What order do you Paint body?

[71greengo]

I am Finaly getting to the point were I could start painting the body of my car........ ;D
I was just wondering what is the best way to do so....
Take All doors , hood , trunk lid off? and paint body only and have the other parts painted seperately...or paint underneath hood trunk lid and inside of doors and mask off and paint body entirely together?
What are some of the ways your cars were painted
Thanks in advance for any advise!

[Jer]

On all 4 cars that I've painted, I took everything off that would come off, then painted everything separately: the cab, the doors, the rear deck lid, the hood, each of the four fenders (one was a UniBody, so I could only take off 2 fenders) and in 2 cases the front and rear valances.

People get nervous about doing it that way because they are worried about the colors not matching perfectly because of different proportions....

You "get around" that by figuring how many quarts of color coat to do the entire car (with a safety excess margin of course), then mix ALL those quarts (from the same "lot number", if that applies) into one 2 gallon (or bigger) container with a resealable lid...stir it up really well then, and stir it again EVERY time before you take any out of the container for a shoot-session.

Then, no matter how much or how little paint you take from it, (or how many different times you shoot), you are shooting the exact same mix! As long as your spraying technique doesn't vary from piece to piece, you're good to go!! #2Thumbs#

The best benefit to painting this way is that you don't have to sweat the "buildup" that has a natural tendency to occur when you start or stop at the edge of panels...you can start "in the air" and finish "in the air", just like you're supposed to.

The downside is of course that you have to be really careful with the bigger pieces when reinstalling them...which means a helper and lots of the "blue" masking tape on the edges to prevent chipping (especially on those heavy doors and awkward fenders.)

Another HUGE upside (for me at least) is that you don't have to plan out such a large block of time for shooting the entire car...you can say, "Okay, tonight I'm putting the epoxy coat (or base coat, or color coats/clear coats...whatever) on the two front doors...I'll need 3 hours for setup, shoot-time, and cleanup."....

As opposed to, "It's going to take me 16 hours to shoot my car tonight!!"....YIKES!!


That's just my own personal preference and #Twocents# ...
but it's worked out really well for me...so far, anyway!

Good luck! #A_Toast#

Jer.

[DynoDave]

Let me start by saying, I'VE NEVER PAINTED ANYTHING with a gun. But my neighbor built about a half dozen rods over the years, and painted several other cars. For a solid color, I wouldn't object to Jers method, but if it's a metallic, I don't think I could bring myself to go that way.

Tom (my neighbor) painted a Willy's pickup street rod in a metallic copper color, at another friend shop. It came out very nice, except for one spot on those big round front fenders where the air hose got into the color coat. He didn't notice it until it was all cleared. It was a fairly minor flaw, but he had to redo it. He decided to respray that fender at home, so the other guy could have his shop back. He tried three times to get it right. Same paint, from the same can, but shot in a different place, on different days (humidity), with a different compressor (same gun), same guy pulling the trigger. You'd have though he bought a can of copper paint from another vendor...it wasn't even close. He ended up taking it back to the other facility to spray the fender, and the metallic laid out just like the rest of the truck, and was a great match. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. Was it the humidity? Was it the lighting? Was it the pressure from the compressor (as read at the different guages) laying the metal down differently? Who knows.

Having watched him wrestle with that, I don't think I could ever attempt a metallic paint job in any other way than with the car assembled. But that's just me. Either way, best of luck to you with your paint job.

[71greengo]

I think I will do half of Jers method.........I will paint the car with the Fenders only mounted on the car....they were the hardest to line up correctly and would be hard putting back on freshly painted.......I will have the doors Hood and trunk lid off for paint...I usually do ALL of my own paint ...for my daily drivers or kind of nice cars.......but this one will be my baby and my Garage/shop is not good enough....dirty, poor lighting......I have a friend who I need to convince to paint it for me.....LOL....he is an awsome painter but is always soooo busy
Thanks for the advise Guys!

[Doright]

yet
I am a fan of pulling every thing apart and painting though