the 1990 one is a little greyish, the other one is on the car I showed you

started this a few days ago. I'm starting on my hood first to see how it goes (the paint was faded and cracking in some areas anyways).

sanding down took forever, I ended up switching to 150 grit then back to 220 then 400 before the first coat. This was dry sanding. It's a red car so I have a bunch of rags and clothes that are now a nice pink color. I ended up having to wet some rags just to pick up all the powder that was coming off. I really hope I haven't messed something up. Most of this process so far I have had the feeling of inexperience, ie wondering whether I should do one thing or another. then I shrug and try it one way, and rely on the fact that it's one hood and if I really need to I can replace the hood (it's a 97 honda civic, with a nasty water leak, so it's not worth a ton anyways).

A few questions:

- how many times can I use a rag before throwing it out or washing it? can/should I wash these pink rags or just buy a block of rags?

- how many times can I use a sheet of sandpaper? discard after each wet sanding or keep reusing?

- how should I handle edges and underside of the hood? so far I've been trying to go to about 5mm around the underside of the metal.

- the place where I live, the owners have this mastercraft sander: http://reviews.canadiantire.ca/9045/0547193P/reviews.htm

I wouldn't use it on the wet sanding, but for the initial preping it sure was tempting. Anyone use it? Would it be worth using on the next panel I do?

thanks for keeping this thread going, it's really useful, and I'm sure I will learn more about body work than I would have if there were no $50 paint job.

heres my two cents

"- how many times can I use a rag before throwing it out or washing it? can/should I wash these pink rags or just buy a block of rags?"

it doesn't really matter as long as its clean

"- how many times can I use a sheet of sandpaper? discard after each wet sanding or keep reusing?"

you should be able to feel if theres a difference in the roughness of the paper, i.e how well it sands. I use sandpaper over and over again as long as it still has grit to it.

"- how should I handle edges and underside of the hood? so far I've been trying to go to about 5mm around the underside of the metal."

for the underside of the hood you should try to find a spray can of the paint your using, its much much easier.

"- the place where I live, the owners have this mastercraft sander: http://reviews.canadiantire.ca/9045/0547193P/reviews.htm

I wouldn't use it on the wet sanding, but for the initial preping it sure was tempting. Anyone use it? Would it be worth using on the next panel I do?"

for the inital preping yes, but you should always end with a sanding block. Espessialy with areas that have body filler on them.

and definatly do not use an electric sander for wet sanding!!

hope this helps some

So assuming my paint problems were caused by wax residue, how does one removed old wax? Soap and water is obviously not gonna do it. Do mineral spirits remove wax?

normally I just sand the wax down and then wipe with MS.

Has anyone tried the poor man's paint job? basically $50 paint job but with high density foam brushes.

http://www.stylusscustoms.com/poormanspaintjob.html

There's a video about halfway down.

^ Ah, very informative (as usual), thanks.

Quote:

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His car looks excellent at the end of his efforts and except for the glitch he encountered on the bumper from not sanding properly
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I didn't really follow what he did wrong. He said something about "palming" it. Did he entirely miss sanding some parts of the bumper? If he did get them, just did it wrongly, what exactly did he do wrong that we can avoid?

He just failed to sand in some "nooks and crannies" and of course the new paint flaked off the areas that were not sanded.

I have seen that car "in the flesh" and I can tell you that it isn't cleaver camera angles or lighting that make it look good. It really does look good. I had to hunt to find any brush marks. There are a few but they're hard to find. And, remember that's without any final sanding and polishing. If he wanted to go to the additional effort of sanding and polishing, the finish could be near show quality.

Another q. I don't have a garage, so I'm doing this outdoors. It's supposed to thunder storm later today. Should I put a tarp over the coat I put down earlier today? (coat #4)

Hey guys, long time follower, first time poster. I recently sanded down the rear half of car, I started with a whipe over of all the panels with goo-gone( a common household solvent) and soap and water. After I was satisfied with the clean, I sanded with 100, 150, 220, 320 and finally 400. It felt pretty smooth. I washed it down with smelly mineral spirits and then let it dry for 45 minutes. Since I had quite a bit of filler,I then rolled on a layer of rustoleum, clean metal primer (white colored stuff). I rolled it on with a 9" roller for some odd reason, it was just what I had around and it had a black foam cover thing on it. This was ultimately not the best idea as it gave it quite a bit of texture and was hard to maneuver. However, I saw no drips and the orange peel was very easy to deal with. I was satisfied with my result even though several places I had accidentally sanded down to bear metal when sanding down some more bondo I had put over the primer and then covered with rattlecan filler primer. So yesterday, I had cleaned the car and whipped down my panels with odor MS. Letting these dry for roughly half an hour, I mixed my rustoleum black *came in a quart* with mineral spirits till it seemed to be about the thickness of water *It ended up being about 60% mineral spirits*. I then rolled it onto my car with a 4 inch high-density roller. Instantly, I noticed a TON of bubbles which I needed to blow on very very hard to pop. So I tried chasing it with a 3" black foam brush. First thing I noticed were brush marks from the brush, it seemed to push the paint around too much and the primer underneath was exposed. It looked bad. So I decided not to chase it and see if I could just pop these bubbles with my roller, just rolling back over them with my roller. The roller seemed to even the paint out a bit but still left plenty of bubbles. This annoys me like crazy but I figured the bubbles would pop and self level. Well they did pop, but they seemed to leave thicker spots of paint around them so now it looks very blotchy. I also noticed I have tons of runs. In sanding out the runs and bubbles, I wetsanded with 400 grit like I did on the primer coat. This seems to cut quickly through the paint around the imperfections. it took a long time to get through the drips and bubbles and often cut straight through to the factory paint. I was using a block for most of this sanding. Also, the paint is not very even at all but seems to be alot better on verticle panels like my rear fenders rather than the hood lid. Any suggestions? I'm thinking thicker paint, any other ideas? Thanks for the help!

Paint/spirits ratio is a moving target based on humidity and temperature. Just guessing I'd say you've got too much paint on the roller. You're not looking for coverage but rather super thin translucent coats. Can take 6 coats or more to get even color and good coverage. Lots of runs is my clue that you're not squeezing enough paint out of the roller before application.

I kinda liked the advice someone here gave, to pretend that the paint costs $1000 an ounce, and make it your goal to use as little as possible and still get complete coverage.

My problem that I was always trying to get the maximum amount of paint down without it dripping, but that's definitely the wrong way to approach it.

Are you sure you wanna use black? That color is the most unforgiving there is. If you have any imperfections, they're gonna really stand out.

You paint looks like it's going on similar to how mine did:

I have a sneaking feeling that this might be caused by too much mineral spirits. I know that paint and MS try to separate when you mix them initially. Why should this stop happening once the mix is applied with a roller?

I would try a mix with less mineral spirits or even no mineral spirits at at all on a test patch and see what happens.