What do you think of my paint job?

[st0878]

I have a new found respect for anyone that works in the auto body business. I've been sanding on my old z for 2 months and just when I thought I had everything right I sprayed the color. It looked like shat! So I sanded for another month. I read an article on block sanding and the guy claims that he's been sanding for 30 years and stated he was either an expert or just stupid! I would classify him as mentally deranged! SANDING SUCKS.......but as they say "a good paint job is in the prep work" and I can now say from experience that painting a car is easy but it truly is the prep work that counts!! As the master of shortcuts I can tell you there are none in painting. Anyway, here it is 2005 350z liquid silver WV2. :knockedou

http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=14465&sort=1&cat=500&page=1

[SuperDave]

<img src="http://www.ciaramoonnewfoundland.com/files/Drool.JPG" width="463" height="347">

[hls30.com]

ruf-er, nuf said!

Will

[Palmer]

What grit sandpaper did you use and what type of power sanders did you need? Speed? How many different types of hand sanders did you have to 'make' to get to the odd corners???

Thanks

[dogma420]

Awesome looking Zed! Glad you shared your pictures....please share more information so when I do the process I will get my car looking like yours!

Have a Zed ful day!

[Zrush]

Ed your Z does look good. Scott lowered his car almost 2 inches to go with that aerokit. Funny how that 350Z color looks soooooooo much better on an early Z. Can't wait to see it next year at ZFest.

Vicky

[Marty Rogan]

Vicky,

You took the words right out of my mouth! This color looks way better on an early Z than a 350Z. I like the body kit too. Anything to get rid of those huge 280Z bumpers!

Very nice job!

Marty

[st0878]

Keeping in mind that I have never painted a car before, I learned allot real fast! First of all there isn't pnuematic or electric tool that provides any significant aid in preping your car. 90% of all the body work turned out to be manual labor. I started by using chemical strippers to take the car down to the metal. I did this for three reasons, first I was changing colors, second it had been painted twice before and finally I wanted to treat the metal and properly seal it for rust. I used Aircraft stripper available at AutoZone by the gallon. Once down to the metal I used Phosphoric acid to etch the metal and neutralize any flash rusting. I did have some areas where rust had eaten all the way through the metal. I had invested a couple of hundred dollars in a mig welder with the intention of cutting out rusting areas and welding in good metal. Unfortunetly, it's not that easy. Welding is fricking hard, metal warps, and sheet metal burns through easily. Not that it can't be done, it can't be done with a cheap gassless welder. I used POR 15 to treat problematic areas like under the cowel, on the frame under the front fender etc., but I don't think that POR 15 is an appropriate base for other paints. It dries so smooth that nothing will stick to it. It does have it's place and does work very well in certian areas. Anyway after I had the car down to the metal I sprayed the metal with epoxy primer. Epoxy primer does not cover scratched metal or provide any real fill characteristics but it does provide an excellent seal over bare metal. Now I have to tell you that while I was stripping the car I found allot of bondo that I never had any idea existed. Both of my doors had damage that was very well hidden. Short of buying new doors, there was little I could do but to refill the dents. After 30 years, probably all of your major surfaces are showing some sort of waves and distortions.

Fist of all let me say that it took me about two months to strip, sand and paint the car. I NEVER want to sand anything again. How anyone can do this for a living overwhelms me! But it's your Z and you want it to come out nice right? Anyway, starting with the bondo I would fill the area with bondo and use 24 grit sand paper like a rasp just to get the bondo down to closer to the metal. I had read an article on long boarding that said to use the roughest sand paper as long as you can to get the area flat. The theory is that the smoother the sand paper, the more it tends to round the edges. 24 grit is a bit extream, but it sure saves some time getting the bondo down to where your almost to the metal. Then I would switch to 50 grit to get the 24 grit scratches out and bring the bondo down to where you see your starting to hit metal in the surrounding areas. Then I switched to 100 grit to get it soother then went to 220 grit on the final pass. After I had the all the bondo work done on the door I took some of the 2 part glazing compond and put a very thin coat of glaze on the entire panel then sanded the panel using 220 grit with a long sanding board. This helped create that perfectly flat look across the entire panel. In fact I glazed the top and sides of the fenders to achieve that flat look as well. I found that glazing and long boarding provided the best results for leveling out wavy panels. After you have the panel(s) that you are sanding to where you think they are perfect spray them with a darker primer real lightly, and then take some 500 grit sand paper on a long board and look for high and low spots. You will be amazed at how many high and low spots that you find. Correct as necessary. After you have the panels flat, use a 2k build primer and spray the entire car. Wet sand the primer to a smooth sheen before thinking of sprating your base color. 2k build will fill minor imperfections, sanding scratches. Watch those sanding scratches because they really show through. The surface must be absolutely smooth before you paint. I painted my entire car and realized how many mistakes that I had made. I had to wet sand the entire car again as a punishment for my impatience. Luckely I had more than enough paint!

Ok so I was ready to spray the color base coat (again). Spraying paint is the easy part. I put like two coats of base color let it dry and inspected the surface. I quickly wet sanded the entire car with 1000 grit. Only sand in one direction because I had read that somewhere and I changed directions a few times and it will show after clear coat the car. It only takes a few hours. If you have anywhere that you sanded through the color you will need to spray again. MAKE SURE that you spray the edges of doors, around the edge of the trunk. I'm finding that my paint in these areas to be very thin. Keep in mind that you will be having second thoughts if you chose the right color or not because the car will look like sh%$#. It WILL look different once you put the clear coat on and you get it out in the sun (especially metalics). When you think your ready spray a couple coats of clear go at it. Leave the room and come back in an hour or so. Now study all surface areas and determine if you did a good job of not. If you are finding fish eyes or orange peel like I did then stop and the next day you can take some 1000grit and wet sand the problem areas. I sprayed 1 or 2 more coats where I had sanded. After I had finished with the clear, the next day I began to wet sand the entire car. I used 1000 grit going in one direction, squeegyed it off and look to see if you see any shiny spots. Keep sanding until you have a smooth dull sheen. Then switch to 1500grit and sand the area again. Break out the buffer with some 3m fine cut compond and see how it shines! I probably spent about $500 in paint and chemicals. If you count my labor, pain and suffering tack on another $40,000 dollars. Have fun! :lick:

[Palmer]

Thanks Ed. I can invest the time into stripping the paint and 'dent erasing' but I may be a little hesitant on the paint aspect of things. Never done anything like that but I'm pretty good at picking up things the first time. I've got a two car garage that I don't park in, it only houses the Z so I've got room. I don't know if I want to hang up tarps everywhere to make a 'paint room' so to speak. But just for s$!ts and giggles, how much did your paint spraying hardware cost? I'm not worried about the cost of the paint but what did you pay for a sprayer, compressor, nozzles??? I know a good paint job is going to cost me upwards of $2000 to $2500. But, ya got me thinking...wondering what the cost of the sprayer, compressor, nozzle types would be? Aye?

[SuperDave]

Very nice, detailed how-to. Much appreciated. It was printed out and stuck in my "Body and Paint" file.

I'm about a month into stripping my Zed. It has taken me a lot of time learning the best techniques for the aircraft stripper and the sander. I've found that when you don't have a lot of bondo on a spot, you can "reuse" the stripper. Scrape it after 15 minutes or so, then smooth the used stripper/paint mush back over the spots that need more work and scrape it again in another 15 minutes. Keep doing this without letting it get dried out and the stripper goes a long way.

I've taken the roof and rear quarters down to bare metal and I think I'll be glad I did. The curious thing is that there was lots of bondo here and there, but when you put a coat of primer over the bare metal, it looks pretty smooth. Why did they need so much bondo? There was tons of bondo running from front to back on each side of the hood, but when I took it all off, it looked pretty nice underneath. I guess the true test will be when I paint a guide coat of primer and start looking for those low spots.

Did you paint in your garage? I have a 10x20' canopy kit and am considering building a paint booth like this guy's: http://www.wendels.com/55chevy/booth_constuction.htm

SD

[st0878]

Dispite what all the purist say, you don't need a Nasa like environment to paint your car! Yes you may and I did get some dust in the paint but if your color sanding it's not a big problem. Moreover, anyone can do it and it will cost you considerably less. That being said you cannot fathom the amount of hard is work involved. Im an unrealistic optimist and thought I could do it in 2 weeks. I suppose you could if your metal is perfect and depending on how much help you have. Plan on your car being being down for 30-60 days with every afternoon and weekend dedicated to the project.

I have a simple 33 gallon Craftsman 7 hp compressor that I paid $300 for and a $60 HVLP spray gun that bought at Harbor Freight. You will also need a mask, mine was like $30 or something. HF also carries bulk sand paper which the more you have the better, considering that you will be changing out sand paper about every 2 minutes. If you don't have the cash you can do what I did and buy everything you need over a few months.

The problem with smaller tanks like mine is that they are depleating and replenishing the air in the tank more than a larger tank. The expansion and contraction of the tank causes water to form after 20-30 minutes it starts to show up at the gun. Water at the gun creates fish eye (bad!) and coagulation of the paint in the gun. Fish eye causes an innie type of spot in the paint and not an outtie like dust (these are technical terms here!).....very hard to fix without going all the way down to the color. I used a decsicant filter that I bought at ....guess where HF (they rock!). I used the following supplies:

2 Omni qts of Epoxy primer (used all)

2 Omni qts of 2k build primer (used all)

1 Omni gallon of color base (only used half)

2 Omni gallons of reducer (used 1 1/2)

1 Omni gallon of cleaner (used all)

1 gallon of Delta clear (only used half)

Various hardners that come with each type of paint.

2 tack rags

15 Mixing/measuring cups

1 qt of Ice 2 part glazing compond.

sqeegy

Wet sanding block

11" and 17" sanding board

1 pk of 24 grit (20 sheets)

2 pk of 50 grit (20 sheets)

1 pk of 100 grit (20 sheets)

1 pk of 220 grit (20 sheets)

1 pk of 500 grit (20 sheets)

1 pk of 1000 grit (4 sheets)

1 pk of 1500 grit (4 sheets)

inline air filter

inline decsicant filter

1 gal aircraft stripper

butload of wirewheels

1 qt of POR 15

1 gal of phosphoric acid

2 cans of 3m Rubberized under coating (most excellent product!)

Find a good paint shop where they have the time to help you. If they roll their eyes at you when they realize you don't know what your doing then find another source. There are also some very experienced members on this site like EScanlon that have years of experience and are always willing to help!