Paint job

[cowboy90]

Is there any way to paint a car myself?

[hemi-hampton]

YES

[keepat]

Sure You can paint a car, but unless you are extremely passionate and a skilfully it will look like you painted your 1st car!
Paint a friends car , then paint yours

[cowboy90]

well i guess that always works haha, but like what would i need, would like a wagner paint sprayer work?

[keepat]

well i guess that always works haha, but like what would i need, would like a wagner paint sprayer work?

Yes if your painting a picture of your charger on the side of your garage!

[Mike DC]

 
You'll need a little more than that, I'm afraid.

Like an air compressor, a decent paint gun, the bodyworking tools, and at least $1000 worth of paint/primer/sandpaper.
There's a lot of good reasons that people pay thousands of dollars to get their old cars painted by decent shops.

 

[70charger_boy]

You know what you should do?  Get a dumpster, like the big metal commercial kinds.  Practice bodywork and paint on that.  It's real difficuilt to get that robot move that you need to paint a car.  I find it hard enough not getting the air line from hitting the car, but if you're serious and want to put in the time to learn I can point you in the right direction. 
http://www.autobody101.com/forums/forum-5.html

[cowboy90]

alright well like ive said before, this is my first car to restore so i am gonna ask some stupid questions tryin to figure out what im doing

[terrible one]

I'm doing mine with Rustoleum  :

[BMOTOXSTAR]

I'm doing mine with Rustoleum  :

Wow,
That looks pretty nice.Better than the paint that my buddy did on my 73'.

[67hcode]

I'm painting mine myself. Of course I've been working on it for the last couple years too. I already had a compressor and a couple of old tools. I've bought several new ones along the way but I'll have them for my next project too so it's worth it. I've done a bit of painting here and there over the years, a car, a few motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc.
What will make the biggest difference is all the work that will need to be done before you ever spray any paint.  You can learn a lot about bodywork on here and other sites and by trial and error. You can get a gun that'll do a decent job for under $100 anymore.  You are better off to spend a bit more for a better gun, especially if you plan to use it for awhile. Once you have a gun, get some cheap paint and practice spraying on something.  What kind of shape is the car in? any pics?

[HITMAN 149]

alright well like ive said before, this is my first car to restore so i am gonna ask some stupid questions tryin to figure out what im doing

the only stupid questions...are one's that aren't asked!!!!!!!!!

[70charger_boy]

Hey TO, that is one sweet engine bay

[hemi-hampton]

Compressor & gun is what you need, Oh, & Unlike me in this Pic you'll need a good Respirator. LEON.

[terrible one]

Hey TO, that is one sweet engine bay

Thanks man.

[Mike DC]

 
If you're starting with no tools or anything and you just wanna get the current car painted, then it's hard to do a whole paint/body job much cheaper than you would get by just throwing money at a shop.  Especially when you factor in your labor (and your likely results vs theirs). 

But this is when we're only talking about doing one car. 

If you plan on doing multiple cars in your life & learning to do this kind of work yourself, then you might as well dive in with the first car.

 

[dkn1997]

If you are looking for driver quality and want to do an almost zero investment job, then go over to moparts and read the 3 different threads on painting your car with a roller and either brightside marine paint or rustoleum/tremclad paint.  Hotrod did a car this way and it came out pretty good. 

time consuming, but you will get a more than presentable paint job for close to 100 bucks.  the prep and finish wetsanding are exactly the same as with a spray job, so the smart move is to try it with the roller and if you are good at the prep/sanding, then move up to buying spray equipment for the next one you do.  nothing worse than blowing money on a sprayer, compressor, etc...then realizing you totally suck at it. 

Hell, even if you do all the prep great and wetsand it perfect and end up not liking the quality of the paint itself, you have invested nothing and then go out and buy your spray equipment.  it's worth 100 bucks to find out if you can really do it.  plus you get lots of "shock value" when you roll up the local cruse with "rollerjob" on your personalized vanity plates....

[Lord Warlock]

Yes you can paint it yourself, I wouldn't jump in and do my first job on my old charger though.  In my case I had most of the tools to start with, i.e compressor, hoses, and had plenty experience painting with the wagners on the house (like the author mentioned) as well as painting oil rigs in the 80s, (as well as sandblasting).  I chose to paint on another car i had to learn with since it was old, paid for, and sitting around doing nothing.  My first job entailed painting stripes on a stealth turbo, and came out pretty nice, the 2nd was a whole car repaint with house of kolor medium teal pearl basecoat and clearcoat, the basecoat went on great, primer, sealer coat, guide coat then 2 wet coats, then 1 light coat of clear, 2 heavy.  The 2nd heavy coat of clear disaster struck with a several runs in the clear.  Stopped and let it dry enough to sand used the run nib to cut excess off and then sand it smooth, and then spray the 3rd coat of clear.  The 1st major repaint actually went very well, didn't use up that much paint, 3 quarts or so (plus reducers and activators) then over the next 2 years did alot of changes, and tried new things out, some worked out well others didn't.  Once the panels were holding too much paint, i'd strip it down to metal and start all over.  Eventually i got a very nice job done on the stealth with medium teal pearl, with 3 types of metal flake mixed in with the base coat, silver metallic base wide rally stripes up the nose over the top and down the trunk and rear bumper.  this looked real nice, till i got a wild hair, and decided to see what flames would look like, blue Kandy ghost flames over the silver stripes and nose of the car, and down the lower doors.  Even got this one done nice enough to drive and not get laughed at, then eventually fortunes changed, funds dried up and had to consider selling the project toy to fund other projects, and decided to paint it back the stock napier blue color in case i want to sell it, the market for flamed cars is somewhat limited. 

After painting on the old stealth for almost 4 years i finally felt ready to paint the charger, this was back in October of last year when i stripped the body to metal first...manually...don't have a sandblaster so did it the hard way, with muscle and power tools.  Got it primered, and since then have been working on the body one section at a time.  Last week, i thought the body was ready and sprayed a quart of Y3 on to make sure it was the right color, and found quite a few more areas to work on.  This weekend i pretty much finished the body work on the right front fender, right door, trunklid, and part of the right rear fender, and got it re-primered, and started prepping the primer for paint (sanding...always sanding...can i buy stock in sandpaper somewhere?)

There are rewards and heartaches in doing it yourself, it is by no means cheap, sure you can buy cheap paint, (only do this to practice with) but you'll still spend alot with all the reducers and activators, as well as clearcoats and their activators, plus you'll learn new levels of aggravation when you see a sag form, or runs appear out of nowhere, you also need alot of tools such as compressors, guns, moisture traps, line filters, hoses (damn those hoses always figure out how to bounce into the fresh paint don't they), plus sanders, blocks for sanding, and a ton of sandpaper in grits from 60 grit all the way to 2500 grit, then of course you get to buy the buffer and all the polishes and waxes so you can see it shine again after sanding on a freshly dried clearcoat to get rid of all the dust nibs and orange peel.  There is alot of satisfaction you'll get when you finish your first nice paint job, but don't let it go to your head, the 2nd and 4th and 15th always screw up just to humble you.  Makes me wish i built a paint booth in my spare hobby garage, a good booth would do wonders in keeping contaminants out of the air and out of the paint as it dries. 

If you have the space, the cash to get supplies, and want to learn, go for it.  In the worst case you can always strip it down and do it all over again.