Hi all. As suggested on a previous thread, I'm going to keep a thread on my progress spraying synthetic coach enamel on my landy project. If any of this goes well, then I'll edit it into a how-to.

Today I managed to get my first of coat of paint - acid etch primer - on a proper body panel.

I'm starting out with the front bulkhead (galvenised), having already had a practice at prep and spraying technique. Here's the process thus far:

Spend a while looking over your new galv bulkhead for any holes which have become full of galv. My bulkhead went to ashtree for repairs and galving, so thankfully they'd already cleared most of the holes on mine.

Degrease you new uber shiny bulkhead with some warm soapy water, or some meths... Either will work.

Next, give you bulkhead a brush all over with mordant solution (aka t-wash aka acid wash) to remove the non-stick nature of fresh galv.

Wait 24 hours and give your bulkhead a 2nd coat. Hopefully it will then be a dark grey colour all over (with some white crystallisation). If you have any large patches of shiny silver galv remaining, simply degrease and repeat the mordant wash.

Now you have to clean down the bulkhead to remove the crystallisation. I found this very easy to do with some warm soapy water (washing up liquid), and red scotchbridge. The scouring action helps a lot.

Swill off the soapy water as soon as you've finished to avoid soap puddles. Leave the bulkhead overnight to dry out. If any powdery white areas remain, a rub down with meths should get them.

You should be left with this:



Having hung the bulkhead at a suitable painting height, I then give go over the whole area with a tack-rag to remove any dust.

Tack-rags are soaked in linseed oil, so you've now got to remove that oily contaminant.

Give the whole bulkhead a rub over with white spirit to remove any oil residues, and finally prep for the paint.

Next, prep the paint for painting. I bought all of my paint and matching thinners from paintman.co.uk. I have been advised that you want to get the paint to "single cream consistency"... Not very scientific, but seems to leave a nice margin for error akin to most landy jobs! Worth mentioning that acid etch primer has a specific thinner. Decant a bit of paint into a jam jar, and add thinners a little at a time until you reach single cream. About 10% thinners as a maximum I think.

I used a bergen mini hvlp gun for the bulkhead, as there's a lot of small spaces to get into. Bit low on paint volume, but that was good for a beginner with this complicated shape. FYI, I used 2 mini-gun cup fulls of paint to do the whole bulkhead.

Get your thinned paint in the gun, and gun hooked up to your compressor. I set my regulated output to 30psi ish.

Next you need to set up your spray pattern. For spraying flat panels, you want a nice long elipse shape, but the bulkhead is far from a flat panel! I adjusted the "spray pattern" screw to give a nice round spot. I then adjusted the "paint volume" screw until I had achieved a level of paint that would enable the odd pause and/or 2nd pass, without creating runs. Very difficult to explain this, so here's a pic of my setup cardboard:



The dot and line down in the bottom right is what I eventually went with. You can always increase the amount of material if it's not enough.

Then the proper spraying can start! Here's a progress shot:



So that's it. A bit of time, and one paint refil later (from the same pre-prepared jam jar), and it was done:



Obviously this is only the 1st coat, and is fairly forgiving. I'll have a look over it in the morning to see what the finish is like, and decide if any of the normally visible bits need any work.

Hopefully, the next job will be to spray a coat of high build primer.

Looking good and good explanation notes
Looking forward to next stage

Good to see you're moving on with the paint bud.
Provided you removed any of the rough galvanising lumps or bumps prior to etch primer I would just put the high build straight over it.
You will flat the high build primmer after and that will get rid of a lot of unevenness that you get with the galvanising process.
Think I did 5 coats, and once flatted back it was all gone, I expected to see a lot unevenness in the bulkhead and was preparing myself for it to not look brilliant, turns out I was wrong and more than happy with the final result.

We'd best tell @Cashpat that the promise from the other thread has risen from the dead

Don't be daft, he's expecting you to have rebuilt the whole thing by now! FYI, graduated paper paint cups are about £5 for 50. Sometimes, you get the mix just right but you can't replicate it in future because you don't know how much of what went in the mix.

Did a bit more today. 2 coats of the HB primer. Bit of a bugger that it's exactly the same shade of grey as the acid etch! FYI, this is dark grey HB primer - the correct colour for under keswick green.

Before painting anything, I gave the whole panel a run down with a lint free cloth and some upol panel wipe. Do not use white spirit after the bare metal phase!!! It'll take your paint off!

I set the mini gun up in exactly the same way today, and managed to get 2 coats on. Took a few hours in the garage to dry, but I only have a small convection heater in the spray booth. I don't like to turn it on until the worst of the particulate has cleared from the air (paranoid possibly).

Here's a shot after 2 coats of HB primer. You can see all the defects in the original zinc surface. I'll give this another coat of 2 of HB primer tomorrow, then leave it overnight again to dry.

The UPOL slow degreaser you seem to be using is really good stuff but it has always given me the impression that it leaves a thin film behind. I have had good results with Eastwood's pre-paint after using the UPOL this stuff makes the surface feel totally degreased.

I must say your spraying area looks pretty scary. It needs to be a real clean area if you are not going to get muck in your paint: Think hospital operating room.

Whilst temperature is a problem for this time of year in Northern Europe the biggest problem is likely to be damp. If the humidity is too high then you are more likely to have trouble with the finished surface. Painting in Northern Europe at this time of year with out some gucci humidity controlled paint booth is not ideal.

So - sorry - probably not being clear enough...

...by turning on your heater after spraying you are not necessarily helping the situation in a damp environment. Note: Before you spray the temperature of the bulkhead and the air should at least be at the minimum temperature stated on the tin of paint.

If you heat the air / area after spraying you are inviting trouble with condensation. Warm (humid) air - cold surface - water droplets "appear".

Thanks for the input stretch, but I don't think a lot of that applies to coach enamel.

This is 100% the reason for me posting this thread. In fact the chap who sells the paint says he'd have no issue with painting outside at this time of year. So I don't think humidity is such a factor.

Important to remember that I'm not painting a Ferrari...

farmershort said:

Thanks for the input stretch, but I don't think a lot of that applies to coach enamel.

This is 100% the reason for me posting this thread. In fact the chap who sells the paint says he'd have no issue with painting outside at this time of year. So I don't think humidity is such a factor.

Important to remember that I'm not painting a Ferrari...

Click to expand...

Which brand of paint are you using then?

(I've probably missed the link)

It's in the OP chap

Look, my view is this:

People giving advice on the internet about spray painting are largely (but not totally) in one of 2 groups:

1) people recycling received wisdom they read elsewhere on the internet.
2) people with a vested interest in making it sound difficult (professional sprayers).

My attempt will likely not come out perfectly, but I hope to get better, panel by panel. I am following the advice of the man who sold me the paint (who has a vested interest in me achieving a good result).

All I ask is that folk judge the technique by the results at the end, and not by Internet/cellulose/2k advice.

farmershort said:

It's in the OP chap

Look, my view is this:

People giving advice on the internet about spray painting are largely (but not totally) in one of 2 groups:

1) people recycling received wisdom they read elsewhere on the internet.
2) people with a vested interest in making it sound difficult (professional sprayers).

My attempt will likely not come out perfectly, but I hope to get better, panel by panel. I am following the advice of the man who sold me the paint (who has a vested interest in me achieving a good result).

All I ask is that folk judge the technique by the results at the end, and not by Internet/cellulose/2k advice.

Click to expand...

Firstly I want to make it clear - I'm not here to give you (or anyone else) a hard time. This is a forum - people exchange ideas - chat - whatever - but at the end of the day it is up to whoever to take advice or not - the end user is responsible for what ever they do.

I'll add in a different category to the two you list above:

3) People who are not professionals but have had a bit of experience painting inside and outside (in less than ideal conditions) before.

I'm in group 3. Not an expert. But I have done this sort of thing before.

I have, for example, cleaned and prepped steel before (just like you are doing now), painted it (with good quality stuff) and have come back to it a few years later to find that whilst the top coat looks good there's rust forming underneath.

Now this wasn't the same paint that you are using: So I will be interested to see how it goes with you because I'm asking similar questions about painting Land Rovers here =>

https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/paint-quality-prep-colour-codes-advice-reqd.298013/

There is a lot of information on the internet - some of which might seem confusing - but there is always a separation of wheat and chaff (good farming term eh?)

I think these two links present realistic point of view that coincides with what I've figured out so far =>

http://www.yachtpaint.com/sgp/diy/ask-the-experts/whether-to-paint-depends-on-the-weather.aspx

http://www.defelsko.com/technotes/environmental_conditions/environmental_conditions.htm

4) Apprentice trained professionals who pass on knowledge learnt the hard, easy and everything in between way, because they care about somebody else's time and wallet, and have seen people make mistakes before, as well as read others giving daft advice which has then been followed - all to end in tears. But i see your term 'largely' which means you acknowledge there are more categories. (I don't want anybodies paint job by the way, no matter who they are and how much they're paying!) Stretch does have a point about condensation, better to warm up beforehand, then paint.

Yep more categories indeed, but most people fall into the first 2 groups I reckon. Bare in mind another major group is people who spray modern paints... Which this is not. I read tonnes of crap about keying old paint with anything from 80 grit to 320 grit, and everything in between. I now know that the correct level of prep for a landy with this paint is 800 grit to key good original paint, then primer, then 1000 grit to flat it back, then top coat. I'll cover that detail when I eventually get to a pre-painted panel.

FYI, yes I get the heater on at 9am, then turn it off once I start spraying, then turn it on again once I've finished cleaning the paint pot and gun between coats. That's as good as I can manage.

The main thing for me here is that I don't see the point in a thread that states that you need a dust-free lab to paint in, as most hobbyists don't have one. I'm not here to teach anyone how to make a living as a spray painter... I just want to show people it's easier than they think to get a half decent paint finish on a landy with coach enamel... I may or may not succeed.

Dust free lab lol! Have you seen my rebuild thread? I have been known to p1ss on the lawn but that's as far as I go nowadays.

Well if you get to the stage where you want shiny paint and want to get rid of dust and muck that might have found its way into the mix there's this =>

http://www.rickwrench.com/50dollarpaint.html

That might encourage you to find a way of fixing it!

(The 50 dollar paint job might already be known in the Land Rover world - but if you've not come across it before it is an inspiration to all home painters)

Difficult to say just how good the finish is....
Pictures tend to make the finish look better than it sometimes is...
But for 50 dollars????

What did he get for $50??? Sandpaper/filler/panelwipe/primer/paint/rubbing compound? Yeah right.

Meh... I've spent a damn sight more than that, I can assure you... But still a lot less than the 5k a decent respray would cost.

Discokids said:

What did he get for $50??? Sandpaper/filler/panelwipe/primer/paint/rubbing compound? Yeah right.

Click to expand...

farmershort said:

Meh... I've spent a damn sight more than that, I can assure you... But still a lot less than the 5k a decent respray would cost.

Click to expand...

I'm not too fussed about what people say they've spent on their vehicles.

I'm a pretty strong fan of Mercedes vehicles and if you ever go to the dealership there's usually a little huddle of "business" chaps waiting for their cars to be serviced: They often compare cock length by saying how much something has just cost them...

...much like other people on the internet who report they restored something for pocket change...

...the interesting thing about the 50 dollar paint job is the slap dash technique. It is all about "whack it on" and then polish out the crap you've just smeared in there. If you polish to bare metal - don't worry about it - whack on some more and start again.

Now I'm not saying this is the way to do things - I'm not saying that at all - but it does make you think that if it works it isn't such a bad way to go.

I suspect that it all boils down to luck and a nice dry day!