The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop homemade paintjob - is it possible?

I wanna paint my C-60 bus, for cheap, by myself. I'm not looking for a professional grade job obviously, just something to cover the old crusty white paint (which itself looks like an amateur job). Someone recommended I use "implement paint", i guess what they use to repaint machinery and farm implements...does this completely dumb? If I were to undertake the project, what kind of prep would the old paint require?

Sawby: I have painted 2 school busses over 30 yrs. I used my high pressure barn sprayer. 4,000psi Hero. Anyway painted one with JD Green and another with Benjamin Moore Iron Clad oil base at 45 mph they both looked great. Also they were being used to haul hogs to the market.

I high pressure washed, wiped down with a cleaner put vasoline on head lights, taped off windows, shot right out in the barnyard. Hogs didn't care .

popcorn The Truth is Out There (if it don't move I'll paint it.)

Ben,
It seems some of the Ben Moore paint was grey and alot of it got in your hair! Next time wear a hat.

rock on. maybe i'll look into the sprayer idea. it doesnt have to be perfect, I just want to cover the remnants of the three other paint jobs peeking out from the recesses of the latest one, various layers of yellow, blue, green, and scummy white. Did you sand it or prime it at all?

id use a derusto type metal paint put on with roller and brush with a bunch of my friends

I painted a lot of big trucks for the Phoenix Bekins Moving and Storage when i woreked for them as a part time mechanic. Washed them off with cleaner, sanded any rough spots, masked off stuff and sprayed them on the asphalt in front of the shop. I've used rustoleum, commercial automotive paint, enamel for painting school lockers just abaout anything that will go through a spray gun with my Home Depot 2 horse compressor since.

Sawby (any relation to Gumby?}
A neighbor kid (now a city cop! Time flies!) had a '54 Land Rover. He cleaned it up and brush painted it with mobile home paint. I don't know the brand cause it's been a while. It looked great.
I also have a neighbor who's father brush painted an ex-Forest Service '57 Chev 1/2T with Rustolem 25 years ago. It still looks better than my truck. Instead of a Rat-Rod, call it a Rat-Restoration!

Not dumb at all. A lot of folks are using black tractor paint for their classic rides. I use paint from my local Tractor Supply with great results.

This shop has 2 grades of paint. One will work with a hardner, and is a real acrylic enamel. You can get a nice job with this. The one I used did NOT

(whoops - my daughter hit the SEND key!!)

I had to experiment to find the best thinning ratio for shooting in my gun, but the paint is really decent. The colors are limited, but you can mix, test, adjust, test - and fine tune a batch for your needs.

You can really save some cash going this route. And if you don't have a compressor and gun, you really can paint with a brush or roller and it'll look good except upon closer inspection.

Good Luck!

I'm going to give this a try on a '85 Cherokee beater we've been working on. I didn't think the price was too bad. Bought a couple extra quarts of reducer as well in case it takes more to get it to gloss decent. I guess I'll find out if it's any good in the next few days.

paint on e-Bay

you can buy a one part polyurathane paint, from interlux, can be thinned with turpentine, self levels so can be put on with a roller and is real shiney....self levelling means will run easily but not leave brush or roller marks

I've used implement paint on both my dad's and my trucks, and they looked completely serviceable. The brand I used was Forrest Paint, it was pretty dull without being flat, but for work trucks, there's not a tear shed when a rusty scrap of metal scrapes a stripe down the side. Price was about 1/10 the cost of automotive paint, and it seems much more durable. I can't comment on using a brush or roller, since I always shoot paint with a gun. The colors available were mostly safety colors (fire red, road yellow, plus a couple of blues and greens) so, again, totally serviceable, but not at all flashy.

Well its a mixed review on my e-Bay paint. it sprayed out fairly easy and seems good and hard. I had some trouble getting it to lay out nice. May be more my lack of talent than the paint. I've had the same trouble with black paint before. It didn't look bad but it was a little "lumpy". I ended up wet sanding it with very fine paper then taking the electric buffer to it with a fine cutting compound. It is pretty shiney after that. One suggestion I would leave is that if you don't want to fix every little ding, don't go with black because every little flaw really stands out. Heres a pic. of the end result, though the lighting in the shop does not make for good pictures.

Jeep beater

I feel sorry for the hogs. They are smart and friendly like dogs. Sending them to slaughter is evil.

As far as paint is concerned: It's just as easy to do a good paint job as a bad one. The hard part is the preparation. Get a good high pressure compressor and high flow gun, and spray it with some cheap but good, surplus auto paint.

Has anyone used an airless spray gun like a Wagner power painter? Any comments?

Frank,
I have researched the Wagner line at various times over the years when guys have asked about applying Zero Rust with them. This certainly isn't the pure quill as I've not done it for some time but there did not seem to be much in their line that would handle solvent borne coatings. If anyone has more up to date info to the contrary I'd be interested in hearing about it. Bruce Palmer
info@zerorust.com

The problem is, that pork tastes so good....

Sawby, check out my webshots link. The stepside bed is for my '70 C10 and I painted it in my back yard with it sitting on cinder blocks. The 67 Dodge Dart is a paint job that I did for a friend and just finished last Friday. We put up tarps at his shop to block out as much airborne contaminants as possible. Used bc/cc paint and it turned out really good.

Paint jobs