DIY: Guide to spraypainting and basic panel repair

[jamsta]

I was an apprentice spray painter for 3 years and only 6 months short of receiving my papers before I got diagnosed with asthma and was forced out the trade. It sucks but I can still paint my own things and stuff for mates but my body can't take it 60 hours a week.

A friend of mine recently asked me to fix a dodgy repair on his Honda hornet motorbike so I figured i'd record the process and throw it up here as a general guide because alot of people are afraid to attempt painting their own stuff when basic repairs arn't very hard at all and you can save serious amounts of dosh, especially if your in the habit of doing fat skidz getting smoke pouring in industrial areas and have a habit of collecting a few walls in the process...ahem.
TOOLS YOU REQUIRE:

Air compressor

Don't worry about having a big tank, I have a 40L electric compressor that cost me 150 bucks from bunnings. You don't need a big compressor for small work you'll be doing at home. I could easily paint half a car with this compressor so you do not need a big one.

Spray guns
I suggest buying two spray guns, a putty up/primer gun and a gun for your colour and your clear coats, cleaning putty guns takes forever and you never really get all the primer out so it's best to have two!

Do not go out and buy the most expensive awesome gun!
Go to autobarn/super cheap and pick up two 30 dollar guns for your first attempt, you won't notice the difference between a bad gun and a good gun your first few jobs! If you enjoy painting and want to up your game you can buy a good midrange gun like mine (devilbiss gti pro) for about 400-500 brand new or less if you shop around. You can pick them up used on ebay for 200ish, they're more than satisfactory for backyarder jobs.

Wax/grease remover.
pretty self explanatory, use it to clean any dirt and grit of your panel.

paint/primer/thinner/hardener.
Your local paint shop will take care of you in this department.
You have two real options here, acrylic and two pack.
I prefer two pack but it might be best to start with acrylic.

Sandpaper.
Generally stick to wet/dry paper, for panel work you'll only need gritts in the range of 180 up to 1000 so thats... 180/240/320/400/600/800/1000

Scotchbrite pads.
These come in handy for dulling down clear coat buy the grey one, the redy purple one is a tad to strong.

A decent orbital sander:
Mine cost me 80 bucks from supercheap, it's powered by the air compressor and is speed adjustible. It has a 150mm pad and does a fantastic job for the money. Electric ones can be pretty nasty.

Sanding block.
If you want your repair to be flat and nice, buy one.

safety gear:
Go out and buy yourself a decent respirator, especially if your using two pack. Two pack paints have isocyanates in them. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS IN YOUR BODY.

Note: If you can it's probably wise to hire everything before you go out and spend 500 bucks only to realise you hate painting.

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STEP 1: PREPWORK
Suss out your repair and plan the job! cannot stress this enough! Don't start work on it until your confident you've worked out a plan of attack. The story goes he bought the bike with this shitty patch work on the tank but how hes trying to sell it and nobody is stupid enough to do what he did and buy a bike with this on the tank.




We had NO idea what was under it but it had obviously been used as a patch. My first thought was there could be a hole or a leak after the previous owner had obviously dropped the bike so I wasn't about to take the patch off, I decided to work around it just to be safe.



I simply sanded down the edges so you couldn't feel te height difference between the tank and the ghetto patch. I used 180 initially, then went to 240 then finally 400 feathering out onto the tank. Then just grab your scotchbrite, dunk it into some water then rub the surrounding area to dull the old clear coat ready for primer.



Now we've fixed the patches hard edge on the tank but it's still rough and not straight at all so I grabbed some bodyfiller (bog) and put some over the top of the patch then sanded it down flush with the panel using 240 gritt paper then 400 over the top so it was nice and smooth.
When your learning you might need to reapply bog, it's very hard to get it perfectly flat after one application of filler, you can apply as much as you want it just takes more time waiting for the filler to set. When I first started I was using 3/4 applications of filler to get it just right so don't feel disheartened.

Mask up the area you wish to prime like so. See how the masking tape has been folded over and retaped? Do this to eliminate a hardedge effect when primimg. It's a pain in the ass to remove and will drive you insane, masking correctly is alot easier, trust me, I know Now grab some plastic or whatever you have lying around, drape it over the tape get a razor blade/knife/scissors/fingers and cut/tear the plastic then tape it down over your tap like so. this eliminates overspray, you don't want primer everywhere, especially when we're not planning on repainting the entire tank.

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STEP 2: PRIMING.

Finally, time for some gun action!
For your first coat just very lightly mist over the body filler, the idea with priming is you get heavier and heavier and move in an outwards direction.
Your first coat should simply be a bonding layer that seals off the filler.
You should be able to see through it.


four coats later it should look like this. Your fourth coat should be HEAVY it doesn't matter if you get runs or sags in the primer, you can sand them out the basic idea with priming is get a feel for painting and how it comes out the gun, enjoy yourself, every fuck up can be fixed in a primer coat, not so with colour and clear.


Straight after laying down your fourth coat unmask it, not fully but just pull up the tape edges, I got a little carried away and primed right up to masking creating that "hard edge" I was talking about before.
If this happens to you simply grab some thinners on a rag and wipe over the edge, be very careful and precise when doing this but it will save you time later! it's worth doing even if you don't prime all the way to the edge!



Step 3: Final prep before paint.
I was using "primer filler" which is essentially spray on bog so now I have more sanding to do, Start out with 180 to get it as flat as possible then move to 200 working your way through the gritts (320-400) before finishing of with 600 lightly sanding down the edges of your filler and rubbing over onto the tank making sure it's perfectly smooth.



Congratulations your almost ready to paint! Because this is such a small panel my friend decided he wanted to me to reclearcoat the entire thing, so I grabbed my scotch brite, wetted it up in water then went about softly rubbing over the entire tank, don't rub hard you will leave scratches in the original paint, just rub the scotchbrite softly for 5-10 minutes over the panel then grab a rag dry up all the water and see if you can see any reflections in the old clear. If you can't good work your ready to paint. If you can see reflections, keep rubbing.

step 4: Painting.
Fuck yeah, the easy bit. Panel repair and refinishing is 95% prep work, from here on gets easy, it might take you a few panels to get your technique down but seriously, after a few panels painting will be easier than rubbing one out

Basecoat:
On a repair like this your first coat should be much like your primer's first coat. Only cover the repair area and don't put it on heavy, this is simply a bonding sealer coat so do not over do it. Let it flash off and dry for about 5-20 minutes, a simple way to check if your ready for your next coat is dab it with your thumb in an area nobody will really notice, if you leave a little thumb print, it's not ready for it's second coat.


You should only need two coats of basecoat for most colours but lighter colours like white and silver may require 4 or more to fully cover the repair.
The second coat should be a little heavier and as you get to the edge of your repair flick the gun towards the direction your travelling, the idea here is just spread some of the new paint around just incase the colour isn't perfect. Luckily for my case the match is dead on, but I still did this step anyway just to be safe, basecoat can lie to you, clearcoat exposes all imperfections!!!

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step 5: Clearcoat

Home stretch now, but if your going to fuck up, this will be where it happens Clear coat is unforgiving. However most clearcoat errors can be fixed easily so don't worry to much! If you worry about fucking up, you will fuck up. it's that simple.

First coat of clear:
Your first coat doesn't need to be perfect, it's a good time for you to learn what "dry spray" looks like. You can spot dryspray because well....it's spray....that looks dry. Clearcoat you want to put on as wet as possible, it gives you that flat "wet" look detailers strive after, i'm sure you all know what I mean so try and get that look off the gun. the trick is, is knowing how fast to move your hand so you can apply the clear so it looks stupid wet, without the clearcoat running or sagging. If you get runs, don't worry, if you don't get runs first time out your going to end up with ALOT of dry spray and orange peel. If you get a perfect flat, wet look job on your first attempt. Your wayyyyy better than me.



second coat of clear:
Wait about 5-10 minutes between clear coats, it doesn't dry like basecoat so don't use the thumb print method I mentioned before, just do it by time. This coat you HAVE to eliminate ANY dry spray you put on with your first coat. Put your clear on slowly and be confident, overlap each stroke and make it look as wet as possible!




If it looks like this, congrats your finished, wait about 24 hours for it to dry then throw the panel on the car/bike/spaceship then crack a beer and tell all your friends your a champion with a spray gun and that they should pay you to do stuff.

If you got any runs or sags in your clear wait for it to try then grab your 1000 gritt sand paper and sand them out then polish then panel. Most times you can get rid of runs and sags pretty easily, however if you sand through the clearcoat and hit basecoat you'll need to reapply abit of colour then your clearcoat. If your careful, you won't need to repaint or reclear anything

If you don't want to try the above method....
:)Just pay me to fix your shit


Throw up any questions or whatever regarding paintwork and ill try to answer them?
I'll add to this guide later and explain how to "blend" so you don't need to reclear the entire panel

[japcars]

madd wanna paint my car only half of it can you blend good? if so hit me a pm and ill pay ya

[jamsta]

ugh maybe, what does it need? I can blend fine. lul.

[Jarrow]

Looks like you went to lots of effort to post this up, looks the goods man, and also it's very shiny!

[japcars]

(March 6, 2010 07:18 pm)jamsta Wrote:  ugh maybe, what does it need? I can blend fine. lul.

well i sanded all of it already so only needs some little holes patched up then a last final smooth sand then paint it. ill pm you pictures of it.

[lilandonaki]

nice write up.

a few pics arent showing thou

[jamsta]

weird. which ones?

[lilandonaki]

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13

might be a site bug

i found that putting a [ hr ] (no spaces) between photos allows as many pics as you want, even though it divides the post

[Dori 31]

^^^ same

[180SX]

yeh some pics aint working

but great thread real useful

[Burnt Orange 2JZ]

would you be interested in spraying a pair of veilside read pods for my car? i can get the paint, but i am a compleat noob at this. i have a spray gun and an air compressor, but again, i dont want to fuck it up >.>
i can pay you too either liqueur you up or cold hard ceash shouldent take too long

[jamsta]

weird, have to get the admins looking into it. Maybe I should of split the guide into 2-3 posts

burnt orange 2jz
yeah maybe in a weeks time or so ill sort it out with you via pm.
Ill come grab the pods paint them then bring em to you when they're done.
Depends on the weather though.

[jamsta]

double post but whatever.
All pics work now. Used my photobucket instead of failshack.

[lilandonaki]

just chuck a
[hr ]
after every couple of photos

[^s13^]

very good diy. looks great also.