what equipment do I need for painting?
 

What tools do I need to strip and repaint a car? Any specific brands?

Unless you realy plan on screwing up your car since you obviosly never have painted a car before I highly suggest getting a certified bodyman to paint your car.


Painting a car Involves alot of skilled techniques
this takes alot of time and practice to be able to shoot a car and have it look nice.

Well you need a good D/A [dual action] sander
variaty of grit sandpaper anyware from what 500 to 1500 wet/dry grit finish.

if you have dents invest in a dent puller and some bondo

well crap I can do it just hard to explain.....

is there any body work to be done? You'll need sanding block, lots of sandpaper, Acryliclean, Tac Cloths, masking tape/paper, Air Compressor, Paint gun, bunny suit, respirator, and of course, the primer and paint. Then an orbital or high speed buffer.. I can't think of much else.

no way I would try this on my FD. A friwnd and I are working on a 87 supra so my g/f's family can have an extra car. we're already pulling out the engine and doing a turbo conversion thing. The paint is crap. It looks like the previous owner spray painted it. So even if we do a horrible job I'm sure it'll be better then what it is now.

Any other things I'll need? What would I look under in the phone book to find a place that rents paint booths?

I'm going to give it a whirl this spring. I don't think its really a matter of skill - it's how much patience you have. Prepping is what I think is the hardest part, and how much effort you put into that is probably how much result you are going to get.

I've been doing my interior panels - remove old paint, fine sand out any perfections, appy bonding spray, then multiple color coats (wet sanding between each), then multiple clears (again wet sand), then buff last clear coat.

Besides, short of beating the compressor against the door panels - if you screw up a paint job, a body shop can easily recover from your job and finish it for you. By then you've done all the prep work such as removing trim/etc, and they would charge less.

Other then enviromental legal issues, I say go for it and check the local library (whats that??) for books.

Ltr!

A good spray gun will set you back $200 or more. You need an air compressor capable of seem decent volume, at least 5 to 6 CFM at 90 psi. You MUST ABSOLUTELY have DRY air!!! So, a good water trap is imperative. You need to be able to regulate the air pressure to around 40 to 45 psi, depending on the type of paint you are shooting. Lacquers spray different than enamels, polyurethanes are a whole lot different too. So you've got 4 or 5 bills just in air equipment.
Then, the whole prep work......oh shit man....this is what SUCKS the worst! Stripping a car is just the shits......hundreds of hours spent....dust everywhere (semi-toxic at that!), if you have never done it, and attempt it, you will know what Hell is! Then any sort of repair work is another skill..........
My suggestion is to either take it to a local MAACO shop, or for that matter, Earl Shiebs will "paint any car for $199" or something like that...
or donate it to a high school shop class (East High in Wichita used to be really good...) and let them paint it, they will do it for materials alone.
MAACO should do it for $200 - $400......any of these options are much cheaper than buying the equipment to attempt painting it yourself.....

depends on what your painting it, if your repainting the same color or somewhere near it, dont bother with the DA sander unless you have some body work. Theres a lot of wet-sanding involved. If you DA get 40-80 grit discs. If you need to do body work get some plastic filler and a spreader, or some fiberglass if you want. You must take a lot of the car, best to put her on jacks, cover the interior or just take it out, take off tail lights, door panels etc. Then strip it, wet sand it with different grit like 400, 800, 1200 etc. A good beginner and moderate gun to get I think would be a HVLP gravity feed gun. It wont set you back much and its easy and a accurate gun, not much over-spray. Get some PPG primer, spray that probably a 3-4 coats sanding in-between coats. Then lay your base coat...its really up to you how many coats you want to get the desired affect. then wet-sand that will 1000-1200 grit then you will spray numerous coats of clear on then sand that will 1200. Theres a lot of sanding involved like i said. Then you have to buff and all that. dont forget all the mixings, and additives and all that BS...dont forget its hard to put a skill/trade into one thread its something thats learned over time. hope I've helped what I can
Jeff

Damn, That sure is alot of info in just a few posts. ok so I need:

HVLP spray gun
Acryliclean (whats that?)
Tac Cloths (whats that?)
masking tape/paper
Air Compressor
bunny suit (what color?)
respirator
water trap
dual action sander (its currently red, we're going to blue)
plastic filler/fiberglass
spreader

Anything else?
We wanted to learn how to do all this stuff ourselves, but after looking at the list, and finding out we actaully have $500 less then we thought we would for equpment, that may not me an option, so we'll be looking around at those el cheapo paint places to. I'll have to do some number cruching to to get a final answer on that.

I've read some books on it, but I havn't been able to find a stright forward how-to type of book. Any suggestions on where I can get that?
I'd like something with this type of format:

Step 1...da da da
step 2...da da da
step 3...da da da

Any one know how I would find a paint booth to rent?

What is wet sanding? I've run across the term many times but it has never been explained.

Thanks for any help
Hoainam

a pink one with a fluffy white tail!

Wet sanding is....just what it sounds like. You use sandpaper or emery cloth that is not hurt by water. You use a small flow of water as you sand, the water carries off the grit and residue. Wet sanding is often one of the final steps when finishing a lacquer paint job....believe me, it is a WEIRD feeling to attack a beautiful, brilliant finished paint job with sandpaper........:eek:
But you are using such fine grit (1000+) that it actually improves the finish.....

Acryliclean is a cleaner liquid (that you can buy wherever you are going to get your paint, an autobody supply shop). It will strip off any wax that's still on the car, and will clean any dust, or anything like that.

Tack cloth is a tacky (sticky) cloth that you run over the car to pick up any contaminents..it's cheap, and good peace of mind.

they answered most of your other questions, as for renting a paint booth...hahah good luck. They pay a lot for those you wont get in there for the life of you. You dont really need a booth persay its nothing special. Find a garage with enough room. pull everything out, sweep it then lay the whole floor with water and get it out of there...if your in a cold environment you need to get a torpedo heater because if its to cold the paint wont stick, same applys if its too hot out. And because your changing the color to a degree, dont forget door jams, trunk, under hood ect. if you want to save yourself a little time, get some air-craft paint stripper and follow the directions it gives you, use it on the hood and trunk while your doing the rest of the car, it will get that paint off like no tommorrow, and you also wet-sand before you spray anything on the car so that the paint lays on a smooth surface.
Jeff Lazarek

Just as an important note, there are techniques to which you spray the paint.

I should dig up the pics of the Porsche assembly line that I have. It states very clearly that they spray the paint on in a certain pattern. I'll see if I can dig it up and then have it scanned.