hineas
06-27-2023, 02:34 AM
I know some of you followed my body work and paint thread (https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?44680-Carl-s-and-Phil-s-Mk4-Body-Work-and-Paint) over the past 6 months. It was a rollercoaster of excitement, disappointment, frustration, and pride. I am writing this thread to give my thoughts on the process and to help other people decide if they want to tackle this portion of the build themselves.
I suspect this post will be long, and it will likely be the most helpful to those who are considering doing their own body work. I hope to share all of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I am going to be as honest as I can about the process to help people know what they are getting into. This threat might feel like a bunch of rambling (because it is), but hopefully it is helpful.
To start off, this was a huge undertaking. I truly feel like this was as big of a project as the mechanical build. We finished the car and drove it one season in gel coat. We put 5,000 miles on the car before starting body work. I have no regrets driving it in gel coat. In fact, I highly recommend it if you are going to do your own body work. It was an amazing year putting 5,000 miles on the car before we started working on it again.
Time
We did about 280 man hours of work. I kept track of how many hours I worked, how many my brother put in, and how many my nephew did. Sometimes having 2-3 of us didn't speed things up much, so somebody doing this by themselves may do it in less time.
Sanding
The amount of sanding is unreal. We ended up doing several rounds of Rage Gold on the parting seams on the body. When we thought we were done, we ended up doing a few more rounds until it looked and felt perfect to us. Then we had to do it again with glazing putty to get rid of all the pin holes in the body filler. We spent about 45-50 hours on the parting lines, getting the doors to line up, trimming the holes, etc. Most of that time was sanding by hand. I'm sure it would go faster using a DA sander, but we were worried about sanding too fast so we did it by hand.
Once we had all the parting lines sanded, we then had to sand the entire car by hand. We block sanded everything to get it ready for Slick Sand. Every square inch of the car was sanded thoroughly to prep for Slick Sand.
After spraying the slick sand, we block sanded the entire car again.
After spraying the sealer we lightly sanded the entire car.
We didn't sand the base color coat because that will mess up the metal flake.
We sanded the clear coat. We sanded it several times. We sanded it by hand with 1000 grit, 1500 grit, 2000 grit, and then 3000 grit. We did all of this by hand because we didn't want to go too fast with power tools. This did add time to the sanding, but I think it was time well spent.
Painting
This was stressful, but definitely doable. Luckily, you learn how to spray the car with the slick sand, primer, and sealer before you start doing color. By that time you have it at least partly figured out. If you have a friend who can help you set up the spray gun, that would be a big help as well. It was a huge help to have a second person while painting. The second person can help with moving the air hose around, making sure the air hose doesn't hit the wet paint, and they can mix paint so you can just keep spraying.
The clear coat is stressful because every piece of dust and insects can get into the clear coat and cause issues. You can sand a lot of these out, luckily. However, we got some dust in the clear coat on the hood scoop and it will forever bother me, but it wasn't bad enough for us to respray.
Buffing
This was painful for me. Everything went well, but the final result wasn't what I wanted. It was also hard to get a perfect finish. I still need to buff our car some more, but it is more than acceptable at this point.
Equipment
Expect to buy a lot of equipment. The equipment isn't cheap, either. We probably spent about $7,000 in paint and supplies. Pain is expensive. We didn't even buy expensive paint and we spent about $3,000 for color, clear, primer, sealer, and Slick Sand. We spent a few hundred dollars on Rage Gold. We bought a lot of sand paper, and I don't even know how much I spent on that, but I'd guess a few hundred dollars. Buying enough plastic and red rosin paper to protect my garage from the paint cost a few hundred dollars. I spent $500 to get high volume explosion proof fans (many use cheap box fans but I personally didn't want to risk it). We also spent about $200 in wood and supplies to build the jigs for the doors, trunk, and hood.
I already owned an air compressor, but I have a 33 gallon compressor. This was a limiting factor in my paint job. Ideally I would have had at least a 60 gallon compressor that could do at least 12 CFM. My compressor could do 6 CFM. I did spend several hundred dollars on HVLP spray guns, and I chose guns that didn't require more than 6 CFM. I suspect I would have had a better spray pattern with higher volume spray guns. I ended up buying a gun for the slick sand, a gun I used for both primer and color, and a gun for the clear coat. Each gun was about $150-200 each. I didn't buy cheap guns, but I also didn't buy super nice and expensive guns.
I also had to buy a rotary buffer and pads. I had to buy buffing compound. I had to buy Tyvec suits. I bought an extra light that attaches to the spray gun. I bought extra LED lights for the garage. All of this added up.
Even with all of that equipment, it was still cheaper than having somebody else do it.
Errors
This is the real point of this thread. If you decide to do paint, just know you will have errors. We have multiple errors and I can point them all out. I will give a few examples of my errors. We still have a small amount of orange peel in our clear coat. We didn't have enough light in the garage to adequately know we got rid of it. The orange peel is minimal and it is definitely less than what you see on a paint job from the dealer. We still have a few buffer trails in the clear coat that annoy me, but they are minimal and I am one of the only few people who will notice them. I had a fiber from a rip in my Tyvec suit go into the clear coat and I had to sand and respray the color and clear on half of the hood. We had some dust blow into the clear coat on the hood scoop, and it is on the white stripe. It is noticeable and that is the error that bothers me the most. However, we decided that most people would never see it and it wasn't worth respraying the entire hood scoop. When moving the hood I accidentally hit the edge on something and put a chip in the paint. I ended up just doing a touch up on the edge and it isn't that noticeable. I have some TINY pin holes in the clear coat, likely due to my spraying technique (or lack thereof). There are a few spots on our stripes where the edge isn't as crisp as I would like. The list goes on. We have a few runs that we didn't fix. One of the runs is LOW on the nose and was in the base coat. It is not noticeable since it is so low on the car, so we decided to leave it. There is a run on the inside of the door, but we are going to put a panel over it so it wasn't worth fixing. We had a drop of paint fall from the cap of the gun to the fender, and if you look hard you can still see it is slightly raised even after sanding it down.
Like I said, just know that you will have errors. We could have spent another 100 hours to get rid of many of the errors, but we didn't think it was worth it. Our goal was NOT a show quality finish. Our goal was a good paint job that we would be proud to show other people. Our goal for the build was to make a car that we would drive into the ground. We know we will get rock chips, scratches, etc. Whenever we found an error, we evaluated the error to determine if it was something that was acceptable considering our goal of driving the car into the ground. We fixed the errors that weren't acceptable or that were too noticeable.
Even though we have all of those errors, I cannot stress how good the car looks. No paint job is perfect. But only you can decide which errors need to be fixed and which ones don't.
I suspect this post will be long, and it will likely be the most helpful to those who are considering doing their own body work. I hope to share all of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I am going to be as honest as I can about the process to help people know what they are getting into. This threat might feel like a bunch of rambling (because it is), but hopefully it is helpful.
To start off, this was a huge undertaking. I truly feel like this was as big of a project as the mechanical build. We finished the car and drove it one season in gel coat. We put 5,000 miles on the car before starting body work. I have no regrets driving it in gel coat. In fact, I highly recommend it if you are going to do your own body work. It was an amazing year putting 5,000 miles on the car before we started working on it again.
Time
We did about 280 man hours of work. I kept track of how many hours I worked, how many my brother put in, and how many my nephew did. Sometimes having 2-3 of us didn't speed things up much, so somebody doing this by themselves may do it in less time.
Sanding
The amount of sanding is unreal. We ended up doing several rounds of Rage Gold on the parting seams on the body. When we thought we were done, we ended up doing a few more rounds until it looked and felt perfect to us. Then we had to do it again with glazing putty to get rid of all the pin holes in the body filler. We spent about 45-50 hours on the parting lines, getting the doors to line up, trimming the holes, etc. Most of that time was sanding by hand. I'm sure it would go faster using a DA sander, but we were worried about sanding too fast so we did it by hand.
Once we had all the parting lines sanded, we then had to sand the entire car by hand. We block sanded everything to get it ready for Slick Sand. Every square inch of the car was sanded thoroughly to prep for Slick Sand.
After spraying the slick sand, we block sanded the entire car again.
After spraying the sealer we lightly sanded the entire car.
We didn't sand the base color coat because that will mess up the metal flake.
We sanded the clear coat. We sanded it several times. We sanded it by hand with 1000 grit, 1500 grit, 2000 grit, and then 3000 grit. We did all of this by hand because we didn't want to go too fast with power tools. This did add time to the sanding, but I think it was time well spent.
Painting
This was stressful, but definitely doable. Luckily, you learn how to spray the car with the slick sand, primer, and sealer before you start doing color. By that time you have it at least partly figured out. If you have a friend who can help you set up the spray gun, that would be a big help as well. It was a huge help to have a second person while painting. The second person can help with moving the air hose around, making sure the air hose doesn't hit the wet paint, and they can mix paint so you can just keep spraying.
The clear coat is stressful because every piece of dust and insects can get into the clear coat and cause issues. You can sand a lot of these out, luckily. However, we got some dust in the clear coat on the hood scoop and it will forever bother me, but it wasn't bad enough for us to respray.
Buffing
This was painful for me. Everything went well, but the final result wasn't what I wanted. It was also hard to get a perfect finish. I still need to buff our car some more, but it is more than acceptable at this point.
Equipment
Expect to buy a lot of equipment. The equipment isn't cheap, either. We probably spent about $7,000 in paint and supplies. Pain is expensive. We didn't even buy expensive paint and we spent about $3,000 for color, clear, primer, sealer, and Slick Sand. We spent a few hundred dollars on Rage Gold. We bought a lot of sand paper, and I don't even know how much I spent on that, but I'd guess a few hundred dollars. Buying enough plastic and red rosin paper to protect my garage from the paint cost a few hundred dollars. I spent $500 to get high volume explosion proof fans (many use cheap box fans but I personally didn't want to risk it). We also spent about $200 in wood and supplies to build the jigs for the doors, trunk, and hood.
I already owned an air compressor, but I have a 33 gallon compressor. This was a limiting factor in my paint job. Ideally I would have had at least a 60 gallon compressor that could do at least 12 CFM. My compressor could do 6 CFM. I did spend several hundred dollars on HVLP spray guns, and I chose guns that didn't require more than 6 CFM. I suspect I would have had a better spray pattern with higher volume spray guns. I ended up buying a gun for the slick sand, a gun I used for both primer and color, and a gun for the clear coat. Each gun was about $150-200 each. I didn't buy cheap guns, but I also didn't buy super nice and expensive guns.
I also had to buy a rotary buffer and pads. I had to buy buffing compound. I had to buy Tyvec suits. I bought an extra light that attaches to the spray gun. I bought extra LED lights for the garage. All of this added up.
Even with all of that equipment, it was still cheaper than having somebody else do it.
Errors
This is the real point of this thread. If you decide to do paint, just know you will have errors. We have multiple errors and I can point them all out. I will give a few examples of my errors. We still have a small amount of orange peel in our clear coat. We didn't have enough light in the garage to adequately know we got rid of it. The orange peel is minimal and it is definitely less than what you see on a paint job from the dealer. We still have a few buffer trails in the clear coat that annoy me, but they are minimal and I am one of the only few people who will notice them. I had a fiber from a rip in my Tyvec suit go into the clear coat and I had to sand and respray the color and clear on half of the hood. We had some dust blow into the clear coat on the hood scoop, and it is on the white stripe. It is noticeable and that is the error that bothers me the most. However, we decided that most people would never see it and it wasn't worth respraying the entire hood scoop. When moving the hood I accidentally hit the edge on something and put a chip in the paint. I ended up just doing a touch up on the edge and it isn't that noticeable. I have some TINY pin holes in the clear coat, likely due to my spraying technique (or lack thereof). There are a few spots on our stripes where the edge isn't as crisp as I would like. The list goes on. We have a few runs that we didn't fix. One of the runs is LOW on the nose and was in the base coat. It is not noticeable since it is so low on the car, so we decided to leave it. There is a run on the inside of the door, but we are going to put a panel over it so it wasn't worth fixing. We had a drop of paint fall from the cap of the gun to the fender, and if you look hard you can still see it is slightly raised even after sanding it down.
Like I said, just know that you will have errors. We could have spent another 100 hours to get rid of many of the errors, but we didn't think it was worth it. Our goal was NOT a show quality finish. Our goal was a good paint job that we would be proud to show other people. Our goal for the build was to make a car that we would drive into the ground. We know we will get rock chips, scratches, etc. Whenever we found an error, we evaluated the error to determine if it was something that was acceptable considering our goal of driving the car into the ground. We fixed the errors that weren't acceptable or that were too noticeable.
Even though we have all of those errors, I cannot stress how good the car looks. No paint job is perfect. But only you can decide which errors need to be fixed and which ones don't.