Hey, this is Tony! Thank you for watching my videos and reading the blog. Today, we’re going to do our first round of Learn Auto Body And Paint Q&A.
In my last video, I asked you to send in your most burning auto body and car painting question and I’ll answer them through my videos.
I have a couple of questions on YouTube, some on the blog and on Facebook. I’ll give you a short and straight to the point answers on what I would do.
Let’s start with the questions below the blog. One question here is from Alan Renshaw. He had a question on soda blasting which he figured out but his next question is if he should start flipping cars.
Absolutely! You can earn more by flipping cars for profit. Knowing auto body is an advantage because you can fix up the car, make it look good instead of paying a mechanic to do it for you.
I have a special training course that teaches you how to buy and sell for profits so check out F1 AutoCashFormula 2.0 – How To Buy And Sell Your Cars and grab the FREE 17-Page Bikini Report.
You don’t have to get a car that needs a lot of work to make money from , which was my mistake when I was starting out. You can copy my strategies and learn how to earn a few thousand dollars a month by flipping used cars and reselling them.
Our next question is from Mark Cunningham, “Tony, I know you said you wouldn’t get anything with a lot rust on it, but hopefully soon you will do a video on this other than the one of the old Ford. Here where I live the city uses a lot of salt in the winter and thus rust and I get a lot of people that want me to fix there rust problems. Have you heard of what body shops are doing now where they are cutting say a fender’s rust off and GLUING on a repair panel? I have only heard of this but have not seen it done so I can only imagine it’ll be somewhat like the Miata’s trunk spoiler where you’d have to feather in the edges with filler and whatnot. “
Yes, absolutely! Instead of spot welding, they bond it with a special glue. You can glue on fiber glass, hard plastic or even metal to get your body work done. This is not new, it’s been out for over ten years.
You can do this if you want to get the job done quickly. But for me, I prefer to weld in stainless steel panels and sheet metal instead of bonding it in for a higher quality work. I’ll make some videos about this in the future.
Let’s move on to the YouTube questions. Here’s one from DJ Inclined.
“I have removed the ugly stock roof rack rails on my subaru wagon, I am looking to shave the gutter that is now left open. What is the best way to fill in the groove? I’ve tried body filler, but it failed numerous times and I’m out of ideas.”
Why has it failed with body filler? I don’t know why you failed that because that should work.
If it’s a deep rail and about a quarter-inch deep, I suggest that you use Kitty Hair. It’s a fiber glass mix body filler and it doesn’t crack like bondo would. You can use a bondo that is anything less than that.
If it’s really deep, I would weld a piece of metal in and grind it flat then use a basic body filler or kitty hair to flatten it out. Remember not to overheat it and just do sections at a time. I’ll show you how to do that in the future.
Another question from Gabe Mendoza. “What do u think is most difficult, paint or body work?”
You need to have skills and confidence in both areas so I think both are important.
But, I think body work is a little bit more difficult like getting your panels shaped and flat and looking really good. This takes a lot of time and a lot of getting used to.
On paint work, it takes a lot of practice but you can get used to this in a shorter period of time compared to body work.
You just need to practice laying on paint evenly with your 50:50 ratios, or seventy-five percent overlaps if you’re doing candy and laying on a glossy paint.
Next question is from yaboyprime614. “Say if you have dents and dings on the roof of the car and there’s no way to hammer and dolly that area do you just bondo that area then sand it down to fix the dent?”
If you have a big roof, it can be very wobbly and flexible. Especially if you have hail damage in the middle of the roof. It’s very tough to dents out on flimsy roofs. It saves a lot of time and hassle if you do Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) tactics.
We have another question here from Eolani Jayne Zavalla. “Can I use airless sprayer such as ozito and wagner, with my paint is acrylic enamel? I hope you can help me on this because HVLP unit is too expensive. Thank you so much.”
The HVLP paint guns are really not that expensive. You can get cheap ones for fifty bucks. You can also get a good medium grade ones for one hundred fifty to two hundred dollars.
I recommend you get a medium grade HVLP spray gun. You can also get LVLP if you have a smaller air compressor tank.
I strongly discourage you to use a Wagner home painting spray gun for painting a car. You are not going to get the right atomization. If you want glossy paint, you need to get high atomization.
You also need high atomization to get a flat surface otherwise you’ll get orange peel and the paint job will look really horrible.
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Here’s a question from Mod Point Rods. “How should you value your own paint job to a buyer or customer? Say you buy a car/truck for 2000 dollars. Then you do auto body and paint. What should it be worth now?”
You have to think what the car is worth on excellent condition. Custom paint jobs are like art. People will not pay extra for custom paint jobs unless you have a special type of car.
If your truck is worth fifty-five hundred dollars in excellent condition, it’s not going to be worth eight thousand dollars just because you did a nice paint job on it. Unless, you have a rare car with a nice paint job.
I have a manual, “The Auto Body Moneymaker’s Guide” that tackles topics like these and other topics like current paint prices, how much to invest and how much to charge people to profit from auto body.
A tip on advertising cars, I wouldn’t mention that I’ve put on new paint on it. Otherwise, people will be suspicious and ask a lot of questions on why it was painted.
Last question here from Charles Barton. “I have a red F150. Eventually I want to do a Candy like wine berry/black with some micro pearl & ghost flames. Say I wanted to put my whip in primer and paint it on down the road a bit later, would that be feasible? If so, would I have to sand it to bear metal and use sealer to prevent oxidation? Or, would I need to just rough it up a bit, and then hit it with a couple coats of primer?”
Yes, you can seal it up with a good primer sealer, drive around and keep it like that. Just make sure to prime over the metals. You don’t want to leave the metals open.
If basically your body work is done, you can run around with primer on it. Though, I wouldn’t leave a primer for more than three months. If you leave a primer for six months to a year, I highly recommend going over the whole thing again.
Make sure to wash it down good and block sand the whole car and check that you don’t have new rock chips and areas that need to be retouched up with primer.
I will continue with the Q&A on my next video. It’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint. If you’re new to my videos, please Like, Share and Subscribe.
Don’t forget to check out LearnAutoBodyAndPaint and grab your FREE 85-Page Auto Body Manual to learn more about DIY auto body work.
You’ll get a lot of information on how to tackle your car projects. You’ll find it very useful no matter what level of experience you’re at or what age you are.
If you’re looking into higher education, go check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP course. You’ll also get to interact with other VIPs from all over the world through the private forums and private Facebook page.
I hope you liked my video. I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!
-Tony
Other Helpful Links:
Jot Down Your Auto Body and Paint Questions Here for the next round of videos!
How To Paint a Car – Spray Gun PSI Settings and More!
How To Fix Automotive Paint Reactions – Paint Biting Causes and Solutions
When it comes to auto repairs, I think I would feel more secure if spot welding was used instead of glue. Using glue sounds pretty cool since it doesn’t take a lot of time. Maybe it’s me being skeptical but even it takes longer I think I’d prefer welding.
Everyone has their choice of repair method. I would also prefer spot welding for a more secure and stronger repair.
Good to know that it’s very tough to get dents out of flimsy roofs. My car got hit by a pretty bad hail storm. Probably will need to get body work done on it.
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