Ever painted your car? What did you learn? Any tips? Would you do it again? Have pictures?

"Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle" (1500sand535) 06/22/2016 at 18:27 • Filed to: None

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My car’s overall paint and body are pretty good but the previous owner painted the black portions of the lower parts of the bumper and rocker panels alpine white, poorly, and there are a couple small dents and dings.

I’ve debated three fixes, (1) respraying the rockers and lower bumpers with some sort of matte black paint or rocker panel spray to match the original look and leaving the little dents and dings for another day, (2) getting new bumpers and side skirts from a 95 E34 which came stock with these to replace the bumpers and cover the rocker panels and again, not sweating the little other stuff; or (3) paint the whole car.

The first option is probably the easiest and cheapest. The second option is a bit of work to find everything and install everything, and would likely cost the most. The third option would obviously be a bit of work, and the risk is high but the reward would be having some sort of awesome colored car, while also fixing little dents, and hiding the previous owners poor quality work.

So, assuming I wanted to go with the third route, any recommendations on process, equipment, expectations?

And anyone who remembers my previous rants about my car is thinking, “go fix the other 20 things you mentioned in a previous post.” I’m riding high right now as I took the beast on a nice road trip this past weekend and last night I think I slowed down the oil leaking by maybe half, woohoo.

Bandit - destroyed his car > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:34

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http://oppositelock.kinja.com/tag/emma?start… Read through those posts. It was hell, it took forever because I was a perfectionist (literally 6+ months), it was ridiculously expensive (list price after I did body work was 6k), panel alignment is a bitch, dark glossy colors show every flaw imaginable, and once you strip the paint down you will ALWAYS find something you don’t like that needs repaired. On the plus side, I learned a ton of awesome skills that are applicable pretty much anywhere a nice paint job and surface finish is required and became more emotionally invested in the car. If you have any specific questions about bodywork and diy painting I probably can help...

Slant6 > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:36

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Sam > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:37

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I really want to paint my E34 Touring midnight purple, but I have a feeling that doing a paint like that is even more difficult than even normal colors.

Montalvo > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:37

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Love that color.

crowmolly > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:38

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In the middle of a paint job now.

A lot of it depends on personal tolerance. If you want a smooth-as-glass finish you are going to pay, both in terms of time and money. You’ll have to build a proper booth, have right-sized spray equipment, precisely follow tech sheets, adjust for atmospheric changes, tear the car down as needed, use the right abrasives, etc. Absolutely not impossible and plenty of good paint jobs have been done at home. But if you half-ass it your mistakes can slap you in the face. Typically you will do a BC/CC paint system for this.

Conversely, you can just mask and remove as needed, scuff the existing paint, and apply a single stage system right over what you’ve got. They can come out good as well. But overall appearance and durability may suffer a bit.

IMO you may want to ask yourself “how good a paint job does this car deserve?” You don’t want to drop $5000 painting a $2500 car. Color choice will also change cost and difficulty.

If you post up more pics of the car we can probably give you more info. Eastwood has some good videos on Youtube hosted by Kevin Tetz.

crowmolly > Sam 06/22/2016 at 18:47

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Yes, it will be much more difficult and expensive.

The other downside is it may/is a complete bitch to match and repair. So if you get a rock chip or get a shopping cart dent you are in for a bad time.

pjhusa > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:53

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Is the orange one yours, or from Google Images?

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > crowmolly 06/22/2016 at 18:56

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Good input, I would not be shooting for anything too complicated. I was thinking of something on the simpler end.

Thanks for the tip on the Eastwood YouTube videos.

crowmolly > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 18:56

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What’s your budget? What color do you want?

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > pjhusa 06/22/2016 at 18:58

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It's from the Google. Mine is a very much more neglected alpine white

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > Bandit - destroyed his car 06/22/2016 at 18:59

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Your post depressed me. Informative and helpful but very depressing.

DeLM > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 19:03

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i repainted mine, the whole thing which isn’t much since it is a miata. I do have pictures of the process. I took about a full week at about 6 hours a day but man it turned out great. If you want me to post the pictures and notate what was done in each one I have no problem doing that. it isn’t too hard but well worth it.

Bandit - destroyed his car > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 19:04

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In the end it was worth it at least.... Just don’t go in thinking it will be a walk in the park if you want to do it the “right” way of stripping the body down all the way to buffing.

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > crowmolly 06/22/2016 at 19:07

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I don’t know about budget. I guess if I had to throw out a dumb range, Maaco was advertising $600(or $700) paint jobs, which I’m sure aren’t good, but I said to myself, “I bet I could buy all the shit I need to paint my car for that much money and I’d learn something, and if I did it well, it’d probably look better.”

I was thinking something bright like a red or orange.

I’m certainly to a point where anything I put into the car is for my own enjoyment not because it’s going to command more money.

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > Slant6 06/22/2016 at 19:08

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Very nice

DeLM > crowmolly 06/22/2016 at 19:08

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mine turned out great and cost me $400 for everything, but I did have my own compressor and spray gun and sanding equipment, but I will say my dad oversaw it which helped since he used to restore cars.

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > DeLM 06/22/2016 at 19:10

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Woah, 40 hours is some serious work time. I'd love to see the final product. I’ll let you know if I want more info, I think I need to get a good grasp on the basics and then if I have specifics I’ll ask people here.

DeLM > crowmolly 06/22/2016 at 19:10

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Before wet sanding , cutting compound and buffing.

DeLM > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 19:16

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i hear ya. This was after I painted it, before wet sanding, cutting compound and buffing it. Needed to let the paint cure for 90 days before i could do that.

This is after all that others stuff was done. if you want to do just the rocker panels. They aren’t too bad to do yourself. post up a pic of your car and we’ll see what we can figure out. Is the alpine white pretty much a straight white or is there some metallic or pearl in it?

razorbeamteam > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 19:17

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I painted a Volvo 240 in my parent’s garage with an air compressor, harbor freight sprayer, and some Valspar tractor paint.

I strongly recommend you DO NOT do this. The paint looked OK on half the car, decent on 25%, and just terrible on the rest. If I had to do it again, I would have used a foam roller or just not done it at all.

Orange Exige > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 20:14

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I painted my winter wheels (which incidentally are far nicer than my summer wheels - especially painted) last fall and they were a pretty big pain in the butt. Not the biggest PITA that would prevent me from ever painting my wheels again (at least my crappy summer ones which really need to be refinished) but big enough to make me way scared to paint an entire car.

I put a lot of prep work into these and even so, mistakes were still made and chips were still had (but they do look good!) so if I had a good set of wheels that I wanted painted, I would look far more seriously at professional powdercoating than spraypainting them myself. No doubt I would look at professional paintjobs for the full car too - touchups are damn hard to do and I don’t have the patience for full car prepwork.

Sweet Trav > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 20:14

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Block sand until you don't have fingerprints. Then do it more. Easy consistent spraying. Oh and maintain ventilation until the car is dry. Oh and don't use valspar paint.

Steve in Manhattan > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/22/2016 at 20:29

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Earl Scheib Inc. will paint the entire car for 350 bucks. For an extra 10 bucks, they’ll roll up the windows.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle 06/23/2016 at 01:31

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Put 150% effort into all of the prep work. If you don’t, the tiniest of imperfections will be magnified ten fold in the paint.

If you have a garage, hang plastic sheeting all around and cover the floor with it. Mist water on all of it, particularly the floor because that will help to keep dust from flying around and landing in the paint. Put a fan or two facing outward in the door to help blow the rest of the dust out.

Practice your technique on junk fenders or something first, particularly at weird angles like stretching over the roof and crouching by rocker panels. Consistency is important, particularly if you’re spraying a metallic, pearlescent, or semi-transparent color.

The more disassembly and less making you do the better it will look.

High quality sanding blocks are your friends. I use durablocks.

Don’t put any force into the block when sanding, let the block and paper do the work.

If you can feel an imperfection before paint, you will see it after. Prime. Sand until smooth. Prime. Sand until smooth. And continue until perfect, then apply a thin coat of primer-sealer. Do not skimp on the amount of primer you use.

When you get around to finally laying down some color, mist it lightly. Paint is very thin and needs to go on in multiple light coats, sometimes as many as 5-6 for a single color.

Clear coat is where the depth, gloss, and finish texture come from. Clear can be very difficult because you can’t see how much you’re laying down. This makes it incredibly easy to run.

When buying your paint, make sure your primer, color, and clear are all compatible.

Try to spray somewhere in the 70-80 range. Hotter can cause your paint to dry to quickly and crack, colder can cause it not to dry at all. Different catalysts/reducers are available to appoint for different temperatures.

Source: You name it, I’ve done it with cars. Hot rod shops, late model body shops, sheet metal fab, structural fab, electrical, mechanical, etc. I’ve never really been one for taking pictures though. If you’ve got a question, there is a very good chance I can answer it and I would be happy to do so.