so i have never really painted anything with a gun before, but i went and bought an HVLP gun, read as many threads on the internet as i could, and decided to paint my car myself. i knew it wasn't going to be a professional looking job, but for total cost of $212, i couldn't resist. i have a few pictures of what the car used to look like when i first bought it and to where it is now. opinions wanted

 

wet sand and buff.

 

ya, i wet sanded it already but i think im gonna go with a little rougher grit like 800 and then put a few more coats of color

 

looks good the color but how many coats of clear do you have on it ? the more the better then wet sand and buff .

 

well there is no clear coat on it yet, its a laquer paint which i kno wyou can clear, but i have not....yet. im debating clearing it or just wet sanding some more and throwing some more coats at it and seeing what kind of shine i can get from buffing it

 

Are you considering painting the headlight buckets and grill area a flat black? LT1 Camaros without that detail don't look right IMO. otherwise, nice color.

 

goodjob!!! yea paint the headlight areas black to give the front defenition i could careless about the grill area though but thats my opinion. couple more coats and some wetsanding then a few coats of clear will bring your car right out. glad you dont have the dumb spoiler on anymore.

 

thanks, i didn't want to spend a ton of money on clear and everything else until i found out how it was gonna turn out. like i said, i never painted a car before so this was kind of the first step, i think i'm gonna let it settle a couple of days and then wet sand and clear next week when i get more time.

 

did you spray it in the garage ? bet the neighbors liked that

 

I think it looks pretty good. I wish you had some high quality shots so we could really see it. In my opinion, you need to put some clear on it though. The way it is now makes it look like the clear just faded away and it really takes away from the paint.

Also, if you like the painted headlight buckets, keep them that way. Personally, I like them painted black, but I've seen some VERY clean LT1's with them painted body color. Are you keeping the spoiler black?

I have a few questions, as I've always wanted to paint my own car.

1. Have you done something like this before?

2. Did you do it in your garage? If so, how did you set it up to avoid contamination and such?

3. Did you just buy a cheap-o HVLP gun, or did you spend some money on a good one?

 

lookslike a copper color. neato.

 

Wow it was an eyesore when you bought it, good going man. I would highly recommend putting clearcoat on it, because clearcoat is what protects the paint from chemical contaminants in the atmosphere and acts as a shield. It's your paint's condom, so put it on.

About the headlight buckets, it only works with certain colors. This is the only car I can think of that I like the buckets being body color.


In my personal opinion, your firemist orange car doesn't look good with them body color. I'd paint them black, but that's just my opinion.

 

i'm still debating about painting the headlight buckets or not, i'm leaning toward painting them flat black but we'll see. as far as painting in my garage, i just set up plasitc around the entire car ceiling to floor and just made sure i kept the car clean as hell the whole time, and i didn't notice any problems with dust particles or anything, and the gun is the cheap hvlp from tcp global, like i said i had never done it before so i didn't want to drop a ton of money on something if i wasn't going to use it right. as for the spoiler, i think i'm gonna paint it orange, but i'm kind liking it being black right now