I live in MN
it's cold up here
i want to paint my block and tranny
can I paint by block if the garage is cold (30-40f)

I have a torpedo style heater that I could use to keep the garage warm... but it would suck to have it on the entire time for it to dry.

Thoughts?

 

dont see why you couldnt. it would just take the paint longer to dry. it would work towards your advantage if you could heat up the garage a bit. but at 30-40degrees. you're just fighting drying times if anything.

 

Close everything off and crank that heater up full blast. Get it as hot as possible in there. Buy a cheap digital thermometer somewhere so you can watch the temp. Put it across the garage away from the heater so you're reading actual ambient temp, not the intense heat straight from the heater. When the ambient temp gets to about 70, then paint. The problem though is that you need to shut off the heater while you're painting and while there's still fumes/material floating around in the air because of a serious explosion hazard. I painted in a garage one winter and I had a whole system worked out...

Heat garage until temp would not rise anymore... 95 degrees-ish is what it usually went to and it took about 10 min of full blast heat to get there. Switched the heater off and quick sprayed the sealer. by the time I was done spraying the sealer and had let it flash off properly the temp was down to about 60-65 degrees. I opened the garage and let the fans blow out all the fumes. Temp went back down to 25-30 deg. Heat the garage again, spray basecoat, then air out and reheat for clear. after I aired out the clear fumes for an extra 10 minutes or so, I cranked up the heat one more time, pulled my 'booth' curtain closed and let it run for about 30 minutes at full blast. It got to about 110 inside the smaller closed off area.

At the collision shop we bake cars for 15 minutes at 140 deg and they're ready to be reassembled and delivered. I baked an entire car at 110 deg for 30 minutes in a friend's attached garage in the middle of January and it cost me about $40 in propane. It can be done, you just have to do it right. I know you're not planning on doing a whole car and you probably aren't using real base/clear, but still... do a method similar to above and you'll get a perfect result. You don't want to be painting when it's cold... definitely not less than about 65 deg or so. Heat the garage, turn off the heater, spray, let it sit to flash off, air out, reheat for clear and drying.

 

thanks agian for the detail reply... you came through as always.


My car is being picked up tomorrow from badmojo customs some body work and full paint job. While the garage is empty for once, I can clean the garage and also detail my block for my new shaved and painted bay!

pictures will be up soon i hope

 

before and after....

I used wire brush, de-greaser, cut small squares of green scuff pad pinched pliers to get in between all the cracks, vth 1300f primer and 500f paint.
I used torpedo heater so the -10f temp outside this weekend wasn't an issue. In fact I had to open the garage up to vent it after each coat of paint.

 

Looks sweet. I wish I coulda had that much patience with mine. I just degressed hit with the brush where i could and then sprayed lol. Didnt turn out bad tho...

 

man the weather sucks a$$in your area.

 

Nice job man. Looks great.