Questions about DIY full respray paint job

[nevr2L8]

I am getting ready to try a full respray on my e30 and I have researched a little on the choices for a decent spray gun that will do the job at a reasonable price.
From what I see out there I think I need a kit with three different sized nozzles for primer, base and clear coats. I want to spend around $100 for the gun if possible.
Luckily I have a good paint store in town that carries some major brand of automotive paint. I saw a video by a professional shop that used the AKZO brand and the results were amazing.
Anybody found a good brand at a reasonable price?
Also I am wondering what the extra money will be for base/clear vs single stage ?
Thanks for your interest
Paul

[packratbimmer]

Deep subject! If you are not using a metallic, single stage might suit you well depending on what brand you pick. If you are doing metallic and want to do single stage, I would recommend multiple thin coats with a little extra hardener on the last coat. Learn to do a flood test, turning your nozzle vertical and spraying flood patterns on a piece or cardboard or other flat material -- all the runs should be equal across. Spraying is a fine art of reading temperature, humidity and contaminants (dust, mosquitos, water in the supply air etc.) For example, if the day -or your sheet metal- is too hot, the paint will dry too quickly leading to dry or hazy finishes. If it is cool, runs and sags can occur. Beware of hot humid days and use air filters to get the moisture out of your air (two or three per phase). If the humidity is low, cool summer mornings (68-70) are great followed by the later warm up which sets up the paint more quickly. Also beware of outdoor prep before a spray. The sun can get the metal cooking much higher than the air, leading to trouble. A moisture trap is a good addition as well, pre-filter. With that said, base/clear can be forgiving in ways, due to the process of blocking out your clear and buffing to eliminate imperfections.

As to the spray gun, sorry -- only advice I can offer is to learn to do a flood pattern when adjusting the gun. Turn the nozzle vertical and flood a piece of cardboard. You will have it right when all of the runs are even. My neighbor who sprays uses the "chrome" harbor freight gun and swears by it for the price.

[e30davie]

Have you painted a car? I've done 2 of them, never again. hell of a lot of work. and very difficult to get professional level quality. my cars looked ok probably 80-90% that last 10% is what you pay for, but id just save my money do the disassembly myself and get someone to prep and paint. reassemble my self.

But if you're still keen (and everyone should have a go at least once!), id just go to a proper paint shop Near you, and see what they have for guns. if they are a bit old school they may even give you a demo. the gun I bought years ago was about 100usd (150ish in aud at the time), and the guy was pretty clear that for me the gun was not the limiting factor in getting a good finish, it was the guy holding it (no offence he said). theres different tip sizes and all of that, and yes pick the right one but its the setup as explained above that is where the magic happens. keeping that fan parrell to the surface takes some practices, one false move and you'll get a big blob and a run. be the robot!

your big decision is going to be paint system, 2 -pack vs acrylic is always the argument in in DIY world. I've always done acrylic for fear of death. but if you can afford a proper air fed helmet the 2 pack systems seem alot more forgiving these days. I would always put loads of clear over the top regardless of what color you choose. gives you lots of paint to cut back so its nice and smooth. and that way you can afford a bit of orange peel (due to lack of ability like me) as you can always cut it back and polish. 80s cars seem to have a mirror finish paint, rather than modern cars have uber orange peel straight off the gun. you want that mirror finish to be period correct in my opinion. which is another weeks work sanding and polishing after you've put the spray gun away.

[econti]

Have done a few, its a lot of work but very satisfying.
I would recommend doing 2pack single stage, so you don't do a separate clear coat. Less work and easier to touch up if you need to later on. I don't bother doing primer through the gun, I just get rattlecan primer as its easier to do bit by bit. If there's bare metal use etch primer, if not then hi-fill and sand it til the little dents are gone.

Once you're primed, final rub with 320 grit is my move, then put the paint on. The tin of paint should give you the details for how much psi to run, and how to mix it with hardener. We don't usually thin it down but it depends on the paint, some like 10% thinning.
Get yourself a test panel or test board and play around with the gun settings. It's trial and error for the learning process.
Once you're done and you have orange peel, and you will, don't stress it. Just make sure you've applied plenty of paint and give it a wet sand back with 1500 then 2000 grit then a polish and it'll look like glass.

Honestly the quality of the gun does matter but not nearly as much as people think. Have seen amazing results out of the $40aud gun off ebay and some rubbish results from $400. Go to a local tool shop and just pay the man

[varg]

In for information. At this point, after my experience with a "reputable" body shop cutting stupid corners and doing stupid shit to a car, and seeing quotes for paint work starting in the $5,000 range, I'm going to be restoring and painting my E30 myself.

id just save my money do the disassembly myself and get someone to prep and paint. reassemble my self.

Even doing the disassembly yourself and towing a stripped roller in to the shop, it seems these days you're looking at well over $5k for "professional level quality" if you can even find a shop you've seen the work of/will touch an old car. The paint you get cheaper than that is the kind of quality you'd get yourself as a noob with some practice on junkyard panels. I have been wholly unimpressed with the paint work I've seen on cars over the past few years, and downright mad at what I had the misfortune of being personally involved with despite good recommendations.

[Dj Buttchug]

I've done one. As stated above it is very very time consuming. Easily 4-5 days in prep work for an e30. I had a body shop shoot the car and it turned out well. Most that are on a budget are going to do the prep themselves but even then the body shop may have to prep more if things are not done right by us noobs. At least this is what happened to me. On subject, there are a-lot of paint guns out there that are cheap and work really well. For sub $100 you can get an amazon special that will work well. Harbor Freight also has guns that are super cheap. Use once and throw away. I've done this many times with good results painting wheels, bumpers ect.

[82eye]

seeing quotes for paint work starting in the $5,000 range, I'm going to be restoring and painting my E30 myself.
.

i literally lol when i see folk in the US complain about the cost of body work.

average quote here starts at $20k cdn. if you did all prep right and reassembly, everything other than the spray itself you might get closer to $8k, the issue is no one is willing to do just the spray anymore. they don't need the work here.
majority of shops here will not do rust repair or restoration of any kind either. most state it outright. all they will do is remove and replace panels. you won't find anything like a welder in the shop.

around a decade ago a neighbour and his kid by my dads place painted a chevette they had picked up in their driveway using the $50 tremclad/rustoleum method. the thing looked amazing for what it was. they just used a tremclad colour close to the original on the exterior. didn't do door jambs or anything like that. it still looked good when their kid sold it before moving for university.

[packratbimmer]

There is too much quick money in insurance related collision repair to motivate shops to do full paint jobs.

[e30davie]

There is too much quick money in insurance related collision repair to motivate shops to do full paint jobs.

you've got that right. I was chatting to some guy the other day at a kids event who managed an insurance collision repair place. Talk about a race to the bottom.

Even though my spiel above sort of suggested to stay away from having a go, I whole heatedly agree the costs to do a proper paint job are astronomical and the quality is all over the place. You've got to find an old school resto shop but then the prices are through the roof (and somewhat justifiably given the amount of effort required).

What i found personally was that the painting was the easy bit. Bit of practice with the spray gun and you can get a reasonable finish. its the prep work that I found very difficult. I can rebuild engines, but i cannot for the life of me fix a dent to the point where I cant tell its there. its all practice and patience. But I don't have the patience, and i hate sanding and dust.

[varg]

i literally lol when i see folk in the US complain about the cost of body work.
...
everything other than the spray itself you might get closer to $8k

It isn't a contest bro. A regular family home is like 3/4 of a million up there too, I know, things are crazy. I live in Florida there are Canadians with winter homes here going 45mph on I95 in rusty acuras, they also like to bitch about how expensive it is up there.

Really those numbers make sense to me. The $5k ish USD estimate for paint only with no teardown/prep I mentioned is currently $7,146 CAD, that's only ~11% lower than $8k CAD. That was the cheapest estimate I saw. The prep+paint starting estimate I got at a "better" shop of $10k USD + any bodywork, that works out to $14,295 CAD. It's believable that it would be a third more expensive on top of the exchange rate to get a equivalent paint job done up there considering how much narrower the classic car market is and the general trend of everything being more expensive there than here. I'm guessing the regulatory obligations on paint shops are more stringent too, and the tax you pay when you settle up at the end of it. So $20k tracks. Classics/restorations are a much larger industry in the US, especially where I am. It's worth mentioning none of the estimates I've had were from resto shops, just a couple of ordinary shops that would actually agree to touch an old car, where most just do 2020 honda scuff and shoot bumper replacements with clear coat that will look like dried elmer's glue in 5 years and charge insurance $3,000 for it. The auto body industry is scummy and to do it right you either

A) Pay out the ass*
B) Know somebody who does it right and get a deal
C) Learn and do it yourself

*does not guarantee results

I recently bought some RX7 parts from a guy who had had one of his cars painted 3 times in the years he owned it. Guy obviously had money because he had a supra, an RX7, and a couple other cars, didn't seem like a dumbass, but somehow he got fleeced on 2 paint jobs on the same car. It is kind of difficult to find a paint shop worth a crap if you care about your car.

[TobyB]

Ima be that guy:

if you have to ask on R3v, be prepared to learn a lot of things the hard way.

The only fatal mistake is NOT spending real money on breathing apparatus-
you can kill yourself with this shit pretty easily. And maybe not today,
but in 10 years. So figure out delivered air and filters. Seriously.

$100 paint gun? you're making your life a lot harder than it needs to be.
A long time back, at the beginning of HVLP, Sharpe made good 'starter' spray rigs for 3x that.
No idea what the 'good starter' kit is this decade, but it's worth walking into an
auto body supply place and asking them. You'll pay a little more, but the support will be worth it.
Stay gravity feed. It's a little more awkward, but a lot more consistent.

You're buying at least a grand in materials, don't waste it with a crap spray gun.
The Sharpe that I have has whatever application nozzle and air cap on it that it
had when I bought it- and it's worked fine for all sorts of viscosities. But I've never shot
the truly high- build primers...

Prep is 95% of a good looking respray, and application is the other 95%.
As in, it all has to be pretty good for the final product to look pretty good.

Having sprayed a lot of single stage, and then gone to base- clear:
start with base- clear systems.
Teach yourself how to flow the material with your primer and sealer,
then lay the base safely dry, and drench it in clear. It's an extra step,
but it's two extra safety margins you don't have with single stage.
And even quality single stage isn't as durable as budget base- clear.

2-part materials are mandatory these days.

https://www.tcpglobal.com

t

[82eye]

It is kind of difficult to find a paint shop worth a crap if you care about your car.

hopefully i got lucky. shop's got a good rep. quote starts at 20k up. hope to line it up for may.
there are a number of good shops in smaller places here that specialize in muscle car and other american. it's not so hard to find decent work if you have one of those. foreign is a different thing here.

used to do vinyl wrap and pinstripe in the dark age. the tech is loads more advanced now and they have to use different product due to regulations as you mentioned.

[nevr2L8]

I just talked to a friend who restores Corvettes and the painter he uses charges him $13K to paint a shell, but its show quality. That painter did my e46 M3 ten years ago for $5K with me doing the disassembly and reassembly. So that means $20k would get my car done here but I can't justify that on this car. It will be a lot of work but I need a project.
Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions !!

[iXBeater]

Lots of great advice here.

If I do a lot of the prep myself, I'd be absolutely thrilled to pay $5K for a good paint job on my E30. The thing about paint is the guys are not doing to valuable work when they're pulling trim, bumpers, etc., but you're paying their highly-skilled rate for that stuff. And it adds up fast. Back in the day when there were $99 paint jobs at places like Earl Scheib, I had a buddy who would strip and prep the car to a pretty high degree (including pulling most/all the rubber and a lot of the taping), have it towed to the paint place and wind up with a fairly-decent job. For that money you got a certain amount of time on the job, and if they had to do less BS work, they got to spend their time doing the paint better. He wasn't winning any concours, but the cars themselves were presentable and almost certainly better than he (or I) could have pulled off in the garage with no experience, needed zero investment in the paint guns, ventilation, masks, consumables, didn't require making the garage into a temporary paint booth, etc.

I'm lucky enough to have access to a guy who knows all the body shops around me and the folks who can do great side-work. My plan when the time comes is to deliver them a shell the greatest of my capabilities and take a shell back. If the number is $5K, I'll be overjoyed.

[zaq123]

I've painted my e30 myself. Lots of presswork, lots of research, some practice and lots of videos were watched. I could fit doors, bumpers and the hood into my homemade paint booth with the car. So I painted the body and started assembling it pushing painting of the rest of those parts time the weather in 70s. Mind you, I went with a single stage to match the original solid car color/paint - alpinweiss 2 so I didn't have to paint all those parts on the car which is very important with metallics e.g. (gun spray fan direction, pattern needs to be the same to lay down those metal flakes so it looks good). Later I got too busy with my deck building project while still putting the car together so I had professional shop (one of the best in the area) to finish those parts for me. To my surprise, I actually did very good for my first paint job. Single stage is not as forgiving as base/clear. Once laid down, there is no stopping and fixing it unless a complete curing, fixing, repainting. It has its plusses too. Looks authentic and deep for the solid color, easy to buff to make it look good. it you mess up, it's easier to go back and blend in the panel you need to redo. Single Stage is very rare these days and it's still solvent based unlike water base paints all shops are using these days to comply with EPA rules. Solvent based paint regard totally different setup for shops filtering equipment etc. Pretty much no one is using solvent based paint these days. Single stage paint these days is not like it used to be, it's super durable and still used for like commercial vehicles etc.

I learned a lot through the process. It's definitely not for the faint hearted. But it offers you to work at your own pace and obviously save a lot of money and BS with figuring how to transport the car the shop etc. The shop can be a pain to deal with as documented in many posts here on the forum.

I would not attempt it unless you are willing to invest into 60 gal air compressor and have 240V power source for it, 3 stage air drying system (Particulate Filter, Coalescing Filter, Desiccant Dryer), good spray gun for 3M PPS 2 setup (you can thank me later) ,good air hose for the gun, and very important good PPE (respirator, suit etc). All of that will add some expense to your project although once you get that equipment, you will have it available past your car paint project. Oh and don't forget the cost of building the booth and its ventilation system. I built pic frame inside of my garage with intake/return air filters and used like 6 box fans to pull the air out.

I got paint from these people ( https://tamcopaint.com ). Top quality and easy to spray.