This rather random shot I took a while back asks a number of questions I can’t answer. Like why is he painting the van with a brush in a downtown parking lot on a drizzly winter day? Why all the wood planks underneath it? To make another door, like the rear one? Let’s not even bother to answer them. But it does beg the question: did you ever try painting your car? And how did it come out?
Me: after my older son rear ended someone with our red ’92 Caravan, I put a new fender and hood on it, and bought several cans of matching spray paint. I guess it looked better than before I put the new sheet metal on, but it felt like fine sandpaper. Never mind the run. I should have just used a brush too.
I have done it both ways. Cars like my old Chevelle got Chromabase base/clear and the ones I knew were going to see a beating got ‘Rustoleum and a roller”.
This Jeep was Rustoleum White and Black spray bedliner, eventually I repainted it Green “Hammered Metal”.
Rustoleum’s “Hammered” paint is a great product for bumpers and contrasting rocker panel colors. The texture helps cover up uneven spray patterns, and once applied the paint takes rock chips better than standard paint.
I had a Isuzu Rodeo with a crapy contrast color across the lower beltline (dealer applied). After ten years of wear, paint chips had exposed the base color, and whoever laid on the paint job only painted the bottom of the doors, leaving the rocker panels in the original body color. I reshot it with hammered paint, covering the rocker panels and inside door jambs to improve on the intial work.
I thought the spray can work improved things, and was quite satisfied with the finish, but if the dealer had done a better job in the first place, I may not have been as satisfied with my fixes.
Yeah Ive painted a few brush roller and spraygun the last one my Minx isnt actually finished just paited to assembly stage but it looks ok going down the street Im waiting for summer to finish spraying it my outdoor spraybooth is kinda damp an cold at present
After instruction in the army- “spot painting” trucks, with OD paint & brushes, it was natural to go ahead & paint things like the inside of pickup truck beds. After coming into the possession of a 1952 Ford pickup, with lots of body issues & sunburned paint, it was just natural to go on & paint it with a brush, several times over the last 30 years.
Right after painting it, it looked good from ~50 feet away. Anyway, the roof & horizontal panels aren’t nekked to the elements.
It’s a 60-year-old truck; somebody cares & it shows.
Paul, that sure is a strange photo. As you say, he was painting a truck in the parking lot, on a drizzly day, the truck is supported by either cinder blocks or wood blocks on the rear axle and the front frame behind the front tires. He is standing on a milk crate, brush in right hand, left hand holding a gallon of green paint. The rear end of the truck is a hodge podge collection of wood planks with apparently the remaining planks under the truck. It does not appear that there is a rear door. A ten speed mountain bike, most likely his, is on the ground to his right. On the driver side is a parked Ford Ranger.
This picture is a winner for being subtle in a bizzare fashion. Nothing seems to fit! If I were the owner of that Ranger, I’d be worried about paint splatter. Do a lot of folks up in the PNW paint their vehicles in this fashion? Great photo find!
Only have painted one vehicle with a paint brush. It was my father’s work truck. A real gnarly 1961 Dodge power wagon. He was a building contractor late in life. On one job, my brother and I had finished painting a kitchen and noticed we had a few gallons of a nice off white gloss enamel paint left. And so we used it to spruce up the paint on that old rig. It looked pretty good afterwards, but sadly as we were driving along a week later a huge sheet peeled off the hood and hit the windshield causing a short moment of blindness. Good times.
Never painted a car. Did a bike, when I had an accident (a real accident, not stupid riding) with my three-speed “English racer” and bent the frame. My old man was out of work, so somewhere I cadged out a frame on an otherwise garbage bike, found all my fittings would fit (back then, almost all the mass-market bicycles were made by Huffy; the only exception was Schwinn) and then got set to paint.
Krylon enamel lacquer. It was a new brand at the time. Two cans should have covered a bicycle frame; and IIRC, they did.
Finish was orange-peel. The gold paint was showing through when the job was finished…never had much of an eye for that. But…I kept riding that bike for two more years (no school-bus routes in my neighborhood; I had a two-mile walk to school) and then took it with me to ride to work when I moved.
First winter killed it. I didn’t have a garage so I chained it to a pine tree…keep it dry. It rusted so bad it was frozen up and I threw it away.
BUT…my old man, just about the same time, had his one and only Earl Schieb paintjob done. His Wagoneer, made in Kaiser’s last year and a little light on quality, was shedding paint like streakers shed clothes. So, he got the $29.95 Special.
Looked good, when it came back…never mind they didn’t do the doorsills the way a premium painting contractor would have. BUT…Schieb didn’t have ovens or paint-bakers. They recommended to their customers that they put the car in the garage for a week to a month “if possible.” And to NOT WASH IT for a month.
It wasn’t possible. The Jeep was the Outdoor Car; and as it happened my old man had it on some dusty roads in that month. By the time the end of those thirty days was on hand, and I was directed to take bucket, sponge and Palmolive and wash the damn thing…the dust had settled into that new paint like non-skid.
First and last time he ever used Uncle Earl’s service.
Boy, have I got a story for this topic!
My buddy’s dad up the street drove a 1963 Buick Electra 4 dr. hardtop. A gold mist-kind of color, which was faded and the body had a few rust holes.
My friend and I worked on cars at the time – this was summer, 1969, after graduation from HS.
After we finished the body work, we wanted to paint it in the garage, as they had a good-sized two-car garage. His dad said “no! – too much dust from the paint”…
Well there was a shed in the back yard – a large one, so we built a framework outside the shed and covered it with plastic sheeting his dad bought for that purpose. We parked the car, covered the framework and called it a day – we would paint the next day.
There was a thunderstorm that night, pretty severe. I thought: I guess we’ll have to rehang the plastic and clean the car – no problem. I got up early, went up the street to check (my buddywas still in bed) and looked in horror at what I saw!
I ran to the house, woke him up and I had never seen him so angry before and only once since: to support the plastic sheeting, we used bricks to hold down the plasic on the roof of the shed. Where did those bricks wind up? On the car, of course! One landed right on top of the roof just missing the windshield and its molding above the driver’s side and the other one landed square on top of one of the fins midway toward the tail light on the same side, smashing a good-sized crease in the fin!
Well, a few hours later, we had it fixed and moved the car in the garage after all. I brought up a large fan for exhaust and I mixed the paint while he sprayed the lacquer, which dries on contact, for the most part.
It was hot and humid, and although the car looked nice, we polished our tails off but could only get a satin finish at best.
His dad was happy just the same, as the car did look nice, so we lived and learned ’til next time…and that’s another story! I don’t make this stuff up!
“English racer” 3-speed bikes and $29.95 Earl Schieb paint jobs — brings back the memories!
I never painted a whole car, but did once help my brother with prepping the family ’67 Chevy Bel Air 2-door when the lower part of the passenger door was scraped. We seemingly got the bondo and sheet metal all nice and smooth, but when the finish coat of turquoise went on, you could see every rise and dip!
Later, he became much more skilled and painted a ’67 Chevelle SS in our garage — beautiful job, and he still has the car almost 40 years later!
@JustPassin
A buddy of mine had a fun experience with “Uncle Earl” too.
Back in High School he had a rough 80s Caprice that he wanted them to shoot. He dropped it off primed and told them to shoot it Blue. When he went to pick it up he parked next to a Grey Caprice that was suspiciously similar to his. Yup.. They shot the wrong color!
He pitched a fit and got them to re-spray it.
The quality wasn’t so much an issue at that point even in Blue because the night he brought it home someone “pranked” him and plastic wrapped the thing. The paint wasn’t quite cured enough for that and the stuff stuck like glue..
I’ve never painted a whole car, but I’ve tried doing some touch up.
A little over a decade ago I worked at a little Chevy-Olds dealer. All the used cars had to be undercoated so that they would look better than they were. I got pretty good at it. In fact, I got real good at being able to reach down and shoot frame rails without actually lying down! Of course this was way before one of my knees decided to come apart…
A couple of months ago I acquired a ten year old PT Cruiser, with the dreadful looking gray plastic bumpers. I immediately taped the car off and re-shot the bumpers. They actually look pretty good!
Experiences I can share:
1) My best friend in high school and I patched up his Rustang II with buckets of bondo and cardboard backing for where the cancer had spread too far for body filler to gain purchase. Once that cured, we sanded, rattlecanned some primer on there, sanded some more and then applied some of auto-zones finest spray-can glossy gray, with a shiny black swoosh coming back from under the front bumper, on down the rocker, arching up and forward on the indented faux scoop accent and then around the taillights. It looked better than it did, but it was amateurish and it showed. It was still a POS, but it was HIS POS, smoking 2.3 four and all.
2) A few years later, I painted ’69 Camaro Z-28 stripes in black on the yellow hood of my ’68 el Camino to compliment the pinstriping that was already on the sides and the black interior. Lots of sanding, plenty of measuring & fine detail work with masking tape, and a few coats of black followed with clear. Some uneveness due to the painting method and my fear of sanding the fresh black paint, but not bad. It held up for the three years my folks had it after that, but was starting to fade when it was sold.
3) When I rented a black rental car and either scratched or discovered some previous renter’s scratches on the bumper, I covered it up with a Sharpie. Did you know Sharpies aren’t really back, but are really a very dark purple? At least it was down low where the road grime would cover it. I made sure there was plenty of road grime all over it when I gave it back.
Uh, sort of. Me and my Wagner power painter tried to paint the Matador in Red/White/Blue AMC livery. I only got the red part done, so it was sort of a Red/Faded Silver/Grey Primer look. It actually looked half decent but the extremely cheap paint was slightly water soluble, so it was wearing through within a couple of years.
When I got the beetle painted I wrote a cheque, and it turned out great. Division of labor is a marvellous thing..
Yup. Lots of time and the first time I wasn’t even sober. I’ve used brushes, rollers, air sprayers, and wagners. Always on something that looked better when I got done. That says more about what I started with than how it finished.
Since the S10 is galvanized I am less worried about something happening under the application so am thinking about bed liner for parts of it. Why not. If I just stay white with it it has to look better than the peeling mess on it now.
“the first time I wasn’t even sober.”
Had to laugh there! Some of my best work happened in that state. Many moons ago!
I just knew that our brand new red 1961 Volkswagen bug would look better with black wheels than the tan (iirc) ones it arrived with. So I took each wheel off the car, wet-sanded it, dried it, and spray-canned it gloss black, being careful not to get any paint on the whitewall tires. It helped us find the car in parking lots after VW’s became more popular, and the paint was still holding up well when we sold the car after two years.
I had a guy paint my 1952 Ford pickup in his barn…after I got the truck back he told me that he had had to redo another paint job he did, because a couple of chickens got into the barn and staged an epic battle on the still-wet hood. I don’t know if he’d have gotten my job if he’d told me that before he painted it….
I did a Ranger’s roof once. In 84 the paint on various cars was a bit, er, fragile. As I recall, they were messing with the organic solvent content to meet air pollution rules, and it took a few years to get the system to work right. At least in 1984, it didn’t worth a damn. After several years outside in the California sun, my roof paint just started to wear away. Not sure why the hood did OK, but I had major rust patina on the roof. Did some sanding, rattle can primer and either a black or dark blue rattle can paint on the roof. (The rest of the truck was the midnight blue metallic of the era). Looked like crap, but it was pretty much a work truck.
I gave the truck to the Salvation Army and a local bought it. Saw it around a few years, frequently at the Salvation Army store, where the new owner seemed to be using it to lug second-hand stuff from SA to a third-hand store. He seemed to be pretty happy with the beast, rattle can job and all. Not sure how he dealt with the carburetor-from-hell, but that was a different story.
In high school, I got pretty good with a Dupli-Color can. The only dice-roll was whether the color would match or not.
One summer a friend and I did a whole car – my 71 Plymouth Scamp. I cheated – my friend Lowell had taken body and paint classes and I think was working for a body shop at the time. He had air tools and borrowed a compressor from his girlfriend’s dad. We were a sight. All the work done in my Mom’s driveway evenings after work with a fan blowing on the poor little compressor to keep it from overheating.
We rivited sheetmetal onto the rusty rear quarters and did a nice job of blending the bondo with the body creases. The paint job was done in his girlfriend’s dad’s garage. We had sanded and sanded and sanded. We sprayed it one evening and picked it up the next day. It looked pretty good for a driveway job. Then immediately after, the vinyl roof started peeling off. The next summer we stripped, filled and painted the top in a contrasting color to match the interior.
Since, I have done small parts like fender skirts and some other things. I have also learned that Dupli-Color is a great choice for things like mailboxes and lightposts, as it stands up to weather wonderfully. My son got one really shiny Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car, too (1977 Chrysler Russet Sunfire Metallic.) But with all of the changes in auto finishes, I wonder how long it will be around. I will miss it when its gone – one more piece of hard-won knowledge and experience that will become obsolete 🙂
Last year, I decided to paint my 76 Royal Monaco. The original paint was thin and faded, and wore through in a couple of spots. I knew that any kind of paint job would cost more than the car was worth, so I decided to go the spray can route. Eyeballed a current spray color close to the Dodge’s metallic blue. After minimal prep and masking, I sprayed the hood, trunk, and sides above the molding. 10 cans later, the car looked pretty decent, color matched well with lower sides, except for the lack of gloss.
Several days later, I agressively tried to buff the paint to achieve some gloss, but the results were terrible. Decided to paint it over again. A few days later, I polished the new paint sparingly and finished up with dozens of coats of spray wax.
The spray paint has held up remarkably well through the winter. This morning I sprayed another wax job and the car still looks pretty good. Still get many complements on the car.
I wouldn’t recommend this on a classic car of value, but for a quick cheap fresh up of a true curbside classic, it can’t be beat. Plus, believe me, I felt like a 16 year old who just got his first car when I was painting it.
My friend Lowell, before he took any body or paint classes, had a 69 Kaiser mail Jeep. The paint was no too great looking. Some store had a big sale on household spray paint. He bought something like 25 cans of harvest gold (it was the 70s) and 25 cans of white. He sprayed the entire Jeep. The spray enamel had quite a bit of orange peel and the harvest gold faded pretty badly in the sun over then next hear or so. But at least it was not in postal blue and white anymore.
For me, painting has been a maintenance item on a fairly high percentage of my COALs.
My ’71 Vega had several hard whacks over the years I had it (“it’s not my fault!”), and I resprayed fenders and the like, not to mention having the pull the front and rear glass every couple years to de-rust and repaint the built-in moisture trap areas.
Did a complete respray on my ’82 Cavalier, ’85 Suzuki GS550ES bike and The Mayfield Belle, of course (’71 VW bus), which got painted up like a WWII B-17 bomber.
I painted a friend’s ’84 Mustang in college as well as my uncle’s ’71 Torino wagon (in return, I got a ’66 Pontiac Tempest with a dead OHC 6). Also did some fiberglass repair and repaint for a college friend who had a Porsche 914 with an aftermarket front nose.
More recently, a deer strike required a respray of the front fender on our ’98 Grand Caravan (crumpled it enough to crack the paint).
About four years ago, I restored my ’50 Ford 8N tractor, so that was a *very* thorough strip & paint job (a brush works really well on cast iron, though – built-in orange peel!).
My ’95 F-150 4WD is missing a lot of metal around the wheel arches, and it got a “lick and a promise” when I wire-brushed the worst of the rust off, brushed on some iron oxide primer and shot that with some reasonably-close color matched rattle can paint.
I’m also currently restoring ’62 and ’63 Beetles with my youngest son, so we’re back in the painting business again.
When I was in grade school, I distinctively remember a neighbor painting his pickup with rattle cans – the memory is so strong because every Dad in the neighborhood was talking about it for weeks.
First car ’84 cavalier – spray painted flat black (black out portions of grill and headlight buckets) along with rear trunk section that was rotting out.
Got to paint my second car (’88 EXP) at the Ford body shop I was working at with my uncle who was a painter.
Lastly rattle canned my ’99 CBR after a drop made me adventurous.
According to family lore, the first time my dad met his future father-in-law, my grandfather was in his driveway painting an old pickup truck with a paintbrush, in a shade my father descibes as “battleship gray”.
Yes. Painted a ’86 LeBaron flat black. Cost $30 or so. I did it in winter with rattle cans so finish was not perfect. I thought it looked decent with the red roof.
I painted my Beetle myself. Good Standox paint, and yet i used a fence sprayer…lol
Came up pretty well though. Even the metal flake over the red came out alright.
Painted quite a number of cars and trucks in bygone years.
I think the first one was a 1955 IH R100 pickup. Did it up in forest green with black running boards and gold dash.
Used automotive paint and a brush. Since you could take the fenders off (and the doors off) I could paint most of the truck horizontally and avoid the dreaded runs. That job held up for years, well into the next owners time with it.
Another time I had a ’66 Valiant Signet hardtop. It needed considerable body work (left rear caved in) which I did myself as well as prepping and masking the whole car. Took it to a buddy who painted professionally.
He did a great job. It really looked good.
On my way home, they were digging up the street where I lived. As I was being waved thru, the bucket loader swung around and dropped a bowling ball size rock square on my windshield!
In the end they made good and replaced the windshield. By some miracle, the day old paint job escaped unharmed.
I have Wagner Power Painter-ed two vehicles, an early ’80’s G-3500 Chevy Van and a ’93 Sonoma. Paint was worn out on both, but neither had any body damage.
They looked ok as a “twenty footer”, but the paint wasn’t durable, probably due to my poor surface preparation.
Brush painting of vehicles used to be a common practice. Somewhere, possibly in an old “Motors Manual” repair book I have covering 1935 to early 1950 cars, I have an article outlining proper brush painting procedures.
My old Asto Van done in Tremclad Rust Paint Satin finish. Rolled on with fine paint roller noodles. Wheels were sprayed with Tremclad Red Rust Paint. The trim was all done with Krylon Fusio Black Satin.