Completely re-painting the Chevelle? Do the prep work myself?!?

[Dwn4BassAlan]

So I'm pretty sick of waiting 6 months to get this damn key-scratch repaired, I've been super busy and my mechanic had the car half the time, but now I'm just dying to get it started during summer. But I have a dilemma to decide, despite AAA being the one of best in the area, they won't paint the whole car, despite how difficult matching the paint is and how obvious it will look that is has 2 different tones. But they're kinda giving me the whole, "It's your problem not ours" crap, even though I pay a $500 deductible for something that was completely out of my control. The whole job would be around $7000 just to start, and it will go up to around $9000 to finish probably, and I can't afford to pay out of pocket for the rest of the car. So my plan was to get the quote from this place Rubios, who seems like they do very good and expensive work, then have AAA write me the check, and then instead of only having the driver side and hood painted, I could get the whole thing done if I just do all the prep work myself because there's also lots of rust I want to fix before painting over it. I can easily see myself being able to do everything, and I understand the entire process, but my only issue might be primer? I don't have an easy way to spray the primer on, and even the biggest compressor at Home Depot does not say whether it can be used for spraying or not........ I haven't asked my boss yet, but I think he might have something I could use, but I'm not positive.

Either way, does anyone have any experience with this kind of stuff? I hear that prep-work is where the majority of the time, money, and importance is based on anyway, so how true is that? How much would that "prospectively" save me? Does anyone live in the 90278 area that has a way to help me spray the primer on?

[Keith77]

Prep work is key to a good paint job. You could find the best painter in the world but if the prep work is shit so will the paint job.

[Dwn4BassAlan]

Prep work is key to a good paint job. You could find the best painter in the world but if the prep work is shit so will the paint job.

I get that, but do you have any ideas about the primer work? If I just tape up lots of plastic in my garage and spray primer, how well will it work? Aren't there usually a lot of environmental factors (e.g humidity/temp/airflow) that shops use for the best results? Or is that really just for the actual basecoat/clearcoat itself? How worried do I need to be about dust particles in the primer's top coat since I'm going to be blocking and sanding with 600 anyway?

[bbeljefe]

Prep is definitely the most important part of a quality paint job. As for having an easy way to spray, I've sprayed epoxy on small jobs with a 4 gallon nail gun compressor and a detail gun. The only problem with a small compressor is that you have to stop and let it recover if you're spraying a large project. But... you don't need to prime the entire car at once. In fact, you're going to need to prime each area as soon as you get the body work done so the largest area's you'll have to spray at once will be the hood or a quarter panel. A fifteen to twenty five gallon compressor will be just fine for that. And buy a cheap gravity feed spray gun. You're going to be spraying at 30-50 psi, so you don't need a huge volume of air, especially since you'll be spraying small areas. That said, pneumatic sanders will kill a small compressor a lot faster than a spray gun. ;-)

Go to an automotive paint supply house and buy some urethane primer. It will be a two part product and comes in a variety of colors. If the car is staying red, I'd use a gray primer. I would also deliver the car to the paint shop with an 800 grit water sanded finish. 600 will work, but I prefer to spray over 800.

I have no way to tell you what you'll save on the job by doing the prep work because every shop is different. But, you'll probably save somewhere between 60-75% of the total cost by doing the body and paint prep yourself.

Good Luck!

[Dwn4BassAlan]

Prep is definitely the most important part of a quality paint job. As for having an easy way to spray, I've sprayed epoxy on small jobs with a 4 gallon nail gun compressor and a detail gun. The only problem with a small compressor is that you have to stop and let it recover if you're spraying a large project. But... you don't need to prime the entire car at once. In fact, you're going to need to prime each area as soon as you get the body work done so the largest area's you'll have to spray at once will be the hood or a quarter panel. A fifteen to twenty five gallon compressor will be just fine for that. And buy a cheap gravity feed spray gun. You're going to be spraying at 30-50 psi, so you don't need a huge volume of air, especially since you'll be spraying small areas. That said, pneumatic sanders will kill a small compressor a lot faster than a spray gun. ;-)

Go to an automotive paint supply house and buy some urethane primer. It will be a two part product and comes in a variety of colors. If the car is staying red, I'd use a gray primer. I would also deliver the car to the paint shop with an 800 grit water sanded finish. 600 will work, but I prefer to spray over 800.

I have no way to tell you what you'll save on the job by doing the prep work because every shop is different. But, you'll probably save somewhere between 60-75% of the total cost by doing the body and paint prep yourself.

Good Luck!

This^^

my man! that's exactly the stuff I needed to hear! you're my favorite newest member by far. Why can't all the new guys be like you?

To be sure, you're saying that as soon as I do the rust work to the bare metal, I want to primer as soon as I'm done to prevent any oxidation right?

And that a 600 wet sand to finish after all the blocking is done would be best?

[Dwn4BassAlan]

my AAA adjuster still hasn't called me back yet................................I don't even understand why I pay $1200 a year for auto insurance...............

Once this jobs done, my mom and I are switching over all of our auto stuff.

[Pioneerchuck]

Prep work is the hardest and most pain staking process. The 600 grit sand would be once the primer is layed out and you have your final coat on. It gives the topcoat that little bit of a bite so it can adhere to the primer coat. I personally like to use a high build primer coat and spray about 2-3 coats sanding in between coats and cleaning the surface. When i sand in between coats i use a 200 grit paper and progressively work my way up to the final coat where i use my 800 grit. Like Jefe said you can use a 600 but i like the 800 grit a little better as well. You said you had rust to work on, so if you know you can handle that then spraying down some primer is pretty much the easy part. There will be a lot of sanding ALOT. Lol and if you have surface rust it can be treated using vinegar water. You wipe the vinegar water over the rusted areas and the vinegar neutralizes the rust then you wipe it down with some warm water and dry it and you're good to go. If its rusted through then youre talking about patch panels that you either buy or if not pre made youll have to make on your own. If you have the ability to do all that then hell yeah dude all the more power to you.

[Dwn4BassAlan]

So I just got the estimate today, they said they agreed on $2,200 for all the work, and $500 of that comes directly out of MY POCKET........

what kind of bullshit is that? Blending paint on a candied car? Are you fucking high? It's not like anyone will notice the obvious 2-tone paint job and the multi-colored panels.

OH WAIT.

[Mtnbikecrazy55]

Fuck that's shitty man

[Dwn4BassAlan]

do you guys have any comments on duplicolor candy paints? Some of the youtube videos I've seen come out really nice lookin, but I wanted to be sure it's quality stuff.

It seems "relatively" cheap for what I was expecting it, only about $28 per quart?? And I only need like 3 or 4 quarts for an entire car right?

And they sell the silver basecoat that goes over the primer to really make the candy pop, so I would assume 3-4 quarts of that too right?