Friday, October 17, 2008

I painted my front bumper and some other stuff

So I went rattle can crazy over the past few days and painted my wiper arms, door handles, and front bumper with Rustoleum Semi-Gloss Black. Who knows if the paint will last but man they look really nice right now. I sanded them all down with 220 and then used some rattle can automotive primer. After that I laid down around four coats of black taking 30 minutes between each coat. In the case of the handles I left them to dry in the sun for 48 hours, wet sanded them with 400, and then put another three coats on. I'm worried that I've lost the hot summer weather that my drying times are going to go through the roof on these painting projects - on the plus side the paint seems to be going on a lot better.

Anyway I put all of that stuff back on the van and I'm getting impressed. The paint job still needs a ton of work on the van but its starting to look good. I've got three coats of paint on the van right now and its time for more wet sanding. The side that gets direct sun has a ton of orange peel to it (funny how much direct sun will impact paint) so I need to take the time to knock it all down with some 800. This may be a bit premature but I believe that after I sand and get another three coats on I'll be ready to do a 1600 wet sand and then buff with rubbing compound to get it finished up. My expectation is that the large flat areas will look just as good as they would have if I had taken the van to be painted at a shop. The real test though will be all of the hard to reach areas and areas around the windows. You just can't do a good job if you're leaving the windows in the van. I think I'm going to have to end up rattle canning parts here and there to get decent coverage in some of the seams and what not.

2 comments:

Ron Bloomquist said...

I'm enjoying your Vanagon improvements. One thing alarmed me though when you wrote:

" So I'm thinking that I'll get a solid base done with the cheaper Rustoleum paint and then top it off with the Brightside."

Make sure those two paints are compatible!!

I know Lacquer over Enamel is a disaster because Lacquer softens enamel!

Do a test!!

In your "spare" time you might check out my Vanagon trials and trips at my website:

www.blabberon.com

Onward

Stuart said...

Thanks for the heads up! I decided that I am just going to stick with Rustoleum for now. I'm concerned about how long this paint will last but I really like how easy it will be to do spot repairs with it. I still have a good deal of body work to do so being able to get my repairs painted easily is a high priority. Maybe once I get the body as good as I can get it, I'll consider getting a real pro paint job. For now though the Rustoleum is good enough.