I've given this a roller thing a shot and, although it scared the (enter your choice of words) out of me, I am starting to get the hang of it.

I'm working with a Dynasty/Imperial project (my cardomain page should be in my sig if I've figured out how to use this forum software correctly). Really long story short, its a mutt made from a combination of Dynasty, New Yorker, and Imperial parts. I would consider myself experienced when taking about fiberglass work and fiberglass fabrication, as you can see from the pics this is not a normal imperial front end (that's just what I used to start with).

I had originally intended to do this car in flat black, using rustoleum flat black rattle cans. But I had a lot of problems getting proper coverage with the spry cans of flat black, it was flashing dry so fast that it wasn't leveling and was just looking like crud. I then tried wet sanding it smooth... that made it worse (if I had known about the 1st of these roller threads I'd have known about the probs of wetsanding flat paints!).

So, in frustration I basically said the heck with this and painted the car using rattle cans of primer black. It was cheap, it didn't look completely terrible... and I could make it a nice dark flat black by taking a rag of oil to it. Problem was, its very porous so it isn't good for a daily driver, it couldn't be kept clean, and it isn't UV-friendly. Within 6 months my primer black turned into primer gray!

I thought about the blitz black since they carry that in spry cans but I have read that too is porous, and I need something that won't rust my car out.

Well, in hearing about this I decided to try it, but using satin black. I've read through the first 1.6 threads, that far into it I didn't see that anyone had tried this yet.

My results actually weren't bad. I am using ordorless mineral spirits and in mixes ranging from 1/1 to 1/4 (mineral spirits/paint), and haven't found anything particularly different between such extreme ranges of mineral spirits. However if I go thicker than 1/4 I do find myself having problems with the texture (bad orange peel texture), and if I go thinner than 50/50 I have problems in getting the paint under control (runs etc).

It took some experimenting for me to figure out how to do this, the first coat I tried (just on the front of the car) was so bad I really started to wonder if I had just made a mistake in attempting it, orange peel & runs like I'd never seen on a car before. My observation was, that the first 1-2 coats no matter how I did it, or what part of the car I did it to, would look absolutely disgusting. But every subsequent coat after that would make it look more and more presentable and by the 3rd & 4th coat I had a "10 foot" paint job.

Now, unlike the people I've been reading in these threads who are trying to go glossy or "wet", I don't want that at all. I want satin black, no clear coat, no "wet" look, and most importantly I want texture. So I am not wet sanding down to perfectly smooth, in fact the only prep work I have done between coats so far is in sanding out rogue runs, and using a tact cloth to remove any pollen/dirt. The question becomes "can i get the final coat good enough to where i can simply polish/wax it, and have it look the way I want?" The short answer is yes, I've been able to get my hood and roof to look the way I want the whole car to look (roof only has 2 coats, hood 4- no sanding outside of removing runs between coats!).

In these pics you'll see the car looks "better" the closer you get to the front of the car, and the worse the farther back you look- thats because I have been painting 1 section at a time, and the rear only has 1 coat, the front has 4- everything between that has something within that range.









Mind you the car is not finished, my quarter panels are removed, the rockers aren't painted, and the green hue is from all the pollen (its spring). But for no wet sanding, and just minor removal of occasional runs- I am liking what I see. I am not perfectly satisfied with the doors or rear pillars, too many runs I need to take out. But the texture of the rest is close to what I am looking for.

I went and compared it to my neighbor's car, which has a professional satin black $5k paintjob (no clear, and textured) and its comparable only mine has more "mistakes" (small runs here and there I need to fix, a couple areas have more of an orange peel texture). I think that someone -could- get a show car satin black paintjob this way, the question would be how many coats it would take them to put down a final coat without any errors (as there would be NO room for error with a paint you can't wet sand).

If this weren't a daily driver, I would have probably disassembled more, I probably would have fixed the front pass door (has a dent) but, I am really just waiting until I find a rust free dent-less door so I can replace it instead of trying to bondo something that can be cheaply found at a upullit.

I was surprised how much paint this would take, I assumed since I was thinning 25-50%, I would get more out of it. But I am getting about 1 coat of the whole car out of 1 quart can of satin black. Its also next to impossible to find, only one rustoleom dealer around me had it!

You can see how much better it looks than faded primer black (picture is from 1st test application, rums & peel everywhere b/c I didn't know what I was doing yet):


I think it would be a decent paintjob by the time I'm around 6-8 coats, as there are still some low spots (i.e. the picture of the roof).

I am not convinced I'd do this to a high dollar show car, but for my application its great. I gotta wonder if anyone would want to try the roller method only without as much work (less worrying about runs or orange peel) to give it that "old school rat rod" feel to it. After all, its not like rat rod builders originally had all the high tech spry tools & paints that people are using today to build rat rods ....