Looking for Opinions and a Painting Question

[hkestes41]

OK, here is the deal. I have a two parter, if you are not a painter and don't want to read about what I did please jump to the last paragraph and give me your opinion on that part.

1) Presently I did not have the money, time or money to replace my rockers and dog leg areas under the tail lights, so I cleaned them up as best I could. Loaded the inside of the rockers and both sides of the dog legs with rust converter. Screwed some expanded metal into the holes in the rockers, covered them with fiberglass and then painted the car with Rustoleum. I know, not the route I really wanted to follow either but it is 100 times better than letting it continue to deteriorate. Will all be replaced eventually and I only have right at $60 in materials.

I have always had decent results painting in the past, but this was the first paint job ever with Rustoleum or a gravity feed HVLP gun. Could not get the paint to lay down to save my life. I adjusted air pressure and feed control on the gun, thined the paint all the way from 40% to 70% nothing. I have more orange peel that Sunkist.

The paint can be smoothed out with a lot of color sanding and buffing (already did a quick spot on the fender to verify) but I'm not sure if I want to do all that or just D/A and paint again with my old Binks syphon cup gun.

Any advice from those of you who use HVLP's on a fairly regular basis?

Last thing that has me leaning toward a repaint is the color that it turned out. Looking for a dark red I mixed two qts of gloss Emergency Red and one qt of gloss Black and here is how it turned out.

2) I'm looking for HONEST OPINIONS from the group on the color not going to hurt my feelings one way or the other. My daughter likes it (says it is red), wife hates it (says it is brown), I'm so-so (not sure what color it is). Please let me know what you think, my option would be to go back Black.

Edited April 12, 2010 by hkestes41

[RobertKB]

Not a painter so I went to part 2. Black looks good on just about any car and certainly better than the red/brown. Burgundy was another excellent choice on these cars.

[adam_knox]

Black is always a "safe" color. Color however grabs my attention more. Not sold on the red/brown, but not against it by any means. If you have the urge to repaint though, I personally vote you grab some color chips and have you and the ladies sit down at the dinner table and pick out a winner. With three of ya' there can't be a tie! =) Beautiful car mate, no matter what the color!

[Russellc]

I like the color alot ! I think its got an old time feel. My 46 was at one time black, and currently my daily driver is black, however black is too much trouble.

I agree with the above post, color always draws more attention.

[kencombs]

I like the red/brown.

On the orange peel issue. I paint a bit and suspect your problem was too low air pressure and/or moving too fast. There is a fine line w/oil based paints where you get enough flow to smooth out and yet not run.

Some folks think that the 10psi limit on HVLP guns is at the inlet. But, that is cap pressure which we can;t easily measure. The recommended inlet pressure by the manufacturer should give the 10 at the cap. Going up in pressure can't hurt, only moves the gun out of the desired transfer rate for HVLP

I only use HVLP gravity feed guns now by choice, they are great. Easy to use all the paint out of the cup, important when painting small areas and very easy to clean.

But, some of the cheaper ones don't atomize well so that may be part of your problem.

[Joe Flanagan]

I was told to always shoot a test pattern before you paint anything. My gun requires 29 PSI at the inlet, which I pretty much stick to. It's an HVLP, by the way. I read the instructions and made sure I knew what all the knobs did before I used it. You can adjust the air-to-paint ratio as you're shooting your test pattern until you get to where you want to be. Otherwise, I'd just make sure the gun is clean and the air from the compressor is properly filtered. Also, check to make sure you're using the right size tip for the paint you're spraying.

[PatrickG]

one little tip I found with my hvlp gun...

I have an air compressor with a built in regulator, and another reg. mounted to my gun. The gun calls for 40 psi at the regulator to have 10 psi at the cap. however, I found that if I set the compressor regulator at 40 psi it drops too far when you hit the trigger, so I have to set the compressor way high, maybe 60 pounds, and then regulate down again at the gun mounted regulator.

also with all those nozzles and little adjusters make sure you have a really good set of instructions for setting the gun up. there are even how-to videos on youtube that I checked out just to be able to actually see someone do it and go through the why of each step.

and Joe mentioned tip size, that's another variable thats important to check. If the gun is set up with a primer nozzle or something you might end up with the rough coats, because it cant atomize the paint

[Fireball]

I agree with guys above about the gun adjustments, I had similar probs with my HVLP and enamel as you, it did not lay down perfectly despite the settings or amount reduced. Perhaps it was just wrong nozzle. Luckily colorsanding helped quite a bit.

And my vote for color goes to black.

[BobT-47P15]

Kirk......is that the color they call "Boston Baked Bean"?

I'm thinking it should be either a more definite maroon or a

dark red like the P15 convertible color Sumac Red.

There should be lots of colors to choose from in the paint world.

[jakenoklahoma]

I like the color, sort of a cordovan shade of red. I agree with your temp fix: better than letting it rot further....

[dezeldoc]

You might want to check that the paint was not to thick as that will do the things you described also. Air pressure will also do it. the trick to get the last coat to flow is reduce the paint by about 50-60 thinner and let it melt in. black will show any and all flaws like it is under a magnifying glass.

[rcumba11]

#1 Love your car

#2 Love the Boston Baked Bean color

#3 Black looks really good on some, but on this coupe, I like the bright red or canary yellow

#4 It doesn't matter what you or I like, if your wife is interested enough to have a desired color...THAT IS IT! Keep her interested.

I wish I knew about the Painting, but I enjoyed the other responses.