Hi folks,

I wanted to show some pictures of the process I went through in painting my 914. I thought it might be helpful to those who are considering the same task for their car. By painting your own car, you will be saving yourself a lot of money, and you will be able to reach a level of detail that most body shops will not provide, at least not for an economic fee. Be warned, however, it is a lot of work!

The first picture here is a photo of the car with my girlfiend, now wife, back in '91. Since then, the elements have really taken a toll on the car, and hence, the car needed extensive body work to get things back the right way.

Does this involve scantily clad wimmen and cars?

First of course, there is the body work. I prefered to remove each door and work on a panel at a time. That way I stay focused, and pay attention to detail.

What you want to do is use a good quality filler, and a long sanding block....

By long sanding block, I mean get yourself a 4' level, and get some 80 grit sanding paper that has the stock on backing. You then sand the door, or any panel in an X pattern. From lower left to upper right, and vise-versa. That way your panel comes out wave free.

Eventually, I hope...



Another tip I picked up when working with filler: always add a skim cout when you think your done. Then sand that. See my 4' level on the driveway?

When you have finished your body work, you are left with body filler with lots of 80 grit scratches. At that point, you need to use some primer-surfacer to fill in the scratches. There are different qualities of these fillers, just like anything else. The better quality ones don't shrink. If your filler shrinks as it ages and cures, the scratches will start to become noticeable again, which kinda defeats the purpose. So don't go cheap on the filler.

One thing that is a good idea when you are painting the whole car, inside and out, it to do the inside parts first. I removed the doors and painted the inside portions. My trunks were also a mess, which required a lot of prep time and degreasing.

I sprayed primer-sealer in the trunk area. Then painted...

In the sun...

I painted one of my son's hot-wheels at the same time...

I had my engine lid dipped and removed all the paint. I though it would be easier than removing all the grease underneath. I then coated with metal-etching primer, then sealer, then I sprayed color/clear.

This is one of the harder areas to paint on the 914. I wanted to paint this area before I did the main body. That way, I wouldn't have to be reaching in awkward positions over the rest of the body while it had paint drying on it. I did the door jambs at the same time.

Next went the trunk and other areas...

At the same time I sprayed the trunk, I also sprayed this area. Now, this probably goes against the advice most commonly given when spraying metallic paints. Typically, since metallics lay down differently based on the temperature, and the spraying habit of the sprayer, most painters will recommend that you paint all of the body at the same time. I didn't want to do that becasue I didn't want to be reaching over my fenders. So I decided to risk it and paint this area already. I didn't end up having any noticeable difference in the end, so I guess I got lucky.

I painted the bottom of the lids as well. I decided to mount them standing up because

1. It is easier to paint that way, easier to see what you are doing, and you don't get fatigued as easily.

2. Less dust will fall on the vertical surface.

OK, now we are up to D-Day. The day this old tub got painted. The entire body was left sanded with 400 grit paper prior to this day. On D-Day, the day started out with several hours of wet sanding the primer-surfacer to bring the entire body to 600 grit smoothness.

Next, several hours are spent masking off areas. This takes more time than you would expect. I also devised a way to mount the lids to the wall. I didn't want to worry about one of them falling off...

Next, with everything masked off, the body was prepped with pre-cleano. This gets any grease off the body that was from your fingers, or anything else. Then a tack cloth is used to remove any dust.


And so here we are....By this time it was already 7:30 PM. Should I paint it now? DO I have the energy still? How will it go? Someone on the Autobody forums once said that once you pull that trigger, the odds are against you. And so they were. I''ll post pictures of the rest in the morning...

paint... paint... paint...





Thanks for sharing

Very Nice! Are you able to quantify the now long it has taken you?

Yes, I can, and I must say a lot of time. I would say most of the time is spent on body work, and prepping of surfaces to be painted. I would say several weekends on all the body work and prep. It could go faster, it just depends on how much time you have in a given weekend. I spent quite a bit of time practicing also, and shooting odd jobs on friends and families cars. That way I paid for my spray equipment! In some cases I was my worse enemy in that I spent a great deal of time choosing the colors I wanted. To give you a time perspective, the car was painted starting in September, with the main body being painted in October, and I am just now finishing up buffing it out.

This is the gun I used in painting base coat and clear, by the way:

Devilbiss GFG-670

Very Nice. I'm going to have about 8 months off before grad school starts in September. I'm looking forward to some projects & painting the teener myself sounds like a good way to go!

Thanks for the posts!

-pt

Very nice job!

I wrote a small manual on home paint jobs, if anyone is interested send me a PM with your email and I will send it to you. It is in PDF format.

That looks like a conventional gun, have you tried an HVLP? I actually like a conventional gun, but have been trying to switch, much less waste. I have had problems getting my HVLP to lay down flat, wants to OP, I have done about every adjustment out there, I was told to try reducing it more. Any way, nice job on the paint, I like your idea of building braces on the wall for the hoods, I always hang them from the ceiling and then fight them moving while spraying. I 'll give that a try next time.

My gun is sort of a hybrid, but it sprays much like a HVLP.

Ok, so one thing I wanted to have on this car is those PORSCHE negative side stripes. But, I wanted mine to be painted on. I also wanted to precisley dictate the color, which meant that stick-ons were not an option. So, here I'll show how you can easily paint on these stripes using the stickers as a template....


Step 1: With the base color you want the letters to be, spray enough color for coverage in the area where the sticker goes along the length of the car. I chose this cool VW/Audi dark blue, that I think you see on the Golf GTI's. Spray that and llow that to dry at least 30 minutes or so just to be safe.

...

Next, you apply the stickers...

There are currently two sticker kits available for the 914: One from AutoAtlanta that has 3M backing, and one from Ebay. You will want to use the Ebay one. I practiced this technique before I went live, and I found that the Ebay kit was much more accurate in the lettering, and the sticker came up a lot easier when it came time to remove than did the AutoAtlanta kit.

The sticker is pretty easy to put on, the only tricky part is that you need to create a reference line along the car, that is fairly straight, and then lay out the sticker slowly along that reference line. I used 1" masking tape, applied in small sections, along the bottom of the car, and use a long straight edge to line it up straight. When you apply the sticker, you don't need to get rid of all the air bubble, you just need to make sure that the edges of the letters are stuck on real well, that way you don't get any bleeding.

Once the decal is applied, you are ready to paint your main color.

One thing to remember when appying these decals, when the body is raised, is that there is body flex to be considered. If you have a lot, then apply the decal with the car on the ground, so the letters go straight across. My flex wasn't so bad.

Ok, so next part, you spray your main base coat color. With metallics, I think the trickiest part is to develop your technique so that you don't get tiger-stripes. Tiger stripes occur when you are laying down metallic, and the metal flakes kind of stay in streaks together. I think everyone has to develop their own technique for that, and adjust their gun accordingly.

My general rule is to spray till you have coverage, then add another coat to be sure, then take care of any streaking. That's how I do it, and would love to hear what other folks do.

Ok, so after you have finished spraying your base, and alowed it to dry, then it is time to remove the decals. I took my doors off the car earlier to make painting easier for me, by the way.

Here, you want to have some decent fingernails so you can get the decals up by prying under one of the corners of each letter. Nice and slow, and they come up just fine...

Looks like you're doing a nice job. I'm doing mine now and exactly like you are. I just hope all the paaint matches when it's done. I used a conventional gun on the door jambs and inside of the sail and it flowed perfectly whith a good final finish. I'm using HVLP for all the rest and I don't think there's any way to avoid OP. I'm putting on 4 coats and color sanding it out. The best thing about the HVLP is the fact that it takes so much less paint. I paid $400 for the color paint $ catalyst so it's a big deal. Not only did I use epoxy sealer on the bare metal but I also put it over the primer after final sanding to keep my burnt orange dark. You're absolutly right about doing it yourself - a shop would never get all the rust out or take the extra effort to make sure nothing happened to the paint job later on. Only problem I have is sanding out the bugs.

Looks great!

How did you spray? In your garage? How did you rig the ventilation up?

I am in this same situation.

Only a single fan was used to exhaust, kept real low, so not to stir up dust.

Ok, next I applied 3 coats of Dupont clear. Of course, thats when all the flying bugs come out....

I finished painting about 2:30 AM. I was very tired, but it took at least another hour for me to wind down before I could fall asleep. Dreaming of my baby blue....

The next day, I was anxious to see the car in the sunlight....

..."I knew the moment had arrived, and I headed straight into the shining sun"...

(Pink Floyd song)

...

Drool.. It looks so good, I just wanna take a bite out of it! Kudos!

Jen

Very very cool.

What sort of air compressor did you use for that?

-Tony

Awesome job, and great color too! If my handiwork comes out looking half as nice as this when it comes time for me to do some of this I'll be greatly pleased.

There is German in your ancestry... somewhere.









wow

Wow nice work and looks fantastic!


Crap I'm lazy.

Wow, thats very impressive

I agree with Boojum; if mine comes out half as nice I'll be very pleased.

If you don't mind, what brands of paint did you use?

Yep, 100% German, mom and dad came to the U.S. back in the 60's.

The paint is Dupont Chromabase. I way overestimated what I would need. MY compressor was a sears 33 Gal.

Thanks, for the compliments, everyone. Yes, at this point the car looked pretty good. But, as this picture shows, the clear coat has far too much ORANGE PEEL.

But never fear, we're only halfway done with our paint job at this point....stay tuned...

Looks great!!!
Nice work Thomas!!

I bet these pics don't even do it justice. And orange peel? pshaw... wet sanding is your friend... that's gonna be glass...

Yay...

That's gonna be one jaw dropping home paint job. Outstanding work.

Looks great! I'm at the point where I'm just about ready to put on my first coat of primer. Did your Craftsman 33 gallon compressor keep up with the gun? I've been reading all I can on painting and they say that any pressure drop while painting can effect the performance of the gun. Sure looks nice. Wish I was that far along.