No More JustTalking About It

[randroid]

Gents,

I've been threatening to paint my '48 P-15 with a roller for several years now and it looks as though the hour is nigh. Last weekend (my weekend is Tuesday and Wednesday, but such is the life of a restaurant rat) it was 95° and in the early afternoon I took my scraper to the paint on the passenger's doors. Five coats of paint over the last 60 years flowed-off like latex after baking in the sun all day, and that was my call to action. I'll still scrape and chemically remove what I can, and for the rest I have 3 grits of pads for the ol' DA.

Damn, I'm excited! Many photos will be taken and posted to the old P-Bucket and as things progress and when I come across something I find interesting I'll post a picture or two here.

Although I'm going to roll the Rusto I'll probably get a few rattle cans to get to places that could be done with a roller but would be so much more simple to spray. The window frames come to mind because those things are made of compound curves and lots of ridges, and I'll need to sand all of them at least once to get them clean initially. Knowing I'll wear paper through every coat, I'll opt for spraying and try to get away with just one final sanding.

There's a paint shop here in Loveland that will put my paint in their rattle cans for $6.50 each, and if I were hung-up on some weird colors I'd go for it, but I think it would be of long term value to use stock colors to ensure future reproduction. I have the colors all but bought, but first it's sanding and the primer.

The only body work I'll need to do is a few dents in the RR fender, but I'll pull each fender for finishing and I'll remove those dents out fairly easily.

Geez, wish me luck!

-Randy

[John Mulders]

Good Luck !

John

[NatesSedan]

Good luck Randy.

Do keep us posted!~

[BobT-47P15]

Randy, will look forward to your progress reports.

[Normspeed]

Like REO Speedwagon once said, "Keep on Rollin'!"

[Rodney Bullock]

OK I'm excited:p

[randroid]

Gents,

It's 6:00pm and I have a headache so I think I'll call it a night. First things to buy tomorrow are earplugs because the reverberation from the DA across the hood had to be in excess of 500 decibels! Geez Louise, good thing my neighbors were at work or I'd probably be talking to cops right now instead of you, but the hood is done as is more than half the rest of the car. I didn't do it all today, of course, but there's a whole bunch of the car ready for a final sanding then primer.

I still have some disassembly to do so tomorrow the grill and headlights come off then I'll pull the front fenders to finish them chemically in the garage and hopefully get a coat of primer laid on them so at least it will look as though I'm making progress. The hood needs a little pounding on the lip that goes over the cowl, but it would be sweet to be able to prime it, too, along with the trunk lid. All this priming would be only the first two coats, but would make me feel better.

Now to the shower; Lady Lynn has been referring to me as "The Hulk" because one of the layers of paint was green and the only part of me that isn't green is the part of my face the dust mask didn't cover.

Ain't life a gas?

-Randy

[NatesSedan]

Pics??? Sounds like your making good progress!

[55 Fargo]

Randy, you might want to consisder the "Brightside Interlux Urethane Paint", this stuff you can roll on too.

The diference is the gloss, durabilty, and the fact that you can get away with less wetsanding and amount of coats.

Or lets put it this way, if the Rusto paint doesn't come off as well as expected, you can go over it with the Brightside paint, they are compatible.

The Brightside is more money at $24.99 a quart, but is a tougher, glossier paint, and it is a urethane to boot.

I am also looking forward to your progress.

After the prep work is done, clean off the car real well with solvent, tack cloth it just before painting.

If you are painting in the garage, clean it up, to keep dust and other foreign objects from getting into the paint.

Thin your paint with Mineral spirits, acetone or xylene would make it flash way to fast for rolling, get the paint quite thin, maybe 20 to 30 % mineral spirits added.

Roll on 2 coats, at this point the paint should look semi-transparent, then wetsand whole car with 600, have a pail of water, spray bottle and keep the paper wet, then lean, tack rag, and apply 2 more coats of paint, repeat wetsand with 1000 grit, clean and tack.

Then apply hopefully your last 2 coats of paint, when dry, wet sand with 1500, clean.

Get out the polisher, some polishing compound, sucha s the whiter Turtle wax stuff, and polish the whole car, this should really bring up a shine, and make the paint smooth like glass, this whole process could take a week, so don't be in a rush,take your time.

Good Luck, I hope it comes off well, please post pics of your progress............Fred

[randroid]

Gents,

Rolling with Rustoleum seems a good way to go, so far, but there are a couple lessons I learned yesterday I'd like to share with you.

(I have no idea what order these thumbnails will appear, if at all, so gaze at the one that seems appropriate for the description and you have a one-in-five chance of getting it right.)

This is what the car looked like Tuesday when I started the job in earnest. What you see is the result of very part-time mechanically and chemically removing 60 years of paint over the last year.

Used a DA with 60# to get the hood close to where I wanted it then finished with 220#. Let me advise you that it creates a Hellacious cacophony, so I suggest doing it at night so the neighbors won't be able to see where the noise is coming from.

I scrubbed the inside of the hood with soapy water and one of those dark gray 3M scouring thingies. I wanted a clean surface but didn't worry too much about removing all imperfections because I'll eventually spray some form of sound deadener on it. It was kinda neat seeing where the fan had kicked gunk into the hood over the years.

All clean, sweet smelling, and sanitary drying in the sun against my '67 VW Bug. When the P-15 is done I plan on painting the Bug the same two-tone because if it had a different hood and twice the number of doors they'd be almost identical cars.

The inside of the hood was painted first in case I ran into any difficulties I chose not to deal with, but, in fact, it rolled on embarrassingly easy. I also bought a couple rattle cans of the same primer for those hard-to-reach places, and was glad I did. The keen-eyed among you may notice the hood latch was removed, and I did that because it had paint goop-ed all over it, but a few hours in a can of parts cleaner and it's squeaky clean. It will eventually be re-mounted with the back edge 15\16" from the rear of the mount, just like it was before I removed it. Lots of adjustment here if your hood doesn't seem to fit right.

I hadn't thought-out transferring the primer from the gallon can to the little mixing bucket, and the paint-soaked papers on the garage floor lie in mute testimony to that. What I will do next time is dip it out using one of the

disposable 3 ounce Dixie cups we keep in our bathroom. I thinned it about 30% with mineral spirits and rolled like there was no tomorrow, and it went on slicker than snot. It was also dry to the touch in about 15 minutes. A few shots from the rattle can and I was ready to flip that sucker over and do the top, and this is where I need to share with you the error of my ways.

I let the inside dry for about a half an hour and meanwhile had the roller soaking in spirits to keep it from hardening. What I didn't do was squeeze it thoroughly enough to remove all the spirits that sucker soaked up, but I didn't notice it on the first coat. No, I waited until that first coat got nice and dry and hit it again, creating veritable rivulets of thinner running the entire length of the hood (I painted it while it was standing vertically on end) and cutting gouges the the once-hardened first coat. The end result is a series of swales and valleys that will require the removal of most of the paint but that will be on another day.

I'm a bit under the weather today and should probably be in bed where Lady Lynn left me when she went to work, but I had to give it a shot and found that the primer to be more than dry enough for sanding after less than 24 hours.

When I get back to it I'll post some more pics and add commentary as appropriate.

-Randy

[Don Coatney]

I started the job in earnest.

-Randy

Randy;

Looks good! Who, or where is earnest?

[Captain Neon]

Randy, once I get my newly rebuilt carburetor on to my '46 I may swing by and take a look. Please don't shoot the crazy man driving by your house too slow after dark, it's just me.

After the five day weekend, I have lots of chores to finish. My cats are starting to think they are in the African savannah the grass is so tall, and the car we drove to Minnesota is in desperate need of an oil change. This and I may end up with a 12-day week if things don't straighten out at the plant.

My sister and her husband also informed me that they are moving from OK to northern CA soon. They will be staying at least one night here as Loveland is on the way. I just don't know when. I'm sure my wife will have even more things for me to do once I get the oil changed on "her" car and the lawn mowed.

[randroid]

Ben,

You're welcome by any time, but I work the swing shift so other than Tuesday or Wednesday I won't be home just after dark. If you'll be driving your '46 I'll just alert the neighbors to not worry about a car like mine snooping around. Be forewarned; it isn't yet in show condition.

-Randy

(970) 593-1593

1805 Diana Drive (Two blocks South of Schmidt's Deli.)

[dirty dan]

At first glance, I thought the VW was a two door sedan!

[55 Fargo]

Randy, you don't have to cut the primer with mineral spirits, the primer can be rolled on straight out of the can, in 2 to 3 coats.

The paint (topcoat) , needs to be thinned, in order to eliminate peel, and to self-level, and it allows for very thin coats, that can be wet sanded between every 2nd coat, to be finshed with a polising compound, and the buffing wheel.

If I read this post wrong I apologize, but when it comes to primer, it really doesn't need to be thinned when rolling, as it will be sanded before a topcoat is painted over anyway.

Good luck, things are looking real well, and yes Rusto does roll on quite nicely especially when you get experienced with thinnned paint..........Fred

[randroid]

Fred,

So the primer doesn't need to be thinned? When it got cut about 90% on the second coat from all the solvent in the roller, that ain't natural? I read something on here that I thought mentioned thinning primer, but back in September of 1987 I became convinced I'd made a mistake and it turned out I was right about it all along so my mistake was thinking I was wrong. Thanks for the heads-up and next time I'll try it straight out of the can.

For those of you who have admonished me privately to not put my address openly on the forum, I thank you, too, but I'm not that scared. For one thing I live in a very safe neighborhood of a very safe town, and I'm listed in the local phone book. We share no such opulence in our living that we might be confused with somebody worth ripping-off, and if somebody did try to rip us off they wouldn't get much. Google your own names and see what comes up, or Google your phone number and learn all about yourselves. We're all as vulnerable as we think we are and I might not mention publicly if I owned five old cars, but I'm nobody's target.

-Randy

[Normspeed]

made a mistake and it turned out I was right about it all along so my mistake was thinking I was wrong.

Randy I think you got a good start on a country western song there:D

[55 Fargo]

Fred,

So the primer doesn't need to be thinned? When it got cut about 90% on the second coat from all the solvent in the roller, that ain't natural? I read something on here that I thought mentioned thinning primer, but back in September of 1987 I became convinced I'd made a mistake and it turned out I was right about it all along so my mistake was thinking I was wrong. Thanks for the heads-up and next time I'll try it straight out of the can.

Randy, try it right out of the can, if it is too thick to yor liking, just reduce it a bit and see, but most likely it will be just fine full strength.

I thinned my primer with medium autobody enamel reducer, simply because I sprayed it on with my hvlp gun, and shot on 3 coats wet on wet.

If I roll any of the Rusto type primer, I use it straight out of the can.

The topcoat color paint needs to be thinned for the leveling reasons, and wetsanding, as well as progressive built up paint coats that make it more durable and harder, with a better curing rate, than just plunking on 2 to 3 thick coats of paint.

I am looking forward to your paint progress, keep us informed............Fred

[randroid]

Gents,

I spent this morning wet sanding the hood, trying to remove the valleys and the orange peel. The valleys aren't any big deal but I have it close to bare metal and still the orange peel persists. I'm approaching this with the idea that the finished product won't be any better than the prior coats, and to this end I want the primer to be as smooth as possible, but this is getting a little silly. So, is there such a thing as an acceptable amount of orange peel in the primer that the paint will cover or should I resign myself to starting over from scratch? If I need to start over, what's the best way to not have orange peel in the first place?

-Randy