Fresh Paint for an 88'

I helped a buddy with painting his XJ this past weekend. This thing was pretty clean for an 88, I was impressed when I first saw it. He actually did a pretty good job as far as filling dents and blocking them out and what not for someone who hasn't really done much body work. He picked a nice color off the new dodge trucks. I like it anyway.

So he drug it over to my house Thursday.. showed up looking like this...


We went over it with 220, prepped, masked and primered it.



Guide coated it....


The next day we went to town with some 220, block sanding, cleaning up edges around windows, fixing any little dings/dents. We then spot primed any bare metal. Next I painted the jams in my garage. After the jams were done we guide coated again for the final sanding.




That night we stayed up past midnight wet sanding the entire thing with 400 grit wet paper. That put us here.



Saturday morning in the booth masked and ready to go...



Then I started putting some color on this beast... base coat going on....

Three coats of color, and three coats of clear later....

Looks nice... Mine next? Lol

What size tires are on there?

whycantitbeT/C said:

Looks nice... Mine next? Lol

What size tires are on there?

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Thanks, I think they're 33x12.50's on 15x10 wheels.

I really like the color you ended up with. Nice job.

Thanks for the writeup.. came out nice.

What is meant by "Guide coat"?

I'm looking into the possibility of shooting my second Jeep, this time finish is important to me as it wont be OD through a cheap spray gun. It'll be white single stage through a cheap spray gun.

With the OD i didnt care about texture.. just didnt want runs, and i painted the rig a bit "dry" giving me a rough texture. I still dont want runs but i'd like to eliminate wetsanding to get a glossy finish. Think it's possible with the very limited experience i have?

OverlandXJ said:

Thanks for the writeup.. came out nice.

What is meant by "Guide coat"?

I'm looking into the possibility of shooting my second Jeep, this time finish is important to me as it wont be OD through a cheap spray gun. It'll be white single stage through a cheap spray gun.

With the OD i didnt care about texture.. just didnt want runs, and i painted the rig a bit "dry" giving me a rough texture. I still dont want runs but i'd like to eliminate wetsanding to get a glossy finish. Think it's possible with the very limited experience i have?

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Guide coat is the red you see in the picture that is kind of "misted" over the primer. Once the guide coat has dried you sand the vehicle with a block sander, any red (or whatever color your guide coat is) left showing = a low spot/ding/dent. Which means it needs fixing.

I don't do single stage, to me it's very hard to work with, and if you do get a run it's much harder to repair. With base clear the color/base coat dries very fast (dry to the touch in minutes) so it's hard to run. The clear is another story, you want to spray it on "wet" looking, but obviously not so wet you end up with runs. It's kind of a fine line you have to ride. Your only adjustments are your gun (air pressure, amount of paint coming out of the gun, width of the spray), the temp. of the air you're spraying in (which you can only control if you're in a booth type setting), and the temp. of the reducer you're using-you can get "fast" reducer if you're spraying in a colder environment, and "slow reducer" which would be used for painting on a hot day in the garage.

Not sure what you mean about wet sanding to get a glossy finish, this Jeep has not been wet sanded and probably wont be. It's not a show vehicle so it doesn't need to have a glass/mirror finish, we just made sure to do 3 coats of clear so it looks plenty shiny.

Personally I would not recommend single stage for an overall paint job, if you do decide to spray the Jeep yourself, practice on a few things first with a darker color so you can see more whats going on. With white it's hard to see where you stopped and where to start again.

When I first started my paint jobs weren't nearly this nice, obviously you get better with experience as in all things. (i think?)

I hate you and your jeeps awsome looking paint!!

I see bushwhacker holes? Tell me he painted those too.....

Kittrell said:

I see bushwhacker holes? Tell me he painted those too.....

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hmmmm.... not yet. But maybe we should.

Looks pretty fresh. I sees some green primer, hope that's not anything laquer based (duplicolor self etch).

Not sure what you mean about wet sanding to get a glossy finish, this Jeep has not been wet sanded and probably wont be. It's not a show vehicle so it doesn't need to have a glass/mirror finish, we just made sure to do 3 coats of clear so it looks plenty shiny.

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This really depends on what you're going for/how good you are with a gun. If you're decent with a gun and put down a nice flow coat, wet sanding probably isn't necessary (especially with a jeep). But if it was a daily driver or project, show car, etc wet blocking can really put a nice shine on. Once you start though, be prepared to take it all the way through to buffing.

Here's an example:

This is right after clear. No wetsand/buff.



This is during wetsanding. You can see if you don't finish the whole process it just looks like trash


And here's after buffing.

Can single stage be wetsanded for a smooth finish and buffed to shine?

Figure i can put enough coats on thin to build up the paint (and avoid runs) then block the Jeep to take off the high's and buff a decent shine in.

I'd really like to keep the ZJ white but if i cant get a decent finish i may as well OD this one too..

OverlandXJ said:

Can single stage be wetsanded for a smooth finish and buffed to shine?

Figure i can put enough coats on thin to build up the paint (and avoid runs) then block the Jeep to take off the high's and buff a decent shine in.

I'd really like to keep the ZJ white but if i cant get a decent finish i may as well OD this one too..

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I do believe so. But like I said before, I've never really dealt with single stage. To me that's a ton of work to put into a Jeep you plan on wheeling. I'd say find someone who will shoot it base/clear for you and be done with it.

DanMan2k06 said:

Looks pretty fresh. I sees some green primer, hope that's not anything laquer based (duplicolor self etch).

It's not.


This really depends on what you're going for/how good you are with a gun. If you're decent with a gun and put down a nice flow coat, wet sanding probably isn't necessary (especially with a jeep).

Which I did.

Here's an example:

This is right after clear. No wetsand/buff.

This is during wetsanding. You can see if you don't finish the whole process it just looks like trash

And here's after buffing.

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Good example photos.

I do believe so. But like I said before, I've never really dealt with single stage. To me that's a ton of work to put into a Jeep you plan on wheeling. I'd say find someone who will shoot it base/clear for you and be done with it.

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ONLY if it's a non-metallic. If you try and buff anything but a solid color you're going to mess up the metallic pretty bad. Single stage is nothing more than the paint and clear mixed into one. So like x1994j said, it can be kind of a pain to correct any dust nibs/bugs/defects/runs. If it's something like black, you can just sand down, polish, buff, and you're fine. But with metallics you have to sand down the defect, then respray the entire panel. BC/CC is far more forgiving, especially for first time shooters.

Now single stage does have it's places... Axles/underbody/other components especially. If you need a near bulletproof finish, shoot some epoxy primer on your part, and coat it with some single stage. From my experiences this method is far superior in both chip protection and corrosion resistance than say- moisture cure por15, herculiner, etc etc.

EDIT:

I'd really like to keep the ZJ white but if i cant get a decent finish i may as well OD this one too..

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White is definitely the easiest color to shoot. Sucks because the coverage totally blows (also depends on paint brand/quality) but it is extremely forgiving.

DanMan2k06 said:

you can just sand down, polish, buff,

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This is also an art in itself, I don't think people realize the amount of time it takes to do this step correctly.

Lol yea I throw around those terms like it's something that can be done in an afternoon with a 6 pack If only it were that easy...

what color did you paint the jeep? what brand is that as well.

norcalchris said:

what color did you paint the jeep? what brand is that as well.

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It is the "Mineral gray" color off the newer dodge ram trucks. We used Dupont paint in the Nason Base coat.

looks great,good job.