A nice paint job takes a little bit of skill but takes a lot of attention to detail in how you setup the paint gun and how you clean it after your done using it. A dirty or improperly cleaned paint gun could cause issues the next time you go to use the gun and we wanted to show the proper way to clean a dirty paint gun.
The Eastwood Paint gun and Equipment Cleaner is a great way to save yourself time and money by not needing to buy a new paint gun. Depending on the level of cleaning needed you can wipe, spray, or submerge your spray equipment along with a thorough internal cleaning We also like to wipe down the exterior of all spray guns immediately following a paint job. This keeps your paint equipment top-notch and always spraying like new.
If your current spray gun has leftover residue from a previous paint job it can cause spitting sputtering and an inconsistent spray pattern. If that’s the case you’ll want to clean all the passages to revive it instead of throwing it away. To fully clean a paint gun we first need to disassemble the gun. Make sure to take note as you take each part off the gun as this will speed up reassembly. We suggest to start off by taking the paint cup off to clean it by itself at a later step.
Next remove the air cap, but be careful not to drop this as they’re easily damaged. We’ve found that pulling out the needle with the nozzle still on the gun will protect the needle from any accidental damage. Using a wrench you can now remove the paint nozzle and now the air diffuser is accessible to be pulled straight out with a puller which is included with all Eastwood paint guns.
The most important part to remove if you’re completely submerging the gun will be the packing nut. This keeps unnecessary cleaner out of a vital part. On the Eastwood Concours Pro Paint Gun we will need to remove the trigger to access the packing nut. Pop the clips off using two screwdrivers working from the back of the paint gun. You can now access the packing nut with an Allen wrench. Just be mindful that there’s a metal nut spring and packing nut which can fall out here. It’s best to lay parts on a clean work bench exactly how they came off the gun.
The fully disassembled paint gun is now ready to be soaked in the cleaner until the paint softens up. We generally only soak the area of the paint gun which comes in contact with paint to keep gun cleaner out of air passages which do not need to be cleaned. On the Concours Pro and most paint guns this will be the area in front of the trigger. Once the parts have been soaking you can begin to pull each part out and thoroughly clean with a specialized cleaning kit such as the Eastwood professional paint gun cleaning set which is ideal for this task.
Make sure you use small brushes in the air holes which direct the paint into the spray pattern can get paint residue in them and it will cause the overall spray pattern to suffer and be inconsistent. Once you’re finished cleaning and putting the paint gun back together you’ll have like-new performance for your next paint job.
