Painting A Car: the latest ride at Universal Studios!

I've got car painting on the brain and it looks like it's going to rain outside. So instead, I'll quickly discuss the first car I painted and why I don't get excited about sanding cars...not that I ever did, really.

The first I car I painted was my 1991 Eagle Talon TSi AWD, which was damn sweet but had (also) been in a hailstrom at one point. The damage wasn't nearly as extensive as it was on my Camry, but the hood and roof both had significant lumps in them.

The roof wasn't much of a problem—there were only two or three tiny dents, and the black color hid them very effectively. The ones on the hood, on the other hand, were very noticable in the flash red paint. Yowza.

I actually can't find any pictures of my Talon before I started the body work, unfortunately.

I'm pretty sure I bought the car around May of 1998 at the end of my junior year in high school. I remember paying around $2k for the car. This was a bit of a steal because I was fixing the body for my auto shop class project, and the mechanical problems (timing belt and transfer case) were easy to fix and covered under recall, respectively. If the car had been in good shape, it probably would have gone for around $6k.

By September of 1998 I had finished the timing belt and gotten the Mitsu dealership in Santa Fe to replace the transfer case for free. Rock on.

As I remember, I took the intro auto shop class in the spring of 1998 and the advanced classes in the fall of 1998 and spring of 1999. The advanced class required a project: unless you were exceedingly clever (which most people in that class weren't), you either rebuilt and engine or painted a car. I painted a car, because I'm not very clever, either.

I'm pretty sure I started sanding the car sometime before the winter—I had to work on the car indoors most of the time, but this wasn't much of a problem because sanding isn't too messy and doesn't involve any fumes.

Anyway. Sanding that car is what has turned me off from sanding for the rest of eternity. Not that I ever really enjoyed it, but I'd be very happy to pay someone else to do it for me in the future.

Here's a picture about halfway through the process. The dark red color is the primer I used to cover up exposed metal after sanding. The chalky white is some unwashed paint dust, and the yellow is the exposed bumper plastic. There were, as I remember, some really big gouges in the bumper that I had to sand out. Speaking of the bumper, you can see that it's been torqued across the bottom—I straightened this later.

The light and grey patches are the primer applied at the factory, but the beige was body filler (i.e., Bondo) I used to fill in hail dents. Luckily, the dents were shallow enough that I didn't have to pull them back into shape before filling them in. You can't, after all, use much more than about 1/8" of filler without it falling out after a few months.

The sides were significantly less damaged than the hood, but still needed to be scuffed up so that the new paint would hold.

Now, all of this sanding was done by hand. It's possible to do rough sanding with an orbital power sander, but we only had one in the auto shop and, for some reason, it was reserved for instructor use only. It's really easy to overlook the subtle details when using an air sander, and I suppose the work is somewhat more rewarding when it's done completely without any power tools, so we were required to do everything with a bucket and a sanding block.

Regular orbital sanders also leave terrible swirl marks which are difficult to remove and which show through most paint. Most automotive power sanders have an extra swivelling element which doesn't create swirls, but I can't remember the name of it.

Anyway.

The sanding took, as I mentioned, around six months to get done. I usually sanded for three hours or so on days when I went to auto shop, and most weekends, but it probably averaged out to around an hour a day.

It turns out that automotive paint is ridiculously expensive. I can't remember what brand I got, but I bought around a quart of primer and a quart of color for around $180. The clearcoat was, as I remember, snagged from the shop teacher.

A not-insignificant part of this cost (~$40) went into the flex element, which is added so the paint won't crack off the bumper when it bends in everyday use. Flex element can be added to paint that's going to go over metal surfaces, but most manufacturers don't do so because it's really fucking expensive stuff. This is one of the big reasons why bumpers often fade to a slightly different color than the rest of the car.

Anyway. After a solid day of washing, wiping, and tackclothing¹ the car, it was ready to paint. The high school I went to happened to have a humidity- and temperature-controlled paint booth complete with sealed doors and air filters. This project wouldn't have been possible without it—the spraying equipment alone would have cost a grand or so, and painting this car in my garage would have meant that a ton of dust would get stuck in the paint.

The process of painting took around 10 hours, in total. I remember putting a total of ten coats on: 3 primer, 4 color, and 3 clear...although these numbers could be off slightly. The point was that it took all day, as each coat took around 30 minutes to apply and 30 minutes to dry. By the end of the day my hand was ready to fall off, too, because the spray gun weighed a few pounds when loaded with paint.

In the end, though, I think it was worth it.

Pardon my JPEG compression.

¹ Did I mention how much I hate tackcloth?