Ready to paint your car? By: Nick Capinski

One of the first things, if not the first, that people notice about your ride is the paint.  That mile-deep, mirror finish is something we strive for.  With the price of professional paint jobs costing thousands of dollars, we often hear from hobbyists that want to paint their own vehicle.  We are constantly amazed by the jobs that these hobbyists achieve, but we also hear from hobbyists that encounter issues while painting their vehicle.  Many of the issues encountered relate to the use of incompatible products, incorrect mix ratios, poor technique, or air supply issues.  Eastwood offers solutions to each of these problems, so your paint job turns out the way you expect.

Incompatible products is a gamble when painting a car.  We often hear of people that use one brand of primer, another brand of paint, and another brand of clear, to save a few dollars.  Although they may not experience any issues, we  hear of others that have issues with adhesion or wrinkling.  Paints are designed as a system; if you go outside the system, you never know what results you will get.  To solve this problem, Eastwood has developed a line of primers, paints, and clears that are compatible with each other, all at a great price!  In fact, we have recently added a new line of basecoat/clearcoat colors, to compliment our single stage urethanes.  This new basecoat/clearcoat system is low VOC….it can be sold in California!  

To eliminate the confusion on mix ratios, we have simplified this as well.  With our low VOC bascoats, these have a 4:1 mix ratio (4 parts paint to 1 part activator).  Our single stage urethanes are a 3:1 ration (3 parts paint to 1 part activator).  We package these single stage colors in a gallon can that is ¾ full, so you simply add your quart of activator, to give a gallon of sprayable material….no need to measure out and add reducer.  It doesn’t get much easier than this!

To tackle poor technique, I highly recommend checking out Kevin Tetz’s Paintucation dvd’s.  These instructional dvd’s  walk you through the process of painting your own car.  Once you understand the proper techniques, it really comes down to practicing these techniques.  Before you dive into your project, practice spraying a spare fender, hood, even your lawn tractor.  You really need to get a feel for your equipment and how it acts spraying the material you will be using at different settings.

The root cause of the biggest problem that hobbyist we talk to have, is related to their air supply and equipment.  Many hobbyists have an air compressor and think all they need to paint is a good paint gun, so they’ll go out and buy a top-end spray gun.  This sounds good in theory, but there are other factors that come into play, and oftentimes, these hobbyists are disappointed with the results.  Having clean, dry air is critical when painting.  Any moisture or contaminant in your air supply is going to cause issues with your paint job.  Also, many of the compressors that home hobbyists have simply cannot put out the CFM (cubic feet per minute) requirements that a lot of the paint guns on the market need.  This results in inconsistent air supply to the gun, which varies the atomization of the paint and the spray pattern, and also a compressor that is constantly running and trying to keep up with the air needs.  A compressor that is constantly running generates a lot of heat, causing wear on the compressor, but also is a cause of moisture in air lines.  To tackle this problem, Eastwood developed the Concours gun (we also offer a full line of air management products to supply clean dry air).

Eastwood’s Concours spray gun is a professional-quality paint gun that will operate on as little as 4cfm @ 29psi with your home air compressor!  Compare this to the cfm requirements of other paint guns on the market – many require at least 10-13 cfm – well beyond the capabilities of most home hobbyists’ compressors.  The Eastwood Concours gun features stainless steel needle/nozzle and passages, allowing it to spray both solvent and waterborne coatings.  To make this gun as versatile as possible, needle/nozzle/air cap sets ranging from 1.2mm to 2.2mm are available.  This allows you to spray everything from heavy primers to colors and clears.  In fact, we know you will be impressed with this paint gun and its 10-year warranty!  Click here to see it in action.

For even more information on painting your car with Eastwood paints, check out this How to paint car article from our FREE tech library.