Best Paint For Classic Car

Own a classic car and it’s starting to fade? Literally? Your hot rod is showing signs of chipped paint or “bruises”? Than maybe it’s time to renew the paint. You will want will want to know that a properly made paint job is a grueling  process that will take up to 3 days. Or about 30 hours of work depending on how you want to count.

A little preparation is required before any kind of painting is to be done. Before even getting the paint you might consider giving the car a brush with a fine tooth comb, this will help you find small errors and correct them. After covering and masking everything, a tack cloth is what you need to get some wax remover and grease around. Another prep matter is washing the entire space where you plan to do the painting with soapy water (preferably with a mix of 50/50 water and alcohol) and cover the walls as much as possible with anti static spray.

Ok now it’s time to shoot some paint. But first, and most important, protection. Don’t even think about spraying if you’re not wearing a protected suit with an included hood. You will see that after only a few tanks of paint you will have to change the lenses because of the enormous amount of paint dust in the air, so remember: the paint may look good on the car, it won’t look as well inside your lungs.

Start with the base of the car and run 2 coats of paint, be careful with the car lines to keep the coats even. Remember to sand and eventually blend possible water marks. Also be careful with dust. It may set in on the dry paint and needs to be removed with a cloth that doesn’t leave marks. This is to be done after the paint gets dry of course.

When switching to the doors, apply one coat of paint, then let it dry so that you can check for eventual specks of dust. After cleaning them go ahead and cover with the second coat of paint. DBC has the advantage cause it dries very quickly and leaves very little peel so many runs aren’t a complicated operation in most places.

Spraying the lower parts of the body can get a little more tricky. The sills can be tackled rather easily since all you need to do is get on the floor and check out under the car to make sure that the paint lands perfectly. On the other hand the trunk tub and the bonnet can get more complicated because of the awkward position you have to stay in to ensure that the paints sticks without problems.

When you switch to a new tank of spray, it would be advisable to try and paint mostly flat surfaces because the 2-3 minutes of spraying can be quite tricky since there’s fresh new paint and some adjustments may be required. So in case something goes a bit wrong, a smooth surface is a lot easier to fix than sharp angles or curved lines.

Remember that the most important part in a base paint job is attempting to get the base as smooth as possible with as little dust and problems as possible. Cause that will enable you to get the paint shining a lot faster, than after a sanding process which can get tricky and if an error is made a new coat has to be applied.

Good luck and have fun in making that old pile of metal looking like a real hot rod again.

You might also want to read:

Post tags: Tags: Best Paint For Classic Car, classic-car, paint classic car