Aw yeah!

 

What gun did you shoot that with? Can you lay down the idiot's guide to doing this in your garage?

I have my ventilated hood that I need to paint, which has some scratches I'd like to take care of, and my hardtop is green. The car is blue. Contemplating doing this myself. My father-in-law has painted a couple of cars and I'll be talking to him about it when I visit next week.

 

Alright Mobius, I'll take a crack at it. Caveat: if you want to do a good job, don't follow any of this advice.

1. Materials
I do all my paint shopping at TCP Global. They've got quality paint and supplies, and have great customer service. Don't try to be a man, and just call them before ordering anything. They can be a bit on the surly side, but super knowledgable.
Find your factory paint code here, and choose a clear system (save a few bucks with Restoration Shop, or splurge on the House of Kolor - your call).
Grease and wax remover, lots of shop towels, yogurt containers or paint mixing containers, and some extra thinner for cleanup.

Paint + reducer. Use the extra reducer for cleanup.


Clear + reducer + hardener. That reducer is too pricey for use for cleanup.

Get this gun kit. For $80 it's a ridiculous value.

So many guns, such little price

You'll need a compressor. I am using this one one, but at 2.8 CFM it's pretty under powered. To compensate I over thin my paint/clear and shoot it from a 1.0 gun. You'd be better off with a ~3.5 CFM compressor, which you could rent or buy, so it will support shooting from a 1.4 gun.
Get some sandpaper and something to sand with. Random orbital is best. If you are renting a big *** compressor, than any RO will work, but they eat air like nobody's business, so if you are buying a compressor it's not good value to have to get one big enough to support it. Seriously, you need like 15-20 CFM to run one. When I was using air for all my jobs, I daisy-chained two compressors together to provide enough air for my RO, and then I could still only run it for 3 minutes at a time. I ditched the big compressor and just use a Makita cordless now. It's super good value for $100.

Safety gear. This is the one place not to cut corners. You know how clear coat is basically just thin epoxy? And then you know how you basically make a huge thick cloud of vapor when you spray it? Just imagine what happens when you breathe that in and it condenses in your lungs and then cures. Nitrile gloves, safety glasses, and most importantly a solvent and particulate respirator are not negotiable. Suit and hat are recommended, but I don't always bother.

You must have one of these or better

Filler either for plastic or metal as your job demands. Don't cheap out here because a good filler is way easier to work with and won't just fall off the first bump you go over.
Spray can of sandable high-build primer. Optional, but helpful to get a super smooth finish with minimal effort. Since you'll be sanding it, the spray can is way easier than dealing with another paint to mix and spray.

2. Prep.
Painting is relatively easy, cheap and fast. Prep can take minutes or months, depending on your standards, and will have the biggest impact on the final product. If you are just looking for something that's going to look similar to the rest of your 15-year-old car, then factor a couple solid hours of prep per panel. If you can take off the part you are working with, do that. It's way easier to work with when it's not bolted to your car.
First, you want to knock down the clear coat with ~300 grit with your random orbital sander. This let's the paint stick, so it's mandatory. I do this dry because you are really looking to scratch it up real good. No need to take out all the clear, but it's no big deal if you go through in some places. Just try not to go through to the primer.
Once you've sanded, wipe the panel down with water and a shop towel and the low spots should look shiny and the high spots should be down to the paint or even primer. If you are lazy, or it's a racecar, jump to paint.

All the high spots get cut away the most. If your car is in decent shape it shouldn't look this colorful.

Sand into the low spots and fill them with filler. Lay on filler in thin coats, expecting to do 2-4 layers and sanding in between. It dries quickly so it's not that big of a deal. Use your hand to feel bumps and valleys here, and sand-fill-sand-fill till you're satisfied with the shape. If you are just repainting a perfectly good hood or hard top, you can skip all this.
Last step before painting is to use a sandable high-build primer. Anywhere you went down to metal or plastic should get a couple hits of this stuff, as well as anywhere with tiny scratches and such. You can do without this step, but it is helpful and should only add an extra hour to your total project. If you skipped the filler, then it's especially a good idea.
Now you are basically ready for paint. Spend some patient time taping off trim and such. if you are painting on the car, do a really good job taping, and use old bed sheets to mask off big areas. You are going to feel like a real idiot if you cover your car in overspray.
Lastly you need to get your garage ready. If you have a bunch of sensitive stuff hanging around pack them up. Everything in your garage will probably get tiny droplets of paint. It's basically unnoticeable, unless it's something really valuable, like your wife's car. You can also shoot outside, but you run the risk of getting dust on your paint and getting paint on your neighbor's dog.

3. Paint

Safety first

This is the fun part. Mix your paint with reducer and load up your 1.4 gun. Wipe the part down with grease and wax remover (required), and once that's flashed off you can wipe it down with a tack cloth (optional) if you want it extra dust-free.
Your paint will specify the coat thickness, overlap and flash time. It's probably going to be something like 2-3 medium coats with 50 % overlap and a 5-10 flash time in between each coat. You can practice on an old part or some cardboard or whatever to get your rhythm down. Shoot from 6-8 inches or so, and that you should end up with is long, smooth shots from one end of the panel to the other, moving ~1 foot per second or so, and overlapping with the previous strip by 50%. Wet layers look wet (obviously), dry layers look dry, and medium is in between. It should have a sheen and not be speckly, but it shouldn't look like a pool and shouldn't drip. Solid colors are pretty forgiving, but metallic colors will show flaws in your painting technique. For example, if you take a step mid spray you'll make a lighter or heavier paint spot, which will be noticable with metallic paint. Don't step while you are painting if you can avoid it. Oh yeah, and if you get a paint drip don't try to save it. If you want your car to look great you'll have to let it dry and sand off the drip and repaint.
Clear coat is similar to the base coat, except usually it's sprayed on with 1 medium coat, and then medium-wet coats. You really build the clear on, and by the last coat it should be pretty wet so that it creates a continuous layer, instead of being bumpy (called orange peel).

4. Reassemble
If you did your job right, you won't need to sand the finished product. People do, but I don't. If you do want to sand or polish, do it after the clear cures, but within 24 hours. It can be a real chore to get rid of all the swirls when it's fully hard. I would just leave everything over night and then slap it back together.

 

Added a couple pictures

 

Per your request these are the new injectors and all the numbers I could make out on them

 

Cool, thanks. I haven't seen the ID1050X IRL. It should be a great injector. The body model number is in your second picture - 0 280 158 ___ what are those last 3 numbers?
I'll watch your thread to see how fitment is with that short body.

 

I replaced my clutch slave. Holy jesus it makes a big difference. Mine was totally dead. And it only took half an hour. I should probably just do whatever Twibs415 says right away instead of waiting a year to get around to it.

 

That's some fantastic info, thanks. I'm going to give it a try. What's the worst that could happen!

I already have a 25gallon air compressor rated for 5.1 cfm @90psi that I've had for a long time without a true purpose for having it. This shall give it new life. Sanding my deck caused the purchase of a new Bosch RO sander so I'm good there.

Which plastic/metal fillers do you use?

Also, removal of the side skirt tupperware has left me with two issues, removal of the adhesive tape the factory used, and then filling the holes left by the mounting clips, 5 or so on each side. About 1/4"x1/4". Do you have any suggestions there?

 

Famous last words. I love it!

This is the plastic filler I used. I found it easy to work with and it came out well, but can't speak to longevity yet. You can get it at TCP global.

For body filler any bondo will do, but I like the .

You can take car of any gooey residue effortlessly with laquer thinner, but go easy on paint that you aren't redoing because it's pretty harsh.

Body filler is the right thing to fill in those holes.

Good luck! Hit me with any questions that come up and I'll try not like you astray.

 

So something like duraglas for the filler?

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/BK_7653044

 

Naw, I'd say that's overkill. That one has glass fibers for strength and reinforcement. You'd need that if you need to actually mend something, like a crack, or rust holes or that kind of thing. For filling drill holes and scratches, just standard Bondo or the professional gold version will do the job just fine and be easier to work with.

 

You the man. I can't wait to post the pictures of my epic failures at attempting what you made look easy.

 

There are some things that are basically irreversible, like brutal overspray, but for the most part, if you mess up you can just take a fresh crack at it if it dries all shitty. Oh yeah, and you only have one pair of lungs and eyes, so that's another thing you can mess up if you aren't careful

 

Dialing up my boost and struggling a bit. My target boost is 15 psi, and it was feeling like spark blowout at 12-14 psi. I pulled the plugs and checked the gaps. Three of them were gapped to .035, and one was .037. I gapped them all down to .030 and did some logging today. I don't feel the spark blowout, but it's not getting me over 13 psi or so. I'm probably doing something stupid - many poscats if someone can point me in the right direction.



Log, Tune

 

go check out my closed loop ms3 thread. if anything at least test it in open loop to see if it actually works, cause looks like your valve is hitting 81-85 boost duty and still not really doing anything. do you have it hooked up correctly?

 

Thanks for that thread 18psi, it's awesome! I suspect that I've burnt out the valve since it's routed properly and it was working before. Tomorrow I'm going to try on test mode and see if it does it's clicking for me, and I've got another one on hand I'll toss in there and see if that fixes it.

 

I'm quite sure now that it's a spark related issue. When my boost tops out below target, I get the spark blowout feeling even with my plugs gapped down to .030. I'm running super cheap coils right now, and rather than replace them with OEM, I just pulled the trigger on the LS Truck COP setup. It was only a few bucks more than OEM.

 

Nice. I have high confidence in the LS coils helping...every car I've put them on has only gotten better as a result.

Let me know if I can help with the LS coils in any way. We make a kit for them here in Oz so if you need something like a PnP wiring loom or any such Items I'd be happy to help.

 

Actually, yes! I was thinking about doing that, but why duplicate effort? You have a PNP look for vvt?

I was going to go with the sadfab bracket, but I think it's too good for my car, so instead I'll shoddily fold up some aluminum.