Finishing in flat colors-tips?

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Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:50 pm
Location: Topeka, KS
PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:15 pm
Okay, I'm new here so try to cut me some slack for being paint-stupid.

I have a car with two factory paint jobs on it(yes, really.) and I want to paint the car without stripping the paint off that is on it now. I just want to prep and paint over it, thinking that someday I'm going to have the car professionally painted.

I want to pinstripe in blue, and flat black the body color. (basically by pinstripe I mean, paint where the body lines are, then tape over it, and paint the body color, leaving a nice uniform accent stripe)

-What should I use AFA prepping the surface for paint?

-Since there is a lot of paint on it now, will I need primer?

-Are there any tricks to painting with flat colors (flat black in this case) that I should know about?

The other big question is: Am I stupid for not just stripping the car now, since I'm doing paint? If I'm not going for Concours type paint (just flat black remember...nothing fancy.) are there a LOT of hours on sanding and stripping that I should know about?

Thanks!
Ryan in MN
65 Corvair Corsa
Corvairs do it from the rear! (no, really...they do.)



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Posts: 307
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:07 pm
Location: pennsylvania
PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:51 pm
Two paint jobs on a car really isn't that unusual. There really isn't a huge need to strip it if you don't want to.

I would take down some of that thickness though. Maybe you could sand down the car real well with 180 grit or 220 grit. Put 2 or 3 good coats of primer surfacer on it, sand that down and paint. That way you'd have a nice foundation to put your new paint on. And it would probably look pretty good also.

Another route would be sanding down the car with 320 or 400 grit. Then putting a nice coat of sealer on it followed by you paint. This would save some time, but if the present paint isn't in real good shape and you have to sand out some chips or scratches a primer surfacer would be better.

I wouldn't reccomend sanding the existing paint and putting new paint right on that. If it's an older car, or the paint is beat, who knows what sort of problems you'll run into.

As far as flat black goes, there's a couple ways to go. You can go with a basecoat clearcoat system. You'd need to use a flattening agent in the clear to make the sheen you want. There are also single stage flat blacks/rally blacks that you can use. This isn't as durable, but it'll look nice and it's easy to spray. I'm not really sure if a flat black single stage is less durable than a glossy single stage. I would think not, but it looks less durable.

To strip a car down, sand a car down, or whatever. It takes alot of time to do it right. But it's all about what you want out of the job. You figure what kind of effort you want to put into it, how much you want to spend on materials, and how long you want it to last until that professional job down the road. There's no shame in being satisfied with a lesser quality paint job for the time being. Maybe you'll enjoy the painting process and experience and want to do the whole thing over again with Concours quality.



Settled In
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:50 pm
Location: Topeka, KS
PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:56 pm
Thank you.
Corvairs do it from the rear! (no, really...they do.)

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