Painting a car yourself

Does anyone know if window seals are something that can be cut to size or do I need to find ones that were made for this specific vehicle? The seals are pretty rotted out and I was thinking about replacing them. Also do I need to remove all the body panels and paint them while they're off the car or can I leave them attached? And those booth rentals are just popup tents that are delivered to your house, right?

It's gonna look 9000 times better and not cost much more if you buy an HVLP sprayer and a gallon or two of paint rather than use a shitton of rattlecans.

Do you have to remove the tape while the paint is still wet every coat or will it pull away cleanly if allowed to dry on the tape?

>came out all right

Do the airless ones work alright or should I rent a compressor?

>ot
>came out all right
>got high off the fumes

Lost a few brain cells doing that one I take it?

>$100 for paint, primer, and tape
>the thing was a mix of bondo, fiberglass, rust, and 3 different primers

Ya, id say alright for what i did. Couldve been much better, but it shined pretty well on a sunny day and looked good as it drove by.

>after typing this i realized i typed all right instead of alright...
Fuck.

I hate typing on mobile. I constantly fuck things up.

Yes it will and you'll have to buy a shit ton of paint cans if your tight on cash tape it up do all the sanding your self and have it done at macco or some place it'll be cheaper and look better

This is basically what I want to do. I think I'm going to invest in a nice HPLV sprayer though for two reasons. Number one, I think it may add enough value to the resale price of the vehicle to pay for itself and number two, I would possibly be able to use this to paint furniture and cars for people in the future to make a little extra money.

Definitely rent a compressor.

How would it be cheaper? How much does maaco charge? It's 19 feet long so not exactly a small vehicle. I can't imagine any scenario where a business would charge less than it would cost for me to buy all the tools I need to do it myself.

>>got high off the fumes

>tfw not wearing glasses and accidentally read

>got high off the furries

Alright, It looks like home depot will rent one for $55 a day which is pretty reasonable. Now I just need to figure out how much a spray booth costs to rent and where to find one.

>I can't imagine any scenario where a business would charge less than it would cost for me to buy all the tools I need to do it myself.
I can: painting a car. You can do all the prep yourself but have the color shot in a booth. The two most important things you need for doing a paint job quickly and without spending too much time on it are experience and cleanliness, which you can't buy or have without a booth.

back in the earl scheib days a two door would cost about $200 and for a few hundred more you could get nice paint and a nice clear coat. All the cost is in taping and sanding, spraying a prepped car doesn't take or cost all that much.

Does anyone know what type of primer and paint I should use to paint the fiberglass top?

So if I tape and plastic it off, strip it and fill in the dents with bondo and get it sanded down real good it will be cheap to have primed and painted then? Might just do that, might buy a sprayer and rent a booth and compressor and give a shot myself just for the learning experience, we'll see.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Nothing will be cheap no matter what you do. That's why you don't see lots of old shitboxes with nice paintjobs. There's no shortcut, it's a lot of work and money to paint a car. Take a community college bodywork/refinishing class, that's how I learned, plus then you don't need to rent any equipment.

Well it seems I can buy a bottle of paint stripper, strip all my paint, then spray paint a guide coat and sand it to find the low spots and fill in any imperfections with bondo and buy a few blocks and hand sand the thing using progressively finer grit sandpaper. This should all be cheap if I do it myself, right? If I can rent a booth and compressor for a day for under a couple hundred bucks then that should also be cheap. I think it's more work than most people are willing to do but I've got time.

That's the cheapest way to get a decent job i paint for a living the tools you'll need to do the job right are expensive this iwata i just bought cost around 400 new and the orbital sander will be a pretty penny two it's much cheaper to just pay someone else if it's not your trade

And all that money is going to be more expensive and you won't get as good a finish because you don't have the experience

maybe you should've bought one with good paint already faggot. you need to pay a professional or it's going to look like shit.

You're missing multiple steps there. After you strip the paint you need to DA ($150 and need air compressor) down the surface for a primer to mechanically adhere. You'll need filler ($50) to deal with any dents, and possibly a set of hammers ($30). After that you need to shoot an epoxy primer and a few coats of high build primer (need booth + $300 for cost of both primers). THEN you can spray a guide coat and start blocking the car down ($50 for various blocks and sandpaper). Chances are you'll have high and low spots that will require glazing putty ($30), and end up needing to shoot another coat of high build, then blocking one last time. Then you are ready for either single stage or base/clear (minimum $300 for paint supplies).

All in all you will be in the booth minimum 3 times (not cheap if you can even rent a booth at all), more if you shoot the jambs, you need two different spray guns for primer/color/clear, I didn't even count the cost of masking tape/paper, filters, other consumables. I would estimate absolute minimum $2000 if you use cheap primer/paint, and the job is going to turn out terrible because you have no practice. Either you need to take classes or have someone else do it.

This so much this your in way over your head bro trust us we ain't trying to be assholes about it we're just trying to save you your money

I've been painting houses for 2 years although I work with a roller and brush mostly so this seems like a logical area to expand into. I've used a sprayer to paint furniture before but I don't own one myself. I'm thinking about buying a Devilbiss finishline and using the 1.8 tip for a urethane primer and moving down to a 1.5 tip for a single stage urethane. I normally work with sherwin williams paint so I'm probably just going to buy some of their automotive paint and primer unless anyone has any other suggestions.

Can't I just sand using a normal belt sander or vibrating sander or even sand it by hand? Do I really need a DA sander?

I'm willing to settle for a less than perfect outcome you know. I know I'll have to repeat the guide coat after the primer but that will just cost another day of rental at worst. I know it's going to come out worse if I do it than it will if a professional does it. I'm not worried about that. The whole point is to sacrifice some quality for some cost savings. If it looks like shit the worst that will happen is I have to pay someone to fix it.

I'd say you ignore all the fags wanting you to splash out graham's number amount of money on a pro job and just stick with doing this. It'll be cheap and look perfectly fine a few steps away, some colors are more forgiving than others too, nor will there be any need for you to shit your pants if you get a scratch somewhere. If you wanna go all out you can do it anytime later on.

ignore the "pros" ITT

Just DA the clearcoat off, get the fucker smooth shoot it with primer, wetsand then spray it with some single stage and be done.

it's camper van not a fucking ferrari.

B L A C K
A
R
S

Take a look at this
thirdgen.org/forums/body/546612-ultimate-budget-paint-job.html

>ignore the people that have painted a car and listen to me, someone that has no experience whatsoever

I've painted two cars. I was in the same boat as OP was several years ago. I am still a complete amateur after ~1000 hours at this point (that includes everything from welding in new panels to color sand and polish, pure painting obviously much less time invested because actually painting is maybe 1% of the time sink of a paint job).

Painting a car is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. If it wasn't everyone would have nice paintjobs, yet 99% of cars on the road have paint defects, fading, wear, dents, rust, etc.

Without clicking, is that the red tractor paint 91/92 firebird?

I was tired of the "black" that it was.

>TP tools turbine HVLP
>single stage enamel farm implement paint
and you're set.
Or opt for the tried and true rattle can.
Both have been successful for me.