Compressor-less Painting?, Anyone know anything about Earlex 5000 or similar? Options

[pjf]

I'm still fooling around with rust on my 914 but eventually I'll be spraying stuff and was wondering if anyone has had any experience or knows anything about HVLP painting using one of the compressor-less guns like the Earlex 5000. Below is a link for it at the Eastwood site:

http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?itemID=...temType=PRODUCT

I have a compressor but its not big enough to handle spraying and I thought a turbine specifically built for HVLP and a matching HLVP gun might be a good way to go. Eastwood is advertising it for car painting but its been hard to find any review on the Internet to guage how good this is going to be. I'd like to spray mostly primer but if I things are going well I may attempt to do the color and clear coats as as well.

Eastwood's price is $399.99 but it can be had for $100 less to give you an idea of the price.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[pjf]

I found some good info on the Eastwood forum. I guess this thing is legit and can spray single stage urethane, epoxy primer, and high-build polyester primer surfacer. According to someone who uses it, it does reasonably well and with color sanding and buffing a very good finish can be had. The professional unit (I'd be getting the semi-pro for $300) does metalics and pearl finishes the best but if you make sure there is some stablizer additive added to the paint, metalics are OK with the semi-pro model. The gun works at ridiculously low pressure (4 to 7 psi) but the turbine puts out 60 - 90 cfm to make up for it. They say waterbourne paints work too. It looks like for the absolute best results you need a big compressor, a good air dryer, and a high-end gun but these units can do a more than adequate job. I'll probably try one for mostly primer work and if it can do the finish coats it will be a nice bonus.