I have a choice of painters to shoot a truck I am working on. One is a standard body shop that uses Sikkens, and the other is a guy that has a shop behind his house that uses Sherwin-Williams AVX waterborne. He swears it's the shiznit as far as paint goes. Sherwin-Williams has never had a great reputation with their solvent paints, but not sure on this new stuff.

I've been in the collision trade forever, but have not been around any waterborne paints before. The guy that has the AVX system works at the local Navy base as a painter, and that is what they use. The biggest advantage to using the guy with the waterborne is it can get done quickly if I do all the prepping, plus he is much closer.

The body shop is a typical body shop where the bread and butter collision stuff gets put ahead of big resto jobs, I know I work there.

Are conventional primers compatible with waterborne paints?

Waterborne paints have been slowly improving, and have been required in SoCal for awhile now. I live in Northern CA, and although they are being used here, they are not required exclusively as in Los Angeles. The traditional solvent based stuff is a proven method that is still legal to use. I don't believe that there is any advantage in quality to using the waterborne. Cleanup of the equipment is obviously easier, but beyond that, I don't see the reason to use the new stuff until the EPA Nazis mandate it.

around here all the bigger shops are using WB paint. it lays on very nice like a factory oe paint job.
color choices can be a bit slim though as not all the 60-70's colors formulations have or will be converted over to waterbourne

my 2 cents is use waterborne if your painter is experienced with it. dont watch him paint though, you will think its the wrong color coming out of the gun.

The truck is a 71 Chevy (no it's not mine! LOL), but is going an '09 Ford color. So, color shouldn't be a problem. I wonder how the waterborne buffs out. I have heard from another body man that the clear has very little orange peel. But like I said, I have never seen any results of waterborne.

Yeah... One consideration I forgot to mention: If the painter has converted to using Water based stuff exclusively, It will be more inconvenient to stick with solvent stuff. The ventilation in Paint booths for Waterborne painting requires a cross flow air pattern as opposed to the standard "DownDraft" design for the old stuff. None of that matters to me though. I have painted about 20 cars over the past 15 years, always in a standard garage with a K-mart fan in the window. It sounds hillbilly, but since it has been customary to cut and buff after clearcoat anyways, a few specks of dust almost always gets sanded out of the final finish.

I've shot half a dozen cars in my garage back in the day just as you described, usually with Centari, but that was in the 80's. I've never even picked up a gravity feed gun.

I believe the guy is strictly set up for waterborne because he didn't even want to discuss anything else.

If that stuff is anything like the water based floor finish we used on a gymnasium, you will be redoing it in a couple of years. Stuff just flaked off. We went back to oil based finish. Much better and tougher.

My local paint supplier said that you are supposed to use standard solvent based clearcoat over the base coat, water based OR solvent. With that, I would hope that the water based stuff has better adhesion! Who wants to strip off all the clear and paint in a few years when any possible durability problems pop up. Remember the EPA idiots that thought that MTBE was a suitable additive in gasoline, only to find later that it was toxic to the water supply?

With the advent of waterborne auto paints you will begin to see guys painting cars in there garage with a Graco airless house painting sprayer.

Stick with the solvent based.
Especially when you are talking Sherwin Williams....I would not use solvent or water from them personally.

PPG water-based is the best out there right now anyway.But stay with solvent based.

Airless sprayer... whats wrong with that? Home Depot can mix colors and the price is right.

i am a pro painter with 30 years experience with PPG products.
i have only went to school to learn about waterborne paint. the dealer where i work at won't switch over to water based base coat until we move into our new shop that is in the planning stages.
a few things i learned in school. water based paint actually drys as fast than solvent based paint with the proper equipment is used. water base paint is VERY thin so you must prep your primer to 600 grit or finer. it has very good adhesion so flaking shouldn't be a problem. you should use a water based pre-cleaner for best results. water based paint is very corrosive so you can't paint over any bare metal spots, so using a sealer before painting is recommended. also you should use a gun made for water based paint. you can't wet sand it. if you get big chunks of dirt in the base you must wipe off the paint and start over on the panel. you spray solvent based clear coat on top of the base coat.
things i have heard from other painters is it requires some getting used to. the color match is very good with the newer paints. it blends much easier than solvent based paint. gun clean up is more complicated than with solvent paint. after everything is over you will get a nicer looking paint job with the water based paint a than solvent based job due to less dye back.