*Disclaimer* Use this only as a reference. This is not a guide. We are documenting our first attempt at rolling on paint. *Disclaimer*
We decided to attempt roll-on paint jobs. We have four extra hoods and decided to put them to good use. We have never painted a car in our life, and thought we would attempt it.
Our plan is to post pictures of all the steps in the process as we get to them.
Here is the paint color that we chose.
Here is the hood after we washed it and hand sanded with 220 grit sandpaper.
This is the first coat (wet) a couple minutes after we got it down.
Interested to see how it comes out. Your north of me, how cold is it in your garage. I dont see much heat and its cold as hell here. Oil paint takes forever to dry in most cases. It may still be sticky in a few weeks. I sprayed a friends Jeep off roader and he brought me some of that paint. I keep my garage over 60* day and nite and your shoes still stuck to floor a week later if you stepped on it.
Its only 32 outside right now, I do have a space heater in there today though. Doubt that its helping much. Gonna go out and move it close to the hood itself to hopefully warm it up enough.
If all goes well with the hood, we plan on doing the rest of our 3800 swap the same color. Its in the background of the last picture (white 85 gt notch).
Interested to see how it comes out. Your north of me, how cold is it in your garage. I dont see much heat and its cold as hell here. Oil paint takes forever to dry in most cases. It may still be sticky in a few weeks. I sprayed a friends Jeep off roader and he brought me some of that paint. I keep my garage over 60* day and nite and your shoes still stuck to floor a week later if you stepped on it.
Don't they make a "dryer" additive to speed up the process?
After the 1st coat dries, make sure that there is no gunk in the paint. Unless you used a tack cloth before painting, you may have fibers from the towel that you used to dry the hood after sanding. You can wetsand the 1st few coats with 1000 grit if you like to really make it smooth and help the gloss of the final coat.
Oil based paint? I wouldn't think you'd ever be able to repaint any parts in the future and the paint most likely will not be compatible with any auto primers at all. The oils will soak into the parts themselves and if you ever need to do any bodywork the only way to fix any damage is to replace the panel....
Our car needs to be repainted one way or the other. We do not have a big enough air compressor to spray so we thought we would see how this rolling business worked out.
I am not very worried about some 'orange peel' on this paint job. Its not going to be a show car, its going to be a toy/daily driver.
The old hood on the car is busted across the headlights from the hood popping open and breaking the support bar. I need to put a new hood on it and would prefer that it matched the rest of the car. Instead of just painting another hood white and trying to match it to the rest of the car, I figured this could be a cheap way to repaint the whole car.
I have been researching this for the past week or so and have found many people that have had good results from rolling on rustoleum paint.
I tried this on my last car's wing and decklid and to be honest with you if you try this paint job and end up with orange peel, you were just plain lazy about it. The whole process is to basically lay up a bunch of thin coats and wet sand them in between until you get the paint built up enough to do a final wetsanding. I sprayed mine on and did three coats and then wet sanded it. It sanded nice and smooth and I polished it with a high speed buffer and it looks pretty damn good. I have seen A LOT of crappy jobs done with this process and it simply comes down to people being lazy and not wanting to do the work. Rolling it on WILL put bubbles and orange peel into the paint. The difference here is that SOME people are judicious about their work and take the time to wetsand it well and then polish it out. Search the net and youtube for examples. This process can and has been done and done well enough to actually win trophies at car shows, but like ANY paint job if the person doing the work is lazy or just does not know what the hell they are doing you will wind up with a real crappy paint job. No different than someone who does not know what they are doing with a spray job, I have seen a lot of really crappy spray jobs and I have seen some AMAZING spray jobs. I will also add that I painted the wing and decklid of my car as a test and while I was going to do a hood vent and other body mods to make the car look at least ALL RED and it sat out in the sun MOST days and after nearly a year it still looked nice and if you hit it with a decent orbital buffer it would shine as good as the day I painted it. The sunburst red is also a very nice looking red color I might add... It is definitely a viable way to get a decent paint job on your car for very little money. The difference here is that you need to do a lot more work to get the results you want. It is also arguable that there are some decent automotive paints available online that are pretty reasonably priced and if you CAN spray they are probably a better option in the long run going with a basecoat clearcoat setup. I will also add that if you do decide to do the Roll on paint with the rustoleum or the brightside paints you will have the often unmentioned ability to quickly and easily repair chips and damage at home at any time. Just some things to consider...peace
Thank you for the input Pete, I plan on sanding in between each coat rather then doing two coats between sandings. I'm hoping to not have to redo the hood if I end up doing the whole car.
I have done this on two cars. I agree with what was mentioned above in that rolling on the paint can look really good - if you are willing to take your time and not be lazy on all the work. If you try to rush it and not do enough sanding then of course you're going to get orange peel, and typically even bad fish eyes. proper wetsanding between very light coats will yield a very nice end product.
There are also advantages as mentioned. One, when done right it's a super way to get a decent paint job on a car for very little coin. Second, if it gets damaged in any way, repairs are very easy to perform, as you can easily get the color, sand and remove the bad spot, and re-roll in onto the affected area.
People have commented on how the paint can be affected by the sun. Remember there are no UV inhibitors in the paint, like those that are placed into automotive paints. Some have claimed they can leave the vehicle out in the sun and there is no damage. I know from personal experience one job I did do faded bad after two years, but I'm believing more and more this may be an issue with the color that is chosen.
Looking good man, just do yourself a favor and put on like at least six or eight coats that way. The secret is getting it on there thick enough and smooth enough that when you get done and do your final wetsanding there is enough paint material there that you do not cut thru and you can really polish it up nice. I found there is a surprising amount of paint that is removed with the wetsanding and buffing process so you will want to make sure you build it up enough....good luck and peace...
You can add that penetrol too as it makes it flow better and apparently makes it stronger when it dries somehow...check out rolled on .com for more info....peace
If you didn't notice the change in backgrounds, we moved the hood inside so that the heat would help it dry faster. So far it is helping a lot. After we sanded coat two ready for coat three to go down.
This is how my buddies in the wooden boat business do the varnish on the Mahogany.....and you know how that comes out!....be diligent about the sanding between coats and it will work, as long as the paint has enough thickness.
On their final coat, they wet down the whole room....and lock the doors. Final sanding is basically rubbing compound.
[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 02-26-2012).]
I did mine in black. It looked decent. Certainly better than it did before I started. Pet hair, dust, and other stuff in the garage killed it though.
------------------ Jonathan 23K mile '85 notchie w/ 88 cradle, '87 2.8/Getrag, Air, PW, PDL, PM - Still under construction https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/121056.html I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage - me Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely - Lord Acton Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not - Thomas Jefferson The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants - Thomas Jefferson
Also in my last picture at the very front of the hood. That's the chandelier reflection, I thought I messed up so went back down to check it out but just a reflection.
I still have that car but it doesn't look that good anymore. I never did buff it. It looks like satin or eggshell black now. By the time I waited long enough to know it was safe to buff, I lost interest. Mainly because it had been hit three times since I painted it. Yours is looking really good! I'm not going to do a paint job like that again. If I paint one myself, I'll get a spray gun and do it the traditional way.
------------------ Jonathan 23K mile '85 notchie w/ 88 cradle, '87 2.8/Getrag, Air, PW, PDL, PM - Still under construction https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/121056.html I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage - me Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely - Lord Acton Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not - Thomas Jefferson The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants - Thomas Jefferson
I Have used Rustoleum Paint on Tool Boxes, I Mixed with acrylic enamel Hardener, It DOES work. dried hard as a rock. almost indestructable !
Same here- We used it on a few car trailers and with the hardener, it dries completely within hours, instead of the days it takes to fully harden by air drying. Rustoleum is pretty much the same thing as olde tyme synthetic enamel so a lot of additives are compatible with it. We've found that for restoring old car frames and the under side of floor pans, black Rustoleum with hardener is much better than POR15 could ever hope to be and cheaper too. Clean-up is hard though- the overspray sticks to everything.
Don't use 1000 between coats. You won't leave enough grit for the next coat to stick to
If you want it to dry quicker you can cut it with acetone. Mineral spirits works as well, takes a bit longer than reducing with acetone and it will help the paint flow out
I've seen another Fiero on here that was done the roll on way in orange. I forget who's it was, but it did turn out pretty good. Like everyone says, it's all about how much work you put into it. It can turn out really nice. I agree with the possible paint fading problems, although I did spray the Rusto gloss black enamel on the flatbed portion of the delivery truck we used at the machine shop I worked at in California about 10 years ago. When I went back to Cali for vacation last year I stoppd by my od work to say Hi to everyone. I saw the truck and the paint, while scratched up for obvious reasons, still looked decent. That was however only a delivery truck bed.
[This message has been edited by Khw (edited 02-27-2012).]
So when are ya gonna tackle the rest of the car? It is looking good and I have seen that orange on a fiero before, if you do a nice job it will look pretty nice when finished...Good luck and peace
Ive obviously not tried it, but frankly Im surprised it dried hard enough in a day to sand on it. I would have thought the oil base would have gummed up sandpaper with just a few strokes. Still interested in seeing finished product.
We plan on doing the rest of the body once we finish the hood completely. This will also be around the same time that we get the 3800 in it finally and see if it will start up for us.
We haven't had any problems with the sand paper gumming up or anything like that.
It's not our dining room but it will be our living room eventually, we just bought the house and fixed up the upstairs to live in. Now that we are in we will do the downstairs as we get the spare time. Perfect place for a roll-on paint booth for now though. And I roll over the hood in all directions each coat, it takes a lot of rolling once the paint is on to get rid of the bubbles and such.
I did not get a chance to do a coat last night or this morning. The earliest I can get one on will be this afternoon or this evening.
How do you plan to keep the paint from sagging when you get to the vertical panels on the car? Won't gravity mess with the eveness of the coat before it has a chance to dry?
I'm interested in seeing a picture of it outside in full sunlight. It appears to have some kind of marks going up the hood. I can't tell if it is just an illusion in the picture...
I don't know that this is any worse then going to Macco. My buddy's Fiero was painted red by them and looked great for a couple years, but now the red has started to look pink...
Bloozberry, I think the vertical panels will mess with the paint. I might have to thicken up the mixture to do those.
Brian, the marks in the last picture are the air bubbles from my roller. I had to re-use one of the rollers because the new roller pads I bought don't fit on the roller I had. So I had to go out and pick up a new roller last night. The more I do this roll on paint, the more I just want to see if my friend will let me use his paint booth. But I am going to wait it out until I get the hood done and see how nice it looks compared to the aches and pains of rolling on the paint.
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