I'm in the middle of repainting my fiero right now. Other than helping out on a couple of occasions, this if the first time I've ever painted a car.

I'm priming the whole car right now with epoxy based white primer (DPLF) from PPG. I'm having problems figuring out how to set up the gun. There is a know on the side to control the width of the spray, and a knob on the back of the gun to control the paint flow. The paint is mixed 2:1 with a catalyst. Expensive paint, but the paint shop said it's good rookie paint because it adhers easily.

From what I can tell I've got one or more of these problems:

1) Too much air. I've my compressor adjusted for 50 lbs at the compressor. The paint instructions say 15 lbs at the cap--and I really have no idea what that means or how to measure it. I adjusted the pressure at the compressor to 15 lbs, that's waaaaay too low.

2) Not enough paint. There's quite a bit of orange peeling going on--sortof. The paint is coming out in what I consider relatively large specks. If I paint slow enough the paint evens out well enough, but it sure seems like I'm laying it down thick to get this to happen.

3) Too much paint. Maybe dialing back the paint needle will increase the paint atomization?

Maybe this is the way it all works? There are spots where the paint is thick by my standards, but pretty smooth. By the time I move on to the base and clear coat, everything will look right?

Any and all opinions are appreciated. I've got pics, but I'm not sure the forum has need for another fiero paint job thread.

Here are links to a bunch of pics of the car. Warning! not 56k friendly.

Here's the engine. I spent most of the summer tearing it down and making it martha-stewart presentable.

The panels half way through the prep process. Still alot of sanding and cleaning to do.

Here's a pic of the 3 hidden bolts behind the headliner that hold the upper rear clip on. If you're doing a fastback swap take a look at this pic

The roof panel masked off for paint..

The roof panel primed..

and the primed rear fascia..

-Jeff

edit for pics

[This message has been edited by JeffMN (edited 09-19-2004).]

If you have the paint mixed properly, you just need to fine tune your adjustments. I think the biggest thing that's missing is a regulator at the gun, and you definitely need a regulator at the gun. You need a lot of air, but you need it at a low pressure, and that's where the gun regulator comes in. What you do is keep your air compressor regulator up anywhere near 50/75 lbs of pressure to keep feeding the air hose, but you turn down the gun regulator to keep your paint flow constant.

Don't mix paint for this. Practice with thinner first......the primer is expensive.

First, turn in your fluid regulator. No paint can flow this way, and you can adjust the air flow first. When you squeese the trigger, you can adjust the air flow until you think you have about 15 psi or so, and if you don't know what that is, think about using a can of brake cleaner or WD-40 or something. That's about 15-20 psi of pressure. When you are satisfied with the air pressure, turn in your air adjuster. You'll get next to nothing for a spray pattern......just a spot spray like spraying WD-40. Once we get the paint flowing, you open the air needle and adjust your pattern.....but not yet.

Now, while you are allowing air out, slowly open the fluid needle. You'll get fluid, and the more you open the needle, the more the trigger will open, and more fluid will flow. Once you have a decent amount of fluid, you'll see it pool and run down the surface you are spraying at. You might want to spray at a piece of cardboard so you can see the fluid hitting something and you'll understand as you go.

Ok....now you have fluid spraying, and now you can open up the air needle and allow your pattern to adjust. When you open, you'll notice that the gob of paint spraying out will start to fan out, and you need to adjust your air pattern to you have about a 4-6 inch spray pattern at about 8-10 inches away from the surface. Too wide a pattern? Turn in the air needle. Too much paint? Turn in the fluid needle. Too much overspray? Turn down the gun regulator. It's a matter of getting comfortable with your gun and mixture. If you still think you have a gooey mess from your primer, add a little thinner/reducer and it'll spray better.

Give that a shot. I always suggest having someone around that's painted before, just to kind of show you what's going on. But, see how this works. You should be ok.

Good luck.

Mark

And a few more pics...

the front fascia..

and the primed trunk lid...

And my big screw up from leaning into the fresh paint on the windshield pillar..

And everything tucked away for the night

Assuming I get the priming done correctly, the car is going to be Viper Yellow and clear coated. I'll post pics when I'm done.

-Jeff

[This message has been edited by JeffMN (edited 09-19-2004).]

Jeff.....when it comes time to paint, get rid of the newspaper and buy some actual masking paper. The newsprint is made of little fibers, and when you spray the paint on the car, the air flow will loosen up some of those fibers and get stuck in your paint. Wetsanding and polishing will remove some, but not all.

Trust me. I can speak from experience.

Mark the paint guy

quote Originally posted by Firefox: Jeff.....when it comes time to paint, get rid of the newspaper and buy some actual masking paper. The newsprint is made of little fibers, and when you spray the paint on the car, the air flow will loosen up some of those fibers and get stuck in your paint. Wetsanding and polishing will remove some, but not all. Trust me. I can speak from experience. Mark the paint guy

Dangit. I knew using newspaper was a bad thing, but I thought it was because the ink could bleed into any fresh paint. I thought I was ok because I was only using it on glass and open air.

Next time..next time..next time...

Using the newspaper for the primer is probably ok, since you need to sand it out anyway. Just change before you paint, and it's a good idea to remask anyway before you spray the paint.

A quick question...

How long do I have to apply basecoat over this primer?

There's something in the instructions about only having 1 week to apply additional layers of primer before I have to scuff up everything. Does that apply to basecoat as well? I couldn't find anything in the literature about it--though I understand I have a time limit between base and clear coat of 24 hours.

-Jeff

I'd still scuff the surface of the primer before painting. You'll find a few imperfections that you can correct before spraying the color, and this way time isn't an issue. As for base color and time to clear, I spray my clear about an hour after I spray the last coat of base color. What brand of paint are you using?

quote Originally posted by Firefox: I'd still scuff the surface of the primer before painting. You'll find a few imperfections that you can correct before spraying the color, and this way time isn't an issue. As for base color and time to clear, I spray my clear about an hour after I spray the last coat of base color. What brand of paint are you using?

I'm using PPG. DPLF primer and DBU basecoat. The primer is mixed 2:1, the basecoat calls for 1:1.5.

I'm a little worried about the clearcoat (nason). Each can has seems like it has the consistency of water. I'm hoping it'll gel up a bit when I mix it.

-Jeff

What kind of clear are you using?

I spray PPG DBU color, and DCC 2042 clear. It's a nice heavy clear, and you only need 2 coats. Three coats and it runs, but you still have a lot of material for wetsanding.

Ill just add a few notes. I always sand primer with #400 and then back over all of it with red scotchbrite.The whole purpose of primer is to fill slight imperfections, if you dont sand it there still there. If you have a perfect surface already you can bypass primer completely and just spray a few coats of non sanding sealer, followed by the basecoat color. If you dont sand thru the original paint anywhere, or dont have any surface flaws like peeling, you can spray the new base color directly on the old finish. All the above will have good adhesion if it was properly sanded in the first place.

On my gun my air compressor is set for 180 pnds, but you dont need that high 90 is sufficient. The regulator ON the gun is set for between 5-7 pnds. I use the fan open about a 1/4 turn to the left from closed. I use the fluid tip knob open so that the trigger will go all the way back to the stop. That allows the most fluid to come out for more gloss, but also increases the chance of runs. I too suggest maybe even going and buying some cheap enamel paint and practicing on some old cabinets or furniture, maybe even spray the inside walls of the garage white. That way you can experiment with how the settings affect the way YOU spray. Everyone is different.

..and the flowers are still standing.

My problem with the primer was it was too thick. I ran some thinner through the gun and fiddled with the settings until I was comfortable with what knob did what. I mixed up some base and let it fly. I always thought auto paint was at least the consistency of house paint. Obviously not, but you guys already know that.

All of these pieces were painted with about 1/2 quart of paint and 2 coats of clear.

One piece went south--one of the headlight covers picked up some contamination somewhere. I'm baffled how. The piece was sanded, washed, prep-sol'd wiped down and tacked, but it still fish eyed in several places.

Everything else went well, though there's alot more dust in the paint than I hoped. That's what I get for using newspaper and not putting plastic over everything. Oh well. Live and learn.

What a difference the clear coat makes. The paint looked totally different and alot 'deeper'.

I've still got the hood, doors, front fenders, upper rear clip and 1 rear qp to go. I'll post more pics when I can.

Anyone know what kind of paint I can use on the molding? More specifically, the 'fake' molding that's actually part of the rear cover. I'd like to match it to the rest of the stuff.

-Jeff

I've been using 3M Trim black, but there are several other sprays out there. Krylon BBQ black is a very nice satin black also, and it works extremely well on the vents....