I know two of the most asked questions here are "How can I paint with out a huge compressor" and "is there an affordable gun out there that still has high quality?"

I know there are lots of established, professional painters on this forum that wouldn't touch a gun that cost less than $50, so please be light on the bashing, I'm not writing this for your benefit. I have enough experience to know the techniques or painting, and know a good paintjob when I see it. I'm also spraying in an environment that must be similar to a million other hobbyists in the country, so hopefully I can help somebody out here.

I was trying to find a gun that I could use at home that had a low CFM, and since I'm painting in my garage, helped control overspray. I didn't really have a budget, but I was trying to stay at $100 or less for something that would see very limited use after my car was painted. I was going to get the astro evo4014, but its CFM was close to 9, still out of my comfort zone for a LVLP gun.

I ran across the Grizzly H7667 on amazon. Not many reviews on it out there, but the specs and praice were just too tempting to ignore.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Profess ... -5mm/H7667

For $50 I wanted to try it, and if it was trash, oh well, I've spent $50 on worse things. First impression out of the box was that this did not feel like a cheap gun. All parts were polished metal, and the knobs are stainless (I think) with lazer etched numbers on the to help you recall your settings. Everything moved fluidly and easily, nothing wobbled, bound up, or froze

Next step, which I did today was to hook it up to a compressor. at the moment I only have a 1.5 gallon pancake with a CFM of 0.9, so I knew I wouldn't be able to do any real painting, but I figured I could use it to blow thinner to clean it, and test the fluid controls while I waited for Monday when I get my 33 gallon compressor over here to the house

I hooked a gauge up to it, opened up the sir control all the way, and shot some thinner through it. After a few seconds of messing with the fluid and pattern controls, I had a pattern on the cardboard in front of me a really nice looking 9 inch cigar. At first it had bulbs on the top and bottom, but trhe pattern control did exactly what it was supposed to do. If I left the gun on for more than a couple seconds, the thinner started to run. that tells me that this thing shoots less material than a HVLP gun, so I'm going to have to move the gun slower to compensate.

As for if the CFM is accurate, since my setup test was with a tiny pancake compressor, I won't even get into that. I will know more next week

More later, I'll update this thread as I go. I'm going to try this gun with epoxy, high build primer, base coat, and clear. I say "try" because I'm worried mainly if it can lay down enough material to do the job, especially with the high build. I've got other guns and options if that's the case, but I want to give this one a full workout

Thanks for this thread Mark. I primed my car with a primer gun that has a 1.8 tip and I am looking for an LVLP that is relativiely inexpensive. My thinking is that my compressor is 30 gallons and only has 6CFM and I dont want to invest in a big compressor at this stage of my interest. I am enjoying this as a new hobby but can not say how far I will take it. Having you post how things are going may help me in buying a gun and setting it up.

ok, i lied. I started spraying today. I mixed up about 20 sprayable oz of epoxy, and sprayed some parts that had exposed metal

I really like this gun! hardly any overspray and it has a great fan. It's amazing for a $50 gun







What I can't really test is how good it is with air. As it turns out, I'm using a 6HP compressor, so it has no problems keeping up with this gun. It also doesn't have any problems keeping up with my HLVP Harbor frieght purple gun, and it's supposed to be an air hog. I'll take the gun over to a friends house and see what it does over there, he only has a 6 SCFM compressor

by the way, it lays down lots of material. the epoxy was glossy on the first pass. I'll probably have to back off a little when laying base
I have a hose fed gun with a 1.8 tip that I'm probably going to use for the high build primer, but I'll be shooting base within a month, I'm sure

check this out... i wore these while I sprayed the epoxy today. so little overspray that there's not even a mist on them. i'm impressed!

Keep the comments coming if you can. I'll soak up any info I can get as I'm trying to figure the gun I'll buy.

Dennis

Please keep us updated. I`ll be watching this thread closely as well.
I too am just a hobbyist, and am working on a garage project. It`s a 3rd gen as well!! I`ve used cans before, even painting whole cars, and have been able to get them to come out good enough that noone could tell it was done with cans. So I figure just about any gun would work better than cans, right?
You are using a high build primer on this, and will also use this for the base and clear with the same nozzle?

Hawk312 wrote:Please keep us updated. I`ll be watching this thread closely as well.
I too am just a hobbyist, and am working on a garage project. It`s a 3rd gen as well!! I`ve used cans before, even painting whole cars, and have been able to get them to come out good enough that noone could tell it was done with cans. So I figure just about any gun would work better than cans, right?
You are using a high build primer on this, and will also use this for the base and clear with the same nozzle?

the primer I'm using is a high solids primer, so I'm going to try my cheap binks 7 copy I got from northern tools. it has a 1.8 tip, which is right in the middle of the recommended specs. 1.5 is on the low end. I bet the grizzly would work, especially if I reduced the primer a bit. the other reason for using the cheap binks is the cup is much larger.

are you on TGO? I've got a more detailed restoration thead over there...including pictures of when my car was in the rattlecan stage. It looked really really good... for a while, but as i buffed it, the metallics looked more and more blotchy, so I decided it was time to move on to real paint

http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/membe ... hread.html

change of plans.

my binks copy wouldn't shoot a good pattern at all. it ended up looking like an upside down ice cream cone.

I went back to the Grizzly, upped the pressure to 30psi with the trigger pulled, opened up the fluid control and it did just fine. the pattern was only about 10 inches, but as long as I didn't get in a rush it was fine.

It was nice not having the clouds of over spray that the crappy siphon gun would have had.

one more coat of primer, and I'll post some pics

got the high build down today. everything went great, except I noticed there was a dent in one of the fenders that still needs work. I started spraying and thought "how did I miss THAT???"

I've got to let the high build dry, sand that part down and see if I need to break out the filler again

After i bumped up the pressure for the high build and opened up the fluid control, the grizzly did great! It would have been nice to have a larger fan, but that's the nature of the beast

here's what I used to set up the gun. that's about a 10 inch pattern



and the rest of the car... I have some dry spots, I guess i should have used a reducer. it's already hot here