Hi, it’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint with another live stream.  Thank you for coming on. This is an interactive training. I hope you enjoy the show! Today’s topic is Can You Get a Professional Paint Job Out Of Your Garage?

I want you to play full out with me. The more you give me, the more I can give you. If you look below, you can just type in the chat whether you’re on your desktop or mobile. Let me know what’s going on.

Before we get started, can you guys tell me right now where you’re from? I can just call those out really quick because it’s fun.

Then, we will get started with the twenty to thirty minute show. I don’t want to go too long. I know you guys are busy and it’s a bit late. We could get in to a quick little training then to our Q&A.

New Zealand … Kentucky … Maine … Memphis, Tennessee … Awesome! I love it! From all over the world! For those of you guys coming on, I’m going to call you guys out really quickly.

How many guys here have a project you’re currently working on? Type into the chat whatever you’re working on, type of projects that you’re doing and also what you need help with. Tell me why you’re here.

Chattanooga … Reminds me of Arnold saying, “Get to the Choppah!” LOL!

Motorcycle … Hard bags … Awesome. Hard bags are awesome. Bulldog 30 … Camaro … Looks like we got some people coming in here.

Now, since we have some more people on, let’s get cranking. After I go over what I want to get off my chest about spraying, about the garage, then we can get on to Q&A.

We’ll spend 15 minutes or so on Q&A and then we’ll say good night and I will see you later.

How many of you guys are painting in a spray booth? Or you do it in your garage? Type into the chat? Let’s get into the topic of just painting in general.

A lot of people have fear that they need a spray booth. They need to have a special spray booth to bake the paint and have awesome paint jobs.

How many of you guys believe that? Or have heard that before and have false belief that it’s true?

Have you come across people saying that you have to bake your paint or in a totally dust free environment with a spray booth, suctions, and this and that?

Okay, some of you don’t believe it. Great! It doesn’t have be like that. You can be like our audience, Bulldog here.

You can do homemade-styled, put plastic up and have some ventilation. Filters or no filters. You can get amazing paint jobs just like that.

Back in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, people used to paint their cars DIY style. Americans are truly DIY people.

When you go to Japan, believe it or not, they are blown away by what all of the stuff we do here. They don’t do this stuff. I travel to Japan a lot because my wife is Japanese.

They don’t do any DIY. If you go to Japan, nobody’s fixing up their car in their garage. Everything is done by the books.  If something is wrong with the car, they have to take it to the mechanic.

It’s very rare in Japan to have their own home air compressor. It’s pretty crazy. But, the Americans, Canadians, Australians are more DIY. We want to do things ourselves.

We want to save money and do it ourselves. We want to have that skill set and that’s amazing. That’s awesome.

Listen, when it comes down to the bare grits of things, you don’t need to have a crazy set up to get amazing, professional finishes on your car.

You don’t need to be spraying in a spray booth. Like I said, sometimes people spray outside in the yard, with bugs flying around and everything. It’s not a big deal.

If a bug lands in it, you just sand it out, repaint that area and maybe buff it out and you’re good. Old school, if you’re doing enamel paint jobs.

Nowadays, it’s so much easier with a base coat clear coat. If you make a mistake, it’s easy, especially with a base coat. You make a mistake, you just sand it out and wait 30 minutes. Then, you just dust it and you’re good.

For clear coat, if you get a little dust in it, as long as you have enough clear on it, you can just sand it out after it cures and dries, and buff it out. Not too bad.

I paint in my shop here. Let me show you my shop. It’s not crazy. I’ve got a little shop here and we bang out amazing jobs here. Professional, show shine finishes.

I did this Miata here. We’re going to be doing the BMW in the next few months. Hopefully before next year, if not early next year. We’re going to be doing a complete paint job.

We’ll be doing the front and rear bumper covers. The hood has to be done and stuff like that.

The main thing is, if you’re painting in your own home garage, basically make sure you sweep out your shop. Sweep out the floors.

You can even get a hose and hose down your floors. Wet your floors down before you start painting. This keeps the dust down.

If it’s hot out, it will dry up, it’s going to evaporate very quickly, but it’s okay. Then, put your car in the middle of the shop. Cover up your tool and your walls if you don’t want overspray, if you’re doing a single-stage paint job.

Single-stage is basically a synthetic enamel paints where it’s just a one-color, dries shiny and that’s it. You put 2-3 heavy coats of that paint and you’re done.

Let me warn you, that stuff is thick and it gets everywhere. If you’re going in with black shoes when you’re painting a car white, you’ll be going out with white shoes. That’s how much overspray single-stage will do.

It’s also sticky. You walk on the floor and you’ll hear the stickiness of the paint. Even your filter is clogged up, so if you’re painting single-stage, that’s how it is. It’s just ridiculous.

I don’t do a lot of single-stage now, maybe every once in a while.

The base coat clear coat is a two-stage and you get very little overspray. You’re not going to get too much color all over the walls. You’re not going to get color all over you. It’s very minimal.

As long as you have good ventilation, it just goes out. No problem. That’s the difference with the two types of paint.

Question: What do I recommend? 1k or 2k?

It depends on what kind of job you’re doing. If you’re doing a quick job and you just want to get it in and out and you’re on a budget, single-stage paints are great.

If you’re doing more of a custom job and you want to play around with the paint a little bit more, base coat clear coat gives you that ability, because you could put flake or pearl in it, in your clear coat time.

I don’t know if you see the micro sequence flake in the Miata. Watch the video as try to zoom it in. You can just do more with base coat clear coat.

I did base coat clear coat on my bike. I did a blend job here. I did yellow, purple flames and pinstripe it and clear coated everything.

The way it’s dried now, I can actually sand it down with 1500-grit and clear it again to get a better gloss. If I wanted to do that.

You have a lot more play room with base coat clear coat. It’s more of a professional style of paint. It will last longer. It’s more durable.

Question: Can you correct imperfections on single-stage paint like nips and peel?

Yeah, absolutely. You can do that absolutely. You just have to sand it out with 1500-grit and get out the nibbles and buff it out as you would base coat clear coat.

You buff it out with a wool pad. You’re going to get the paint transferred on the wool pad because it’s a single-stage and that’s normal, but you’re going to be able to buff it out with a foam pad as well and get that brilliant shine back.

They say to be careful a little bit when it comes down to heavy metallic single-stage paint, because they say as you’re buffing, you could cloud up the metallic in there.

That’s what I heard, but I never personally experienced that problem. I buffed out a metallic single-stage, color sand it and buffed it out with no issues at all. It’s just a little warning.

Question: What stores sell auto paint?

What I would do is search for your local auto paint store is search for your local auto supply stores.  Where are your auto body shop locations at?

Where are the industrial areas of your auto body shops in town? 90% of the time, the paint distributor will be in that area because not all auto body shops have their own mixing system.

We never did, we always order from a paint shop. If you are a huge paint company or auto body company, you have your own mixing system in the back. Most of the guys that I grew up with don’t have them.

We went to the auto paint supply house or they would come over, with the gun. They would get the paint coat of the car and make the paint for you. They sell clears, primers and everything auto body.

In Hawaii, I used Hi-Line Distributors a lot. Also, Sherman Williams and PPG. Here in Texas, English Color is big. They are all over the country as well so check them out and tell them Tony of LearnAutoBodyAndPaint sent you, you’ll probably get a discount. I deal with them a lot here.

Napa sells paint, if you have one near you. You can also order online. Sometimes I don’t feel like driving, I order online. I’ve bought House of Kolor, PPG online.

Advantage is a cheap clear. I wouldn’t recommend this stuff for doing a nice, nice paint stuff. You get what you pay for when it comes to clear coat. You’re going to get a lot of dye back with the cheap ones.

Dye back is basically when you clear your car, a week later it gets dullish. You’re not going to get that when you use high end clears like the USC01 Kosmic Urethane Show Klear by House of Kolor. This is good.

With the USC01, you spray it on and it looks glossy, ten months later it will still have that gloss to it.

Sorry, for the interruption with the ants! (LOL!)

Question: Is automotive repair a good enough career to provide for your family and make a life for yourself?

Yes, it can be but you have to be smart. You have to be the one getting all the business and you need to have workers for you.

You don’t want to be the one day-to-day doing all of the body work, getting dusty, being around all that stuff. That’s my opinion.

Of course, when you’re starting out, you have to do it first. But, eventually you want to hire a body guy to do all the grunt work. You also need a masker. Hopefully, your body guy can do all-in-one although, it’s hard to find people like that.

In the body business, there are prep guys, painters, your body guys and finishing guys. You have your panel beater body work guys.

I used to be a painter. They used to hire me just to go in, the car would be prepped in the spray booth, waiting for me. I would just go in and paint. I was 17 at that time.

I get paid $150 per paint job. I used to do two or three a day, going for 1-1 ½ hours to finish a car and go to the next body shop.

This is how it works at bigger shops, but for small shops, one guy would do everything.

Feedback really quickly guys, how are you liking this? If you like the video, click like and give me some feedback by typing it in the chat box.

What do you think of this? I actually plan on doing this once a week. In the next ten days, I’m going to be heading out to Japan. I’m not going to be in the shop. I’m not going to be able to show you things around the shop.

But, I’m going to be able to talk to you. Do you like doing this? I plan on doing this every Thursday night around this time – 8pm, 9pm or 10pm Central.

Before I do it, I’ll send you an email update if you’re in my email list and if you’ve subscribed through Facebook, you’ll get notification as well.

As long as you like this, I’ll keep on doing this. I don’t want to get on here with just 5 or 10 people and just talk to myself.

If I can have enough of an audience and we give enough back and forth, then I’ll do this. Before you leave, make sure to download your FREE 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual.

Most of you guys probably have it. It took me months to write that manual, there’s a lot of information in it. You can print it out if you want to. You can learn something from it.

Question: What is your opinion on Turbine set ups like Fuji and Apollo? I’m fresh in the game looking for a compressor.

Honestly, I haven’t spent a lot of time doing that myself because I have my own compressor, so I don’t look into those.

But, a few of our VIP members have used those with success, so they do work. They use the turbines to paint their cars and they say it worked so, no problem.

But, I think, if you want air, why don’t you just get an air compressor? To fill up your tires, you got pressure. It’s not just flow pressure, you also got filling pressure. You can fill your tires.

It all depends, if you want to experiment with the turbine system, feel free and let me know.

Question: What size nozzle

Ok, I’ll show you something. Hopefully you can see this. I hope the lighting is okay. Check out my video.

We have three different flakes here. We have the jumbo flakes, the medium rainbow flake and the ultra mini-flakes. Once you buy one of these, they’re going to last you a lifetime, unless you’re painting like a maniac.

I’m sorry, I don’t know the exact size of these flakes. It doesn’t say here. There are all Jon Kosmoski House of Kolor flakes.

I literally bought the mini-flake when I was 18 years old. The other one is a little bit bigger, it’s fine rainbow.

The ultra mini-flake is very, very fine and one of my favorites. You could still have a filter in the neck of your gun and it will come right out.

It’s so fine and will give you a beautiful flake in your paint job. You don’t have to worry about your tip size, you can spray out of your 1.3 or 1.4 without any issues and you’re good.

You can even leave your neck filter in. I recommend taking it out, but you don’t have to.  This flows right through it.

If you’re spraying the medium rainbow flake, if you’re spraying with it, I recommend you take the neck filter out of your spray gun because you’re going to be spraying your clear coat, but all of a sudden, it starts drying out and nothing will be coming out of your gun. That’s because all of it is clogged up in your neck filter.

I actually put this rainbow flake in the rims of my motorcycle. It looks awesome.

Let me show you what a neck filter is, check out my video as I show you using my Warwick 980H Spray Gun.

You want to make sure you put a strainer. You always want to filter your paint. You got your filter and put your clear coat in.

With micro sequence, you can just go right through it. With jumbo flake, you filter it on the side and then, you mix your jumbo flake and mix it right in.

If you look inside the cup, you can see the little ball. That’s the neck filter. Basically, you want to take the neck filter out.

The jumbo flake here is the stuff you see on the custom race boats. You got the huge jumbo flake and like 20 coats of clear.

You want to be spraying at least a 1.6 tip with this. You can probably get it out with a 1.4, but 1.5 or 1.6 would be better. You’re going to be flowing it out like crazy.

When spraying flakes, you can use an inner coat clear, which is a clear base coat. Then, mix your pearls or flakes in and spray it on your car.

So with your thicker flakes, you would do your color, then your inner coat which has your flake and your clear coat.

The micro sequence flakes are for the advanced people. You could just mix this right in your clear coat and spray it. Then you can go ahead and use a plain coat of clear.

The only issue is if you run it, then you’ll have a big metallic run. That’s the way I do it because I don’t run.

Question: Do you like the 3M Gun Kit PPS System or go with the Warwick?

You can actually get the Warwick and get the 3M PPS system adapter and then hook up the whole system with your Warwick spray gun if you want to.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s basically the disposable cups that you use. I don’t like them, because I feel like I’m throwing all these plastic away in the environment.

I like using the Warwick aluminum cups and clean them out. I don’t like using the disposable 3M PPS System because it just seems like a waste to me.

I don’t want to mess up the environment more and put more plastic out. I don’t support that. That’s just me, but some guys prefer it.

Question: Orbital or DA Buffer?

You can use whatever you prefer. I use orbital high speed buffer. A DA sander is for sanding down bondo and cutting down grits.

Question: The clear coat that I sprayed on my car just cracked completely after the second coat. Why did that happen?

That sounds very bad. I don’t know what you mean by cracked completely, did it dry first and cracked? Or did it start separating on the panels wet?

If you can get back to me on that, but it sounds like a curing reaction, if it started cracking on after you sprayed it, while it was curing? Or, it could just be a bad clear and that happens a lot.

I’ve ordered paints directly from paint shops and the paint was bad. You do get bad batches of clear coat.

It screws up your day and it screws up your paint job and you have to do it all over again. It happened to me a couple of times, at least three or four times over twenty years. That’s a lot to me.

I hope you guys enjoyed the show and learned something. If you want to learn more, check out LearnAutoBodyAndPaint and get the Free 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual.

If you want to see and learn everything that I’ve talked about, check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Course. I think you’ll really love it.

We have thousands of VIP members across the world who are just learning so much from the course and doing their own projects and some opened up their own body shop.

Feedback: I really like this Q&A events. Keep it coming please!

Awesome from a VIP member here! I will and I want to do these every Thursday night. My other channel, which is How To Buy And Sell Cars, that’s happening the same time every Wednesday.

Just to let you guys know, I’ll be doing this every week, whether if I’m in Japan or Mexico or Hawaii or if I’m back in home base here in Texas, where I like to be. I love this place.

Thank you everybody, I really appreciate everyone coming on. We have a nice group of people, more than fifty people. It was worth my time getting on.

I would love to get to a point where we have 100 people or on 500 people on. That would be awesome! We can really get stuff going.

It’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint. Again, thank you for joining. Comment, Like, Share the video with your friends.

The next project is this BMW. We’re going to be doing the bumper cover. Maybe we’ll do that before I leave for Japan on July 3^rd.

I’m very happy with this lift that was set up. It was a beast to set up this lift, but we got that done. A couple other thing that I will be doing is the Miata.

When I get to Japan, I’m actually in the market to buy a BMW M3 E46. I’m going to turn it into a race car and join the BMW Car Club of America and document the whole process then share my experience with all of you.

Feedback: Regards from Colombia!

Thank you! That is awesome. See you guys on here next Thursday! I promise I will be here every Thursday from 8pm-9pm Central.

Have a great night, Cheers!

-Tony

Other Helpful Links:

LABAP Shop, Personal Life, Race Cars, and What You Want

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DIY Auto Body Work And Painting Q&A – Paint Biting – Orange Peel – Rust Prevention

How To Paint Cars – LearnAutoBodyAndPaint.com Q&A Part 3

How To Make New Paint Match Old Paint On A Car – How To Paint A Car Q&A Part 4