Doc,
I should have written more of a DIY at the time, so I probably can't recall all the steps.
1. repair, sand, fill, spray with primer. Repeat endlessly until the primed surface appears to be smooth enough.
- I used rattle can primer (from the auto paint shop) rather than home depot or autozone primer.
- Use 2 colors of primer, light and dark, switch color each time, that way raised spots or depressions reveal themselves for more sanding, filling, priming. Then sleep. Then wake up and do another 16 hours of sanding, filling and priming. Then cancel your vacation and do 2 weeks of sanding, filling, and priming -- oh wait you already did that! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]
- used a variety of block sanders.
2. Worked with the local auto paint supply shop. I am lucky to have one right here in town. They gave instructions, all the right material, coached me, encouraged --- you can do it!
3. About a year before I had bought a good compressor and spray gun for painting the kitchen. yThat job bombed, so I had the left over equipment, was about $250 total from Lowes. There are some tricks for buying spray equipment such as have to match the compressor to the gun (those small tank compressors used for nail guns wont' work). Need gravity feed spray gun.
4. Before sand and fill (or maybe during) Clean everything thoroughly with auto paint quality solvent. Removes all wax, grime, silicone, etc. Then clean it again, this time thoroughly [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif[/img]
4. Got 2 part supplies, color coat and clear coat. Color coat get mixed with reducer (thinner) according to temperature and humidity. Clear coat gets mixed with hardner, although I found better results when mixing some reducer into the clear coat mix on the 2nd try. The paint shop gave me copies of the manufactures instructions for use, and mixing.
5. Then it was time to go for it, mixed up the color coat, sprayed it on, 2 coats, only need to wait 5-10 mins between coats. The color coat is a piece of cake, goes on real easy and even. And I was doing Polar Silver (metallic), scared at first, but I had nothing to loose. It went on real smooth.
6. Then waited a couple hours max, then mixed the clear coat, went for it. Oh-Oh, real bad orange peel! Mixture was too thick. So I waited, maybe a couple hours, sanded some of it down, then resprayed with a thinner mixture and it turned out nice. The clear coat is great stuff, really hard, like a mirror.
Couple other things:
- get home depot painters drop cloth plastics stuff. Comes in 8 foot width. Hang all around your work area in the garage from the ceiling. Otherwise the spray particles will settle on whatever it finds, and stick.
- no debate: get an breathing mask that filters out hydrocarbons (not those silly paper masks).
- hang some of the plastic in a large section on the wall of your garage. This is where you set up the spray gun and practice first. My gun has settings for spray pattern (circular, or longitudinal; air volume, liquid volume). You really have to get those correct and know how it will spray before you apply it to the work. Practice different setting and the speed at which you move your arm.
- always move the gun, never stop. So it means you get overspray, who cares, it is masked, the only way to get it even.
- light coats only. But I found with the clear coat, a delivery of too much material or a delivery of too little material both create problems. I has to be the right depth (at least with the supplies I had).
- have lots of paint thinner (or maybe I used the reducer or solvent) to clean the gun. i was worried about this step, but it was fine. Of course it includes spraying the thinner against the test wall to make sure the gun gets all cleaned out. And of course you have to clean many times between fills.
- I bought some leftover metallic paint from the supply shop, something they had mixed but the customer returned or something, same formula as what I planned to use -- this was my practice material, the metallic paint is not at all cheap, so I used some cheap stuff to practice.
- read various stuff around the Internet, lots of places with suggestions, or even get a "body repair" book. I did some of this, just for sanity check or enhanced confidence, but my main help came from the nice guys at the auto paint supply place -- that is all they do, not even body work stuff, so they were really expert and nice.
I just looked, I had put up some pictures here:
http://www.968forums.com/index.php?showtopic=5965 from when I did this (page 2). Hey, I almost forgot, I even did the front bumper cover.
You can do it Doc! Go for it. Great capability to have around the garage.
Roland
