maneuver the hose and warn you if your clothing is dangling too close.
Step 9:
For this job we used a basecoat/clearcoat paint. The basecoat is less stressful to work with since it goes on fairly dry and is less likely to run. After about three or four coats, it flash-dries to a semigloss finish. While waiting for the paint to flash-dry, we like to clean our guns in preparation for the clearcoat.
Step 10:
Following a similar painting sequence, put down about five coats of clearcoat. It’s okay to go heavier on the clear, especially on the horizontal surfaces, since a lot of it will be sanded and buffed off.
Our car photographed wonderfully at this step, but if you were in the garage with us you would’ve seen the fair amount of dust that settled on the horizontal surfaces–that’s what happens when you paint in a garage and not a booth. Wet sanding and buffing will solve this problem. (Make sure your painting space is equipped to remove fumes; our garage has a sparkless box fan mounted in a window.)
Step 11:
We usually sand the clearcoat by hand, but for this project we decided to try one of the new air sanders made for wet sanding. This is a higher-end Hutchins sander that we bought at the local paint supply store for about $150.
While keeping the car’s surface wet with a rag and clean water, start sanding with 1500-grit paper made specifically for this kind of work; then move on to 2000-and finally 3000-grit. Doing this step by hand would have taken us 5 to 10 hours for the hood alone. With the air sander, the job was done in about 30 minutes. We’re sold!
Step 12:
After air sanding, the surface has a subtle gloss to it. It’s too risky to go near the edges with the air sander, though, so sand them by hand with gradually finer-grit paper: 1000, then 1500, and finally 2000.
Step 13:
Just as you sanded the car three times, buff it three times as well, each time with a finer polish and finer buffing pad. Working roughly a square foot at a time, apply a few drops of polish and buff until the gloss comes up and the polish residue disappears. There’s an art to buffing: You need to move slowly enough to get some heat into the paint, but not so slowly that you burn it. Best to practice on something less important than your new paint job.
Step 14:
Buffing the whole car may not be necessary. We skipped the vertical surfaces since they looked great and didn’t really gather any dust. We did sand and buff the hood, trunk, roof and body sides above the beltline.
Step 15:
Final result: The paint pops, proving that you really can achieve high-quality paint results at home. If the car is kept clean, waxed and out of the sun as much as possible, paint jobs like this can last 20 years or more.
Comments
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Very pretty.
(the real reason for my post is that it is staying at the top of the Latest Topics page with a last post time of 0 minutes ago and I’m hoping that another post will put it back in its place 🙂 )
Sometimes when I time things to post they’ll hang for a hot second. It’s a weird glitch we’re looking into.
Nice job. Good tips.
I worked part-time in a body shop during college, about 1200 hrs. Enough that I’ve done nearly all of my own bodywork since then.
One picture shows a common mistake… During cleaning the right rear quarter panel, all attention focused on gloved right hand, towel, solvent…. While ungloved oily-skinned left hand is making a nice palm print on the trunk lid.
I would also consider hanging blankets or tarps around the car, as the overspray gets everywhere in your nice clean shop… Much less work to hang than to clean.
Of course, if weather is good, consider spraying outside.
Plus on tarps. Still finding things with red over spray on . Blue and White colors didn’t have the hang time of the red.
Rushcanuck said:
what colour is that? looks amazing
It’s the correct factory blue for the 1985 325e. As I undersand, it’s a fairly rare color.
iwannarace said:
Where was the prime, base coat, and clear sourced? Online or a local store? What brand was it?
We got it all at a local store. We didn’t get too much into those details for the story because state/local regulations seem to really affect availability of materials. We used a private label (lower priced) brand from our store called Montana. We prefer local stores to the internet because we get great advice from them and want to keep them in business. We had around $1000 in sandpaper, paint, primer, etc. in this job. It’s as nice in person as in the pictures and should last 20+ years.
BimmerMaven said:
Nice job. Good tips.
I worked part-time in a body shop during college, about 1200 hrs. Enough that I’ve done nearly all of my own bodywork since then.
One picture shows a common mistake… During cleaning the right rear quarter panel, all attention focused on gloved right hand, towel, solvent…. While ungloved oily-skinned left hand is making a nice palm print on the trunk lid.
I would also consider hanging blankets or tarps around the car, as the overspray gets everywhere in your nice clean shop… Much less work to hang than to clean.
Of course, if weather is good, consider spraying outside.
Good catch on the bare hand. The behind the scene comment I’ll give you about these stories is that I usually do the work, then bring in a “hand model” to take the pictures and we missed that detail. Sloppy me. Hint: You’ll find another sloppy detail in the first story. Look at the color of the body filler we’re mixing up and then look at the color of the body filler we’re sanding off. Sometimes I forget to take a picture and have to re-enact it. Unlike movie producers, we don’t have continuity checkers…
I’ve painted a lot of cars in my garages over the years and I do throw blankets or plastic over anything that I care about. The floors stay body color for about a month, or until the next paint project, whichever comes first.
I wondered about the pink / green color…. but wasn’t sure about that.
This series has me thinking maybe I can paint my new 944S2 and save some money and learn something new in the process. The problem is I don’t have an air compressor or paint equipment that will do this job either which would add another 2K to the project. I already want a compressor though for my future lift and air tools, so it’s not all on this potential project.
In reply to AnthonyGS :
One paint job will pay for the equipment, and you can do it for much less than $2K. We’ve tried the $15 Harbor Freight guns, thinking we could throw them away cheaper than clean them. We didn’t throw them away. They work very well.
The bare minimum for equipment in my opinion is a 5″ DA sander and a paint gun with enough compressor.
These are great painting articles.
My late brother was a bodyman-painter and we did several cars together like this at home, in particular when I was a teenager. I won’t forget those.
One thing we used to do that helped keep paint off things in the garage also – was to hand large tarps from the rafters.
Carl Heideman said:
In reply to AnthonyGS :
One paint job will pay for the equipment, and you can do it for much less than $2K. We’ve tried the $15 Harbor Freight guns, thinking we could throw them away cheaper than clean them. We didn’t throw them away. They work very well.
The bare minimum for equipment in my opinion is a 5″ DA sander and a paint gun with enough compressor.
You’ve convinced me. I’m going to give it a go. It’ll be next year after mechanical stuff is sorted and my challenge entry competes and sells. I have a nice clean new fully finished garage to work in. Once the challenge car is gone, I can put this car in the garage by itself.
My 944 is guards red or india red (same code). It was originally single stage paint, but was partially repainted in two stage and now that clear is flaking off. Any recommendations on single vs dual stage? It’s a non-metallic color so my understanding is both are viable. I’m in TX so I will probably just hit up my local Sherwin Williams store for materials. I’m looking at 220V single state compressors rated at 10 cfm at 100 psi and 12 cfm at 40 psi. My understanding is most spray guns are 10-12 cfm at 20 psi, so this too should be okay. I could get a dual stage compressor but they are double the cost.
What brand of rubberized undercoating is that? Gun settings, nozzle size?
I am about to do this under my hot rod project.
Before the actual painting can begin, the lower portions of the car need some extra protection. Start by spraying the wheel arches and underside of the front valance with rubberized undercoating. While most people buy this stuff in aerosol rattlers (around $8 to $12 apiece), we’ve found that it’s faster and less expensive to invest in a $30 sprayer and source the underrating in cans (typically $15 per quart).
I’m curious if I can thin and spray it from a HF gun with 2.0mm nozzle. Looks like Eastwood has a good product, but they also want to sell you a special gun for it…
FYI I bought a couple spray cans of the Eastwood stuff. I don’t have much surface area to cover, so I figured it’s not worth buying the gun.
I’ll put results in my hot rod build thread once I get to that step.
https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-rubberized-undercoating.html
I’m curious as to people’s opinions about the isocyanates contained in car paint which absorb not just through your lungs but also through exposed skin and eyes. I painted my car in the garage and the amount of exposure, even with ventilation, kinda freaked me out.
I always wear something like the Tyvek coveralls with the hood up. That combined with rubber gloves, respirator and glasses covers about 99% of me (since I grew a beard, I wear an air supplied hood because a respirator won’t seal on my hairy face). I think that works well. The only issue is that when it’s hot, sweat will collect in the sleeves of the suit, run down the arms and try to drip out onto the paint at my wrists. I generally use masking tape to tape the sleeves up at the wrist to prevent this.
In reply to Kubotai :
Yeah, I feel like an air supplied hood is something I would invest in if I did my own paint again. Apparently even a p100 mask won’t block iso’s. I may be overreacting, but then again chemical exposure is no joke.
In reply to Carl Heideman :
Paint on a rotisserie. You can whip one up from a pair of engine stands or build it like I did from scrap metal.
The ease of working makes it worth while for even one car.
rattlecan said:
I’m curious as to people’s opinions about the isocyanates contained in car paint which absorb not just through your lungs but also through exposed skin and eyes. I painted my car in the garage and the amount of exposure, even with ventilation, kinda freaked me out.
They made me feel real sick for over a Week and hyper sensitive to them for 30 years. I’m still to the point where I back out of any place where they’ve been sprayed in the past several days.
rattlecan said:
In reply to Kubotai :
Apparently even a p100 mask won’t block iso’s.
As I understand it, there are two issues with isocyanates. The first is general toxicity. It’s not too hard for the activated carbon respirator to knock the isocyanates down to levels that are acceptable from this point of view. The second issue is that people can become sensitized to them and have allergic reactions (like peanut allergy or bee stings). For people that are very sensitive to this, the amount needed to cause a problem is very, very low and a respirator can’t reliably get low enough. This is why no activated carbon respirator will carry approval for isocyanates.
AnthonyGS
You’ve convinced me. I’m going to give it a go. It’ll be next year after mechanical stuff is sorted and my challenge entry competes and sells. I have a nice clean new fully finished garage to work in. Once the challenge car is gone, I can put this car in the garage by itself.
My 944 is guards red or india red (same code). It was originally single stage paint, but was partially repainted in two stage and now that clear is flaking off. Any recommendations on single vs dual stage? It’s a non-metallic color so my understanding is both are viable. I’m in TX so I will probably just hit up my local Sherwin Williams store for materials. I’m looking at 220V single state compressors rated at 10 cfm at 100 psi and 12 cfm at 40 psi. My understanding is most spray guns are 10-12 cfm at 20 psi, so this too should be okay. I could get a dual stage compressor but they are double the cost.
If you are going to paint your very first car. Do it one panel at a time. Pick let say the front fender. Repair any dents,chips,scratches. Prime the areas that have been repaired. Prep the fender for paint. Mask off the rest of the car with plastic car cover. As a newbie this would be the better way to go. A whole car with runs is a pain in the ass to sand out and repaint. As far as paint for a Porsche…. Glasurit single stage 21 Line. It is what is on it. Shine last,sprays nice. It may be pricey but that it the only paint I would paint a porsche with. And I have done it.
I’m working up to spraying my ’61 Apache this summer. I intend to make an impromptu “booth” inside my shop.
I sprayed a sway bar for my Hyundai “Angry Accent” with a polyurethane enamel, and despite reasonably new charcoal cans, I didn’t feel so good for about three days. Then I painted a set of widened steelies for it, but outside, and also didn’t feel so good after (still wore a charcoal mask).
I recently bought a supplied air system from HERE, which seems like a smart move, especially if I spray again. Or cut concrete. Or that chili-cheese-burrito-enchillada platter. For only $400US ($900CDN, landed), it’s hard to say “no” to that when it comes to health.
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