DIY Painting your car with rollers

[Gunns VC]

Bunnings or any good hardware shop. They come in 1L tins from memory, so for a start get 2 or 3 if you're doing the engine bay and boot.

Ok thanks mate, i got 4L of royal blue i was just hoping it would be enough before i started. Cheers!

 

[wilso]

Ok thanks mate, i got 4L of royal blue i was just hoping it would be enough before i started. Cheers!

Sorry mate, I thought you were asking how many litres of Penetrol you'd need. 4L of paint should go close, just depends how many coats you do... Goodluck!

 

[Heffer_Slayer]

I keep coming back to look at this page....you did such a fantastic job!!!
Congratulations.

 

[deXtrous]

Hey so.. I've been painting my car with rollers over the past few months... I'm doing it in segments and have the whole car sanded, but I'm only painting the bonnet, two front quarters and bumper bar first.

There's been an issue tonight.

I was down to the last few mL's of mixed paint and it was really gluggy and there were some hard flakes in there. I painted with it, stupidly. Now I have an immense amount of orange peel every where.

How can I replenish this paint? More penetrol?? More turps??? Which is it? agh!!!

I'm up to my 6th coat all round. It's looking pretty shmick and I think I've gotten the painting procedure down now. This paint just f*cked me up.

I'll take some piccies after the next coat!

 

[wilso]

Hey so.. I've been painting my car with rollers over the past few months... I'm doing it in segments and have the whole car sanded, but I'm only painting the bonnet, two front quarters and bumper bar first.

There's been an issue tonight.

I was down to the last few mL's of mixed paint and it was really gluggy and there were some hard flakes in there. I painted with it, stupidly. Now I have an immense amount of orange peel every where.

How can I replenish this paint? More penetrol?? More turps??? Which is it? agh!!!

I'm up to my 6th coat all round. It's looking pretty shmick and I think I've gotten the painting procedure down now. This paint just f*cked me up.

I'll take some piccies after the next coat!

I never let my mixture get that low, or if I found i was getting low i'd tip it into a seperate jar and mix a new batch. Also please remember when I painted my car in the warmer months (Feb and March), my paint mixture my not work well in the coller months, that why I suggest its all trial and error. There's no right or wrong way fo doing this, find what works for you....

 

[deXtrous]

Ah I see, say I did want to do a bit of trial and error, if I wanted to thin the paint down because it's gluggy, would I add penetrol or turps?

I'm a bit in the mist about the difference between the two.

 

[wilso]

Ah I see, say I did want to do a bit of trial and error, if I wanted to thin the paint down because it's gluggy, would I add penetrol or turps?

I'm a bit in the mist about the difference between the two.

Turps to thin the paint down.
Penetrol is added to help the paint stick and also to make it go on smoother. See the website here: http://www.floodaustralia.net/products/penetrol.htm

 

[deXtrous]

I guess I should have read the back of the label.


FARK.. I hate asking so many questions but I really don't quite have enough paint to stuff this up, seeing it's all discontined and that, but....

For the final coat, did you sand with 2000 grit afterwards? Or simply buff the dust and dirt that got stuck to it off?

Sorry wislo

 

[wilso]

I guess I should have read the back of the label.


FARK.. I hate asking so many questions but I really don't quite have enough paint to stuff this up, seeing it's all discontined and that, but....

For the final coat, did you sand with 2000 grit afterwards? Or simply buff the dust and dirt that got stuck to it off?

Sorry wislo

My final coat was pretty damn good so I just left it and didn't bother with 2000 grit, I did give it a polish though.

 

[Raremetal]

The Paintwork 27 Months On:
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The Paintwork 16 Months On:
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The Method:
Firstly if you bag this method out saying it easier to use a spray gun then I would agree. But to be honest I wasn’t in a position to use a spray gun and I did this in my small shed without any worries. I also wasn’t after a professional $3000 paint job but the end outcome is just as good.

My VN Wagon before I started:
View attachment 49467

How it looks today:
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Some positives about this method:

• CHEAP
• Minimal masking up of panels
• Minimal paint wastage
• Perfect for someone that has a lot of time and enjoys sanding
• No need to have a spray booth
• No need to use special ventilation
• Touch ups in the future are easy as
• Paint is tough as

Some negatives about his method:

• Very time consuming to do it right. Took me 2.5 months to do my car. That was pretty much each night 6pm till 11 or 12pm…
• A lot of wet sanding

Things you will need:

• TIME (and lots of it)
• Lots of 4” high density foam rollers (the white ones)
• International Brightside Yacht Paint
• All grades of wet and dry sandpaper, and lots of it (200 to 2000)
• Bucket
• Couple of glass jars > 500ml
• Penetrol
• Prep Solve
• Mineral Turps
• Masking Tape
• Thick cord to go underneith the windscreen rubbers
• Newspapers for covering up glass etc

View attachment 49451View attachment 49453

You can buy the paint online here: Welcome to Whitworths Marine & Leisure

NOTE: If I refer to "sanding" it actually means "wet sanding". I never did any dry sanding...


Preparation:
Most important step. I won’t go into a great deal of detail because if you are going to paint any car you should already know the basics of repairing body work with bog, priming and wet sanding.
Basically what I did with my car was wet sand all the panels with something around 150 grit to begin with. If you do have rust, scratches or dint you will need to fix these up before you go any further.
Once sanded with 150grit and the clear coat is gone, use the next finest sandpaper and remove any marks left from the 150 grit. Basically keep sanding the panels with finer and finer sand paper until you have hit around the 400-600 grit mark. At this stage you can paint the panel with primer which will help fill in any small scrathes etc or you can move right onto painting the car with paint which is what I did... (If I was to use this method again I would use primer)
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The Paint:
The paint MUST be thinned down!

After many trials of working on my car I found a sweet mixture that consisted of:

• 100ml Penetrol
• 75ml Turps
• 375-400ml Paint

What I found works best is to make up the paint mixture in one of the glass jars so you can pour it into your paint tray and then reseal the jar.

Before Painting Each Coat:
Basically you will end up doing 3-5 coats before you get full coverage. Between each coat you will have to wet sand, by doing this it will remove any imperfections from the previous coat.
After 8 or so coats you should be upto using 1500 grit sand paper and your panel will be looking pretty sweet.
Let each coat dry for 18-24 hours before attempting to sand and paint the next coat.
Make sure you thoroughly clean the panel before you paint it, wash it with clean water after wetsanding and then wipe it with prep solve to remove any oil/wax or anything else that will affect the paint.

Painting:
Pour some of the paint into your roller tray. Load up the roller and squash any excess paint out. Then simply go nuts on the panel. Trick here is to do it in very thin coats. If you do it too thick you may end up with an orange peel effect in the paint and you’ll have to do more sanding before the next coat. You'll find as you roll the paint on you'll get millions of air bubbles which should eventually pop themselves if the paint is thin enough. If they aren't popping you can gently blow on them which will make them pop and the paint will merge into the surrounding paint. Another method is using a second clean roller in which you very very lightly go over the entire panel which will help pop any remaining bubbles and should dissipate any light roller marks. The paint mixture above is perfect though as the paint should self-level and you should see this happen before your very eyes.
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Finally:
After you have finished let the paint cure for a good 30-60 days. You can now polish it up which will remove any fluff, hair and grit stuck in the paint from the last coat. I’ve half polished mine so far and it comes up so well you’d never know it was done with a roller…
Pic of the roof after a little polishing:
View attachment 49465

To sum this method up:
Sand panel with 150, 200, 360, 400 then 600. Clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint first coat on. Let dry. Wet sand with 800 grit, clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint second coat. Let dry. Wet sand with 1000 grit, clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint third coat. Let dry. Wet sand with 1200 grit, clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint fourth coat. Let dry. Wet sand with 1500 grit, clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint fifth coat. Let dry. Wet sand with 2000 grit, clean panel thoroughly, prep solve. Paint sixth coat. Let dry. And so forth. Let paint cure properly for 30-60 days then polish and wax.

I will add though that you will soon get a feel of what grit sandpaper you’ll need to use because not every coat will go down perfectly. You may need to go right back to 800 grit on the 7th coat or something because of orange peel.

I have probably left a lot out of this but you hopefully get the general idea.

I’ll be happy to answer questions anyone has but I also suggest trying this on a spare panel first and get used to the method.


Other Tips:

• Use rubber gloves when doing all the wet sanding otherwise you will loose the tips of your fingers from the constant skin+sandpaper contact.
• If possible, paint your bonnet and front guards while they are off the car, but it helps if you have spares to put back on the car so you can still drive it. I was lucky enough to have a red bonnet and front guards. I drove around like this for a couple of weeks. Looked totally bogan...
• View attachment 49452
• Straight after you have painted the panel you can use a clean roller to go over all the air bubbles and pop them using just the weight of the roller.
• Use thick cord and work it in under the windscreen rubbers and go around the whole windscreen, by doing this it'll allow you to get paint under the rubbers, when finished carefully take the cord out.

Facts:

• I used a total of around 86 sheets of sandpaper
• Used about 3.2 litres of paint all up to do my car
• Bonnet had 10 coats, Roof 9 coats, passenger side 7 coats and drivers side 5 coats. I got better longer I did it…
• More progress pictures on my website here

Awesome man, very well done. I through the same as everyone else did. "WTF" D:
Great How-to: as well. Top job.

Rare.