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Anyone use a primer that did work?



It's kind of funny. On my 'car of many primers' I literally used a number of primers... The initial camoflauge primer was a six pack of black spray primers I bought at an 'automotive paint jobber'. This was done to give the car one unified color.

This is the 'primer' the poor little Mustang sat in for almost three years because I couldn't afford to shell out the $3500 that the body shops wanted to smooth my primer and lay down some real paint.

When I found this message thread and chose to go this 'roller route' I sanded down all the wooly primer to a smooth surface and resprayed another brand of aerosol primer over any spots where I had oversanded. But again, this spray primer came from an automotive 'paint jobber'.

When I made the decision in midstream to go from Tremclad/Rustoleum over to Brightside - I bought the official 'roll on' primer sold by Interlux that goes with the Brightside paint.

I have a few thoughts about the problem some people may experience with the 'DupliColor' aerosol primer. First off I don't trust the Duplicolor paint and so I would probably have never taken a can of their primer.

I think the problem with Duplicolor is the 'carrier' they use in their paint and probably in their primer as well.

I remember in the past where I would have a road chip on one of my cars, where I wanted to just 'touch up' the road chip. I would spray the aerosol into the cap, swish it around in the cap to evaporate and thicken the paint - and then use a cotton swab to dip into the paint and drop just a drop of the paint into the road chip.

Most folks who have done that will know exactly what I am about to say. WHEN the drop of paint was placed in the road chip, it would literally eat and WRINKLE the old paint on the edges of the road chip. It never would smoothly blend in.

So I guess I learned from practical experience a long time ago that DupliColor can have adverse effects on the original paint - or even on other brands of primer.

The problems some people may experience with Duplicolor may also relate somehow to the surface preparation they did prior to spraying on the Duplicolor primer. If the Duplicolor primer is separating from the subsurface then either :

a) there was an adverse reaction between the Duplicolor and the subsurface paint or primer.. OR

b ) the subsurface was not properly prepared to receive that primer coat.

For my money... if I was to paint another car tomorow.... I would go exclusively with the Interlux roll on Primer. The stuff goes on THICK ( which helps to cut down on a lot of the little pinhole or scratches ) and helps gives you a better shot at achieving a SMOOTH surface. Most areosol primers are THIN AS H3LL and cannot do that.

There are more solids in the Brightside primer and so it gives the car body one unified surface color upon which to start laying your paint on.

In the case of the Tremclad/Rustoleum painters, much has been said about the merits of avoiding the primer stage and going straight to the paint stage. Afterall, the Tremclad/Rustoleum is designed to be painted directly on to metal etc. So if you skip the primer stage, the initial coats of Tremclad/Rustoleum can serve as the 'primer' coat.

In some cases the same can be said for the Brightside paint... where you can bypass the primer stage and go straight to the paint stage.

I think you have to weigh your decision about whether you do a primer stage, based on just how much patching and work was done on the body panel.

- Lots of bondo... then primer will probably be needed.

- If you are just scuffing an otherwise decent paint job ( albeit flat or simply doing a color change ) ... you should be able to bypass the primer stage and go straight to paint.

- If you have a car with multiple colored panels ( a Frankenstein car like my McLaren was ) then a primer is a worthwhile investment just to unify the color of the sub-surface that you will be painting on.

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