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How long do you reckon it will take me to strip my entire car off to bare metal with the power sander (home depot minimum rental time is 4 hours, would I be able to strip to abre metal by that time)?




I dunno... but all things considered, I would probably just go to Walmart or Canadian Tire and buy a decent quality sander. If you 'rent' a unit you are going to be working 'under the gun' and constantly checking your watch. Buy a decent unit and its one of those tools that you will always find future uses for ( sanding furniture, powersanding walls, woodworking projects etc ) And in a worst case scenario ( not that I want to promote anyone doing anything unethical... ) you can run that powersander you buy 20 hours a day on your project for weeks AND if it should just happen to die, well Walmart and Canadian Tire are pretty friendly about giving you a refund for a burned out unit. But a decent powersander is the kind of tool that you will get many years of good use out of... ( its in the same category as having screwdrivers, socket sets and vice grips )

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Also from your previous post, if i strip to bare metal...I jsut want to confirm, I only need one coat of primer after that right?




You only need one coat of primer IF you are satisfied that it has given 100% coverage to the metal below and that it has produced a fairly smooth surface or one that can be wetsanded to make even smoother. The main benefit of going to 2 coats of primer is to guarantee your sealing of the metal surface from oxygen getting through to it. Also a 2nd coating of primer guarantees that you have a sufficient build of primer that you can do a thorough wet sanding to maximize the smoothness of the surface. As previously noted... the key to the best finished product begins with the smoothness of the surface that you are painting on. The smoother the beginning surface, the shinier and better finish you will get as you add on the coats of paint and when you get to the final polishing, waxing and buffing.

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I also noticed your in Canada, so I'm assuming you've used tremclad to pull this "50 dollar paint job" off. I went to homedepot but they only had the "rust paint" series. Is this is the series I should be using because I have read previous pages and apparently they need to be acrylic/enamel (or have it written on the tub somewhere). Where exactly do I check to see if it is acrylic/enamel, or is the rust paint series the wrong series I am looking at?



The Tremclad paint is a rust paint, just like the Rustoleum is a rust paint. The stuff you find at HomeDepot, Loews, Canadian Tire, Reno, Walmart, etc are the ones we have been using.

There are different 'qualities' of Tremclad/Rustoleum, where you have the standard issue stuff and the 'Professional Grade' stuff... and I think there is even a 'Marine Grade', 'Farm Grade' and an 'Industrial Grade'. Basically all these variations are the same thing and follow the same rules and processes as the 'standard issue' Tremclad/Rustoleum. Possibly the only advantage to the more premium versions of Tremclad/Rustoleum is that they 'might' have a higher concentration of color pigment. IF SO the theory would be that they would give faster color coverage when you are painting. Possibly the more premium versions may also have a little something different that might give them better color fastness, or UV protection or resiliancy. But I would suggest that if you are interested in getting those kind of benefits guaranteed, then you might as well jump over to Brightside paint by Interlux and enjoy the benefits of a polyurathane

BUT just to confirm, I began with the Tremclad, but after four or so coats I made the change over to Brightside and just started using it over the initial Tremclad coats. I found that the Brightside had better coverage AND as such I used it to reduce the number of overall layers or coatings that I would have to do if I had stayed with Tremclad. ( also I wanted the additional advantages of the polyurathane, compared to the enamel ).

I have read of people who have painted cars using acrylics and laquers... but neither are really suitable for this 'roll on' painting method. And frankly I don't think the average Joe can really do a paint shop quality job using either of them. However, on small projects, like a motorbike's gas tank or fender, I suspect anyone could work wonders with them given enough time, sweat and effort. One problem with acrylics and laquers is that they don't tend to flex and don't have much forgiveness when chipped by road gravel etc.

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Last edited by Marq; 04/29/08 01:49 AM.