Jhonny Ricer

So I’ve seen a few posts of people posting questions on how to prep and paint there car and im bored and have nothing better to do than type this to all you lovely people out there on H-T enjoy

Pre-start: To anyone who has absolutely no expeirience in car paints or the equipment used I strongly advise to have someone who knows with you to help/teach, Or to have professionals do it for you.

To the unaware as do many things on the market today paints, clear coats, primers, body fillers, ETC.. Contain harmful chemicals that do become airborne when doing body work, These chemicals have been known to cause respiratory problems up to cancer so please use caution When doing body work make sure you are in a well ventilated area free of possible sparks and always wear the proper protection


Equipment you will need for your project...
1: Paint (House of Colors, Honda)
2: Bondo (get it in Wal Mart, advanced auto, ETC..)
3: 2 up to 6 rubber compound spreaders (Wal Mart, Lowes)
4: #500 up to #2000 Grit sand paper( W-M, Lowes)
5: Primer (I prefer rattle can for this)(Make sure it’s a volume primer made to fill in scratches, etc..)( W-M, Lowes)
6: Terry or Microfiber towels ( Wal Mart)
7: Clear coat ( Advanced, Honda, House of kolors, ETC..)
8: Metallic flake (Optional) (House of Colors)
9: Brown paper bag (Shoprite )
10: Distilled water (Shoprite)
11: Car wash soap ( Wal Mart)
12: Paint thinner (Sears, Advanced)
13: Paint stripper (optional) (Advanced)
14: Sanding blocks (both stiff and flexible)(Wal Mart, Sears)
15: Bondo shaver (looks like a wood shaver with a grate) (Advanced)
16: Metal files (Only needed if there are rust holes) (Sears)
17: Rubber Mallet (For larger dents accessible from behind) (Sears)
18: Ball-peen hammer (For fine touching dings) (Sears)
19: Rust remover (Forget the name) ( Usually over by the paints in (advanced)
20: Chicken wire (Only for Large rust holes) (Any Home and Garden center)
21: Parchment paper (wax paper) (Mostly any store with foods) (might be able to go to a bakery and ask for like ten pieces of parchment paper they'll know)
22: Masking tape ½ and 1 (Any store basically)
23: Turtle Wax (Wal Mart, Advanced)
24: Screw Driver Flat and Phillips (Sears)
25: Razorblade (Wal Mart, Sears)
26: Rubberized Undercoat (Wal Mart, Advanced)
27: Plastic paint mixer (Old plastic Ruler works) (Wal Mart)
28: Fiberglass bondo (Wal Mart, Advanced)
29: Window scraper (Wal Mart)
30: Air Compressor (Must be capable near 120 PSI) (Home Depot, Lowes)
31: Paint Gun (Home Depot)
32: Safety goggles( Be safe )
33: Gas mask or some kind of mouth and nose filtration (Home Depot, Lowes)
34: Brillo Pad (anywhere)
35: Wheeled Dollies (Home Depot)
36: Car jack (Advanced)
37: Wheels on crappy rims such as steelies for painting process
38: Wheel covers (advanced) (You can also use small tarps or crappy small blankets laying around)
39: Socket Wrench and sockets (Wal Mart)
39: Space heater (Optional) (Wal Mart)
40: Couple fans (Optional) (Wal Mart)
41: Food
42: Television (Optional)
43: Play station and some games (Optional)
44: A chair (Optional)
45: A full size Tapped Keg with cups (Optional) ((Only for 21 and above))

???Got All This ???
Yes? Good lets get started shall we.

Rule of Thumb Your car is your baby you want it to look its best. Painting, Let it be a Ferrari will look like crap if done wrong. So I know we all want to get off in the right direction so pay attention to all these steps and take your time on every little step to the last detail. And your car will come back out more a winner than when it went in.

Rules
Always have the proper equipment nearby in case of emergency
such as your cell phone, fire extinguisher, And a first Aid kit in reachable range..
Its always good to have a friend or family member help you out when taking part in a project of this proportion.

Pre-Pre-Prep:
1: As we all know you cant keep your car from getting dirty. All of us have those Incidents where you clean your car than get mud all over it 15 minutes later, god I hate that.. Anyway a dirty car is no way to start a project of any kind especially painting a car. If your vehicle is dirty while being painted dirt will cause paint to become off colored, Not stick, And cause runs so before rolling your car in the garage take your car soap and give your car a highly detailed cleaning on what ever you are going to be painting let it be doorjamb to Engine Bay (Which I will cover in another thread later on) but for now clean everything while cleaning remove your trim (side moldings) and be sure to clean under where they go.
If you plan on painting your lips side skirts and trim clean these also after removing with a brillo pad lightly. Clean your entire car with the brillo pad and don’t be afraid your repainting, Scratch up the paint if that is what it takes to get the dirt off of your car. Be sure to clean your door jams wheel wells ETC.. when painting YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY DIRT ON YOUR CAR whatsoever so be sure to clean it all. Now that your car is clean take a terry towel and wipe off all water make sure there is no wax on the car or dirt to the best of your ability. And park car in your painting booth.

Disassembly

2: Now that your car is in your dust free environment.. Its time to take off the parts that you don’t want defaced or are going to be painted separately. lift the front of the vehicle high enough that the front tires are off the ground and throw a few car jacks underneath for safety (Dad had a friend who got killed by just using the car jack and it gave out with him under the car ). Anyway remove front tire's and throw on those crappy steelies and winter tires . Throw two of your dollies under the front two tires, And repeat with the rear.. now you can maneuver the car if in tight spaces push car around to make room to paint . Pop hood and remove the front bumper and grill( To remove you will need your phillips head screwdriver and socket wrench with a 10 mm socket. Go under hood and remove the 5 fastener screws holding your front grill in place and set aside remove grill be careful not to damage the two clips on either side holding it in place grill aside for now go under the driver side and passenger side wheel wells and remove two phillips screws holding bumper edges in place than get on your back and remove the three 10mm bolts holding the bumper in place. And remove your front bumper.) (Now to the rear bumper which is the same deal as the front basically go to both wheel wells remove the two screws than the three 10mm bolts on the bottom and remove.) Remove lips from bumper if you have them. The next the trim should be carefully pried with a flathead screwdriver until the first few clips give than pull away front the body of the car until completely off and set them aside. Your front headlights are another easy removal but is mostly optional if you don’t care for taping them off just remove the two 10mm bolts up top that attach to the cooling plate and un hook the wire harness from the bulbs and set aside. The rear Taillights are also optional to remove if done go into rear of vehicle and remove the square plastic moldings from both sides of the car take your socket wrench with an extension and remove the three 10mm bolts holding it in place be careful to hold it so it doesn’t fall and break on the floor. Side skirts are held in by five phillips head screws underneath the car get below and remove them then set aside the side skirts. Now go to your trunk door and remove the license plate trim by taking off the two fastener screws and pulling it off it is held in with two clips also be sure to use enough force to free them but not damage them. Now for the rear spoiler take of the trim around the rear window and remove the 4 10mm bolts fastening it to the car unplug power supply and set aside. now remove your side view mirrors. Go to interior of door remove the plastic trim covering the inside of your mirror and remove the three 10mm bolts holding it on. now go under the hood and disconnect the battery terminals and remove your battery to be safe no need for it to be there since your car wont be going anywhere. At this point the exterior of your car should look like it just returned from a major theft recovery if so you got it all

body work prep:

3: Now that our car looks like a hot ride we direct our attention to the prep work when painting your car the most annoying thing is getting drifter paint to float around and stick to our window thus we cover them. In my personal preferences the windows aren’t good enough just covered with some tape and paper. So I take My good old turtle wax out and apply it to the windows this is not for looks so there will be no need to buff it out. DO NOT BUFF THE WAX its there to keep the paint off the surface of the glass so just smear it on liberally so that the entire window becomes opaque and let it dry. If you have decided to not remove your lights this should be applied on all them also to keep them from becoming the same color as your car. after you have covered all these parts LIBERALLY with wax let them sit about 15 minutes to allow the wax to become the hard barrier between your windows/lights and the outside. Now we direct our attention to covering our un-paintable’s with the ½ masking tape we have purchased it is time for us to tape off our weather stripping. Start at one beginning of the stripping per say the front windshield and attach tape with a 1/4 overhang onto the windshield start moving down pressing your finger to attach it to the stripping and laying the tape no further than 1 away from the laying finger so you can easily follow the contour of the weatherstripping. Take your time trust me getting paint on this stripping not only turns out to be a pain in the *** to get off but makes the entire car look like *** close-up we don’t want this in the least bit. So take your time and be a perfectionist at the least. After covering the roof stripping we move to our windows well do the front and rear windshields to begin taking your ½ masking tape again tape off the striping on both windows being careful and follow the curves making sure you cover most the stripping. now take your paper whatever it may be I use wax paper from a local bakery(A.K.A. parchment paper) due to it wont become permeable at all with the paint and cut it to fit your windows with your razorblade. Take your shaped paper and 1 masking tape and lay the pieces overlapping in one direction on your windows tape them together and then redo the weather stripping with the 1 masking tape ½ on the edge of the paper the other ½ to recover the stripping going around the corners either make strips in the continuos tape so it will turn and lay flat or overlap several small pieces around it but make sure they only cover the paper and stripping Take your rubber spreader and use it as a squeegee on the tape after done to make sure it is fully contacting its surfaces and there are no air bubbles or this could end up to be a problem go over paper joints as well to make sure a leakproof contact is made.
For the rear side windows cut the paper and apply it to the window use the ½ tape and wrap tape around the edges of the window and apply to rear of the window make sure no air bubbles are present in tape. Remove front door trim on both side windows between the front and the rear with a flat head screwdriver being careful not to break the clips. Tape of weather striping around your windows with the ½ masking tape cut paper to shape of window and re-tape stripping and paper with your 1 masking tape. Now your windows are covered with your wax coat and paper coat to keep from being ruined time to move onto your lights if you decided not to remove them starting from the bottom use your 1 masking tape and cover your taillights and headlights with masking tap using the paper will cause a serious headache trying to keep it from coming off over lap last piece of tape by a 1/4 of an inch with all over laps facing DOWN to ensure that if any runs occur they cant get in between the overlapping tape and onto your light housings. now we go to your mirror spots there is three holes that need to be covered this is an easy thing open the doors take your 1 masking tape and cover whole area starting at the top and going to the bottom since we are trying to keep it out we need to do reverse than on the light housings to keep the shingling effect facing downward.
Great now our car looks like its on its way to be painted

Sanding


4: Now that our car is completely uncovered for paint all exposed painted areas need to be “Cleaned” or sanded down to start out we will want to have our stages of different grit sand papers, and will also need a terry cloth, a fan, your sanding blocks, and your compressor with a nozzle that blows out a good stream of air. We start by taking our 200 grit sand paper this is our beginning stage of getting our car ready for paint so lets begin place a strip of the 200 grit on your stiff and flexible sanding blocks and also get one that you will use with only your hand. When beginning something like this I usually star on the drivers side front of the fender just my preferences you can start anywhere you’d like just make sure you start the sanding on the side closest to the front of the vehicle and work your way towards the back.200 grit is for the major imperfections in the vehicles paint and should not exceed more force than the weight that the rubber block would be applying to your paper 200# is very coarse and causes scratches that can be a bitch to remove from the car so make sure you press lightly and only sand in a straight line from the front to the back Make sure you make this motion repetitively and get it in your head no other motion, NO CIRCLES circle motion will cause your paint in the final product to look like someone did a horrible buffing job and cause swirls in the paint. Sand the hood, roof, and sides of the car in a front to back motion. Make sure the scratches made are only going in this direction and none go side to side. Now we direct our attention to the lips, front and rear bumper and spoiler if painting.. These will be sanded down the same way as the rest of the car except the scratches will be going from passenger to driver sides visa-versa make sure you do this or paint will easily run get the clear coat scratched up and move on to the next sized grit paper. Making sure to cover up all the scratches from the previous run take your time and make sure you get everything and periodically switch your paper to make sure your not sanding with it clogged. Now when in the lower stages of paper make sure you also hit the rust spots with a lot of attention and remove all rust from the vehicles body if pitting has occurred and you cant get it all out with the paper, After your done sanding the car take a towel and put on some rust remover and let it work its magic. Once you hit the 100 mark grit we start our wet sanding stages by now all clear coat should be mostly removed from the exterior of the vehicle if so we are ready to go take a bucket of water and put a few drops of dish detergent in it get it incorporated and get your sanding paper place it in water and start sanding the car like normal keep on upgrading sand papers until 2000 is reached wipe off all body and parts and dry the dirty water off them make sure its all of and let car sit for the night to completely dry.. As we return the next morning we need to re prep the car if there are any bare metal parts showing make sure you give them a good rub with 1000 up to 2000 papers to remove any oxidation that may have occurred over night. At this point your car should look like a flat paint car and should feel like sating if so then you have don’t the sanding right no deep scratches, Or scratches in general should be visible throughout the car if so you have done your sanding correctly and can move on to your next step

sorry to cut it short for now going to bed will be back and add more tommorow
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EX-T

good write up i suppose.. I didn't feel like readin' it all though.