How To Paint A Car With Rustoleum

A couple of years agone, a reader named Karen wrote in to Car Talk'due south newspaper column, asking if there was a solution to peeling pigment on her Toyota, which had been suffering from a condition called "delamination," which is kind of like mange for cars. "The paint is coming off and it looks horrible. What is an economical mode to get information technology painted?"

Machine Talk's answer: "Have you ever heard of Rust-Oleum, Karen?"

It may have been a joke, but I took information technology as a personal challenge. I had heard of Rust-Oleum, and I was leap and determined to pigment my car with information technology.

Or rather, my truck. It's a 1979 Chevrolet Blazer that I bought from a friend every bit a wintertime project a few years agone. It just has 60,000 miles on it, merely it had suffered through 35 New England winters equally a plow truck. To take care of the rust, I took a night class at Assabet Valley Vocational High Schoolhouse where I replaced a door, the inner and outer fenders, the rusty rocker panels and some minor rust in the rear quarters.

My hope was that I was going to accept time to curlicue information technology into the school's fancy-pants Devilbiss downdraft spray booth, but I ran out of time before the 12-week class was over. I looked into getting it painted at one of the franchised "I'll pigment that car for $99.95 joints," but I learned quickly that the toll was a lot closer to $1,000, and that the $99.95 toll was reserved for cars virtually the size of the Cozy Coupe my son was running effectually the front end k in.

So I decided to accept matters into my ain hands. I had read a story a long time agone in Hot Rod mag well-nigh painting a car with Rust-Oleum and a foam roller. I also spent a lot of time reading "The $50 Paint Chore" at RickWrench.com, in which he painted a Corvair using the same method.

Here's the deal with pigment quality circa 1979, when some dope was spraying single-phase black on my Blazer: It was not-real. These trucks rusted the the moment that they came in contact with oxygen for two reasons: They were made of steel that had the quality of hardened cheese, and the simply place they painted was the outside, and even then the primer was showing through in spots. Entire swaths of the inside of the doors, rocker panels and underside had never received whatsoever paint whatsoever.

And then my thought was if I rolled five coats of Rust-Oleum on it, information technology certainly couldn't exist any WORSE than how Chevy painted it when Jimmy Carter was nonetheless in office. And if it WAS worse, I could just sand information technology down and pay Earl Schieb to squirt it later on.

With that in mind, I headed off to Lowe's for supplies.

I primed the entire truck with one coat of Rust-Oleum Rusty Metal Primer, and then a 2d coat of Rust-Oleum High Perfomance Primer. Both primers are oil-based and nasty. I bought a roller cage and a whole bunch of 4-inch foam rollers, and a ton of those foam paint brushes in various sizes to get into the nooks and crannies.

The nice part about priming was that I could see how the whole process was going to work with the end coats afterward. I took my time and I could get two coats of primer on in a day in my garage.

And so I blocksanded the truck for nigh the time it took the Egyptians to build the pyramids. Getting that surface equally polish as humanly possible is what's going to result in a decent pigment job. The best advice I e'er heard was "When you think you're done sanding, sand for another 24-hour interval." In retrospect, I should've washed exactly that, simply I got the surface pretty smooth with 600 grit paper.

With the primer sanding out of the manner, I was ready to roll on the color.

Rust-Oleum Oil-Based Protective Enamel is pretty awesome stuff. It'southward relatively inexpensive, information technology will take a bullet, and it's avaialble at any hardware store in America. Nearly the only limitation is that it merely comes in limited colors, and that selection gets even more limited at Lowe's on a Lord's day morning. Gloss Black is pretty much available everywhere, though, then I was in good shape.

I had some internal debates about whether I should thin the pigment or non. Subsequently watching more YouTube videos than whatsoever 47-year-old should sentinel in a lifetime, I opted to sparse the paint with mineral spirits. Some YouTubers were recommending acetone, which works, too, merely it seemed to "wink" or dry out a little quicker than I liked.

Lowe's has paint measuring cups in the paint aisle, only I wouldn't recommend measuring using the graduations on the side of the cup. Instead, you're looking for a sure consistency of paint that allows the roller to do its chore, and then allows the pigment to catamenia out a bit. Pour some paint in the cup (perhaps a half pint) and then add four capfuls of mineral spirits.

At this betoken, you need to stir the mixture for a practiced long fourth dimension to make sure the paint and the mineral spirits are well-incorporated. I used a plastic spoon, but you tin use a paint stirring stick, a popsicle stick, your kid's Lincoln Logs, any is available close by.

Now the important office: Pull the spoon out of the paint and watch it flow. Y'all're looking for a consistency that allows the pigment to flow off the spoon in a steady stream for about four seconds before it turns to drips. With that consistency, the paint yet has enough tension to keep it from pouring off any vertical surfaces, just information technology can also flow out a bit and go rid of most of the texture the roller is going to want to put in it.

This guy's video was really helpful in understanding how to mix the paint:

Only before I started to paint, I wiped the entire truck down with a tack rag and and then mineral spirits -- or prep solvent, if you have a good auto trunk supply shop nearby - to get rid of any dust and oil from my fingers.

Then it was simply a matter of rolling the paint on. It goes on surprisingly well. People warned me that the first coat was going to expect lousy, simply honestly, I was blown abroad past how practiced it looked from the get-go coat. I used the cream brushes to get into places that I would've had a tough time using a roller. Because I'd thinned information technology out, the paint just flowed out even when using the cream castor.

If yous're doing multiple coats, y'all're going to desire to exercise them vi hours later. That way y'all won't accept to sand between coats. If you're waiting longer, the paint completely cures and y'all'll demand to sand it to allow the subsequent coats to have something to attach to.

I concluded upwards putting v coats on the truck, which was frankly too many. I could've actually gotten abroad with two, I recall, merely I was experimenting. I wetsanded the whole truck from 1000 to 2000 grit paper, and then buffed it at the finish with a machine buffer. That was my ane extravagance in the whole projection, and it cost me about $100 at Lowe'due south. Well worth information technology, because yous can apply it to apply wax on all your other cars, too.

The event? It'due south pretty darn good. Yous can see a complete photograph gallery at BestRide.com. It's non a show truck by whatsoever stretch of the imagination, but for something that price me about $200 to paint, it looks astounding. I've driven information technology through pelting and a bit of snow in the last twelvemonth, and the pigment has held up extremely well. I even painted the white bumpers with Rust-Oleum Apparatus White.

If I was going to do it once again, I probably wouldn't pigment a truck black, because black shows every single imperfection. If it was a white truck, information technology'd look as good as if it came out of a spray booth.

It took time to roll those coats on, simply not a lot more than it would've taken to spray it. And what time I expended rolling, I more than than made up for in non having to mask much of anything. I taped the door handles and the windshield gasket, and that was pretty much it. By the fourth dimension I finished at got confident, I wasn't fifty-fifty covering the wheels with a sheet.

Depending on the project, I'd paint a auto this mode again in a heartbeat. All joking aside, it's a mode to get color on a machine in a habitation garage for less than half what information technology would price the cheapest trunk shop to spray it.