<VV> painting your own car - long bit of advice

[Roger Gault]

Ryan,
Just so you won't get bored, I'll take the other side of the argument.  If
you're confident you can prep it well enough for Maaco to paint it, paint it
yourself.  Go to a couple of paint shops and tell them you want to watch
them to see how good they are.  Somebody will let you watch.  Keep an eye on
the painter's technique.  Get a book or two.  Get a bent up hood or fender
and practice on it.  It's not that hard to do a decent job.  Heck, 18 year
old kids do it. LOL!

As a matter of fact, when I was 18, I had my '60 Chevy convert painted Candy
Pagan Gold (Yikes! big car, bright!).  The painter that did it for me at a
friend's shop was drunk the night he painted it and screwed it up big time.
He left town with my money, so the shop owner took pity on me and said he'd
spray the car some non candy color if I'd prep it.  The candy colors are a
nightmare to paint.  We ended up painting it Evening Orchid.  He sprayed, I
watched.  Maybe I took a little more credit than I deserved, and a few
months later my dad asked me if I could paint an airplane for him (he was a
dealer).  I said, "Sure".  So, my first non-spraycan paint job was in front
of my dad - high stress.  It was white with solid color stripes and numbers,
so it actually was an easy job.  I got several offers that summer from his
customers to come paint their airplanes, so I guess I was officially a
"painter".

The point is, it's not rocket science.  If you go with a solid (non-metalic)
color or clearcoat it, you can color sand out the orange peel and the run or
two that you'll probably get.  It's just work.  Do your research.  Get good
equipment.  Pick and easy color to paint.  Don't try to make it onto the
House of Kolor website on the first paintjob.

If the job's not perfect, it's still your work, not Maaco's.  If when you
step back at the end and look at it, if you can't say, "Damn, I do good
work." then step back a few feet and look again.  You'll be more critical of
any problems than your friends - they'll be amazed it still looks like a
car.  ;-)

If you hose it up so completely that you can't stand it, sand it all off and
then take it to Maaco.  What are you out?  For a few hundred dollars you
still get an educational experience.  On the other hand, you might turn out
to be God's gift to auto painting.  I can see it now, "Ryan's Radical Rides,
Paint, Body, an Audio".

You'll never learn any younger.
  Roger Gault

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <corvair at mb.sympatico.ca>
To: <chevyd51 at yahoo.com>
Cc: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 12:39 PM
Subject: <VV> painting your own car


> Ryan, spray painting isn't "hard", it's just that the quality of the job
is pretty proportional to experience. 90% of a good paint job is
preparation. Do that 90% perfectly yourself and let the Maaco guy who sprays
10 cars a day spray it for you and you'll get a fine job. It only takes half
an hour to paint a car... it takes weeks/months to prep it properly and
that's where the expense is.
>
> I took an evening autobody course at a local high school (18, 3 hour hands
on sessions) and I used a professional shop under the guidance of a pro
bodyman. Took me 60 hours of work to prep my 63 Spyder (including rust
repair etc), then in a couple hours sprayed my own primer in their shop, and
had the instructor spray the colour and clear for me.
>
> Check my page at http://www.cybrus.net/LHonke/Spyderproject/spydproj.htm
there's a pic there that shows all the paint materials used - a couple or
three hundred $ worth.
>
> Les