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I do have a question about roller pressure. I saw where you should go over it with just the weight of the roller after laying the paint but how hard to you press the roller when applying the paint. It makes a big difference on how thick the paint is.





The question of 'how much pressure to apply' during the initial rolling or the followup bubbble popping roll is kind of hard to quantify or describe in text. It is a technique that you will develop on your own BASED on how things have gone during the course of your painting.

For myself, the trick is to not overload the roller with paint. It's not like painting a wall in your house with housepaint where you load up the roller and repeatedly go over it to spread the surplus paint on the wall. With the car, the trick is to load the roller and then unload a lot of it by repeatedly rolling it off IN THE TRAY before putting the roller on your car body.

With the car roll on paint job, you are adding only a thin layer each time. And so you apply enough pressure to transfer the paint from the roller on to the car body. What you are trying to avoid is glopping on so much paint that you start getting lines of paint on the body from where the paint tends to spread to the two ends of the roller ( where it lays on a thicker amount of paint ).

The lines that you describe happen when a little too much pressure is being applied ( as it is forcing the paint on the roller to the outer edges of the roller ).

You know you are applying too much pressure when you are getting too many bubbles. That is because the air pockets in the foam roller are being squeezed out with the paint when you are pushing down too much on the roller. Since you are not having much problem at this point with bubbles, we can assume your paint to mineral spirit ratio is probably good.

But because you are getting lines, you may be overloading the roller just a bit too much or still applying a little more pressure then you need.

IF you notice you are getting lines ( caused by the outer edged of the roller ), you have two things to keep in mind.

a ) when loading up the roller ( and then unloading the excess in the paint tray ) tilt the roller and apply a little extra pressure on each end of the roller to try to lessen the amount of paint that is gathered on the two ends of the roller.

b ) if lines happen, try to go over the area and 'work out those lines' by gently going over and over the spot to spread the concentration of paint out more. The trick here is to know when to NOT keep working over an area. Its cool to nail it in the first 20 or 30 seconds... the paint is still fresh and workable. But once the fresh layer started to cure it could lead to elephant skin if you try to work it too long.

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And while I am typing, the center of the shell is getting roller over-lap which makes it darker, will that go away as I get more paint on?






As the layers of paint 'add up', the overall paint job will finally reach a point where the maximum level of pigment on the body or panel is achieved. Once it reaches that point the car will have reached one uniform color overall. IF one area looks a little darker then the rest at the early stages or early coats, that is nothing to worry about.

I would worry if it was still noticable by the time you have six, seven or eight layers on.


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Lessons learned, I paint outside because there is a lot less dust there (at least on a nice calm day like today). But yesterday's coat that I put on in the garage had a fair amount of dust and crap in the paint even tho I washed down the garage as best as I could--too much junk to fire hose it .

Regardless of how the truck turns out, the shell is going to far outshine my loftiest expectaions!
john



I think the one thing people always have to do is to burn into their memory exactly how the project looked when it began. That is why it is a valuable reminder to oneself of exactly how things WERE.

For some reason people's brains are odd. Our brains are designed to 'fill in the blanks' and a memory of a rusto or primered vehicle or faded vehicle sometimes fade as we apply more fresh paint on to the project.

The happiest users of the roll on paint job are usually the folks who know exactly where their vehicle 'started from'. They are able to step back from their project at the end and appreciate the degree to just how much better the vehicle is 'today' compared to when it started.

So hopefully at the end of your project, you will end up with results that are equal to that of a lot of the other folks that have posted up their pictures in this message thread.

And the one thing that should give you confidence in your effort is that most of your fellow users started out at the very same point as you in this rollon technique.

Just be sure to put patience in your tool box. That will be the single biggest asset you can bring to the project. I took my time with my car... because I knew that in the end whatever I put on the car was going to be there a long time ( or else in a disaster scenario I was going to have to spend money to rip it all off and have it sprayed at a body shop ). Since shelling out big bucks to the bodyshop was not going to be possible, I took my time to get each layer as good as I could.

I guess you could say that the time you spend being picky with each layer will hopefully pay for itself with a finished product that will look good for the next couple of years.

One of the most valuable things you can do for yourself during the project is to start looking at other cars paint jos. Whether it be a brand new car sitting on a dealer's lot or some car parked next to you at the shopping mall. Soon you will have an eagle eye at spotting just how crappy even factory or body shop paint jobs really are. Fish eyes, uneven paint concentrations, areas with more shine then others.

Our problem with our projects is that we literally are working one or two feet away from our work. We see every flipping hair, bit of dust or tiny bug that lands on our paint job ahhahhaha. We tend to see every tree in the forest and it becomes hard to step back at just appreciate the entire forest. But once you start staring with an eagle eye at everyone elses 'tree' ( the cars on the dealers lot or in the parking lot or on the road ) you soon begin to appreciate that your 'tree' is equal to or better than that other guy's tree. And at that point you can also begin to appreciate how good your forest or overall paint job looks.

Actually, one benefit of doing a roll your own paint job is that you do become really good at spotting the defects or imperfections on 'real paint jobs'. I often found myself pointing out in disgust to my wife just how shoddy the paint jobs were on vehicles sitting in new car showrooms ( where you would figure that that brand new factory paint job should be the ultimate level of perfection to be envied ).

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Last edited by Marq; 12/14/07 07:09 AM.