About how much paint, primer, ect will be necessary to paint a whole fiero.

I will be painting my 88 soon and i need to know how many pints/gallons i will need.

When I did my 85GT I used 1/2 gallon of 2 part primer.
3/4 G 2 part base
1/2 G 2 part Clear. Only had time for two coats of clear as the bugs started to show up since it was getting toward evening.

With color tined primer you can get by with less base but I wanted to be sure I had enough on the weekend. (store not open) Glad I did.

I painted with panels off the car so takes a bit more paint since you don't have to worry about runs as much.

[This message has been edited by Dodgerunner (edited 07-06-2010).]

My 87 GT with wing was painted this weekend. I did all prep work but the actual spraying waas done aby a friend who makes his living painting.

We used 2 qts total of 2 part primer.
2 qts total of one part base reduced 1 to 1.
About 1/2 of a 5 liter pack of clear. I could have bought 3 of the 1 liter packs but I wanted to be sure to have plenty and I gave the remainder to the painter friend (along with some of the best cash I ever spent). My car was painted with the wing removed and all ground effect pieces removed and painted seperately. I started sanding aand buffing last night and it is great.

Hope this helps.

How much paint you use depends on a few things. First, how transparent is the color? Some colors are very thin in coverage and some cover very well with 2 coats. How much of the car are you spraying? How are you spraying it? HVLP gravity guns use less paint than HVLP siphon guns. What your mixture requirements will make a difference. Some are mixed thicker than others. How much metallic is in the paint if any? Spraying metallic colors usually will require more spray coats than solid colors as metallic paints are thinner and need more layers for the proper look when finished. Each brand of paint mixes and sprays different. What I use in paint will be different than what you use when you spray. If you make a mistake, you need more paint. If you spray too thin because you sprayed too far away from the panel, you'll need more paint. If you spray your paint with a faster spray pattern, you'll use more paint. If you use too much air pressure, you'll use more paint. The best advice I can give you is to talk to your paint supplier and ask them what you can expect to use if you spray properly. They will have the best advice.....we can only tell you what we use and that can at least give you a starting point. As for primer, are you priming the whole car? Are you using primer/surfacer or primer/sealer? Are you doing bodywork? Are you going to be sanding the primer before you paint or just using a sealer for a uniform color?

Primer is hard to guess at as I only use primer when I need to.....each car is different.

I use PPG Deltron base/clear. My base color usage varys with color but with a solid color such as white I use roughly 2 quarts of base color and 1 quart of clear. Your results with the exact same stuff is going to be different. I'd highly recommend you do your painting when your paint supplier is open so if you run low on paint you can send someone for more paint / clear / reducers / thinners / supplies. Have a backup plan in case you run into trouble.

So, start with your paint supplier and get their recommendations.

Mark the paint guy

I agree with everything Mark said. I recently painted a Fiero with 3 coats of paint in OEM 8554 white with 1 quart of paint and a quart of reducer. It was single stage with no clear topcoat. If it was, I would have used 1 quart of clear and a 1/2 pint of hardener in addition. I routinely paint smaller cars like Fieros and Corvettes with 1 quart of color. Those are show quality jobs. I did my Showcar Coronet color change (huge by today standards) under hood, trunk and all jams, plus the outside with 2 quarts of color and 2 quarts of clear and had almost a pint of color left over for touchup. My expensive gun also has a high transfer rate, almost no overspray (over $500).

gallon of primer surfacer, 2 quarts of base, gallon of clear, 3-4 quarts of sealer/primer epoxy (I did spray that on alot of stuff like engine bay, before and after base high build surfacer..

[This message has been edited by darkhorizon (edited 07-07-2010).]

quote Originally posted by darkhorizon: gallon of primer surfacer, 2 quarts of base, gallon of clear, 3-4 quarts of sealer/primer epoxy (I did spray that on alot of stuff like engine bay, before and after base high build surfacer..

What are you spraying? A semi? You are using way too much material for a Fiero. There is no way that you should be using a gallon of primer/surfacer AND a gallon of primer/sealer unless you are spilling most of it on the ground. If you are using that much on your car, you have serious issues with either an excessive amount of primer on your car or you sanded off all that primer thickness and wasted a ton of time and money. Either way you apparently don't know what you are doing and shouldn't be offering any more advice to the guys that want to keep the costs down and do things the proper way. As for the clear, again, if you are spraying a gallon of clear you are either using a very cheap brand or are wasting too much paint.

Maybe you should go read a few paint threads and find out why you are using too much primer and paint.

Mark the paint guy

I think the key thing to this or any thread of "how much paint" strictly lies in the painter and the quality of the gun and compressor. I can do a car with a quart of paint because I use ( and the other pro's in this thread ) a high-end gun that can be fine tuned. If you buy a $10.00 siphon gun that is not HVLP, you will end up with a cloud of overspray and very little paint on the surface. When I first started painting in the early 80's using the old technology, it took about 2 gallons of color and 1 gallon of clear for me. Now, the gun and compressor is KEY when spraying any vehicle. So to answer the question in this thread's title......it depends on the quality of your equipment.

LOL, a gallon of primer lasts me a few months working on many cars. Same with clear. I can get 3 or 4 complete all over jobs or 20-30 repair jobs out of a gallon. If your original paint dont have any real problems, you dont even need any primer at all....just sand and repaint. All that needs primer is places that had clear or paint peeling or cracked or bare plastic/ fiberglass, and places you use body repair fillers.