You CAN Paint Your Car At Home – DIY Auto Body Mastery With Tony Bandalos

Hey, it’s Tony with another live stream. Today’s topic is You CAN Paint Your Car At Home – DIY Auto Body Mastery With Tony Bandalos.

Sorry about the technical difficulties earlier. Thank you for joining me today! Welcome! I just got back from a dinner meeting hence the suit. J How’s everybody doing tonight?

I’ve got a lot of people emailing and telling me that they’re interested in auto body work and are passionate about cars, but they don’t know how to start and are scared to start.

The common mistake of most people is thinking that they can’t do it. Of course you can! With the proper knowledge and guidance, then it’s not impossible!

It’s just a matter of how badly you want to start doing auto body work. If you really want to work on projects, then what’s stopping you? Why not go ahead with it? I suggest that you start small like mopeds, motorcycles or small cars.

I made a lamp from a tank given by my Japanese father-in-law a year and a half ago. I lost some of the videos so I’ll redo the project for you then upload some of the videos in YouTube and upload the complete series in the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP members area.

Let me show you a motorcycle tank that I have in the shop. Here’s a Harley Davidson motorcycle tank that I got off eBay. For an authentic motorcycle tank, I think I got this at a great deal of $85.

It has a small dent which is easy to pull out and shape. I’ll do some welding pins and pop the dent out, and bondo it. We’ll grind it down to metal and body work it.

Then, we’ll sand all of the area out because if we’re painting a different color, it will be hard to touch up around the paint here. It can be done however there are little scratches on the tank anyway.

We’ll put fresh paint on it but I’m not sure of the color yet. I’ll probably do some crazy color with pearls and flake. Maybe even do some flames on it or something cool.

We’re not going to put this back on the motorcycle. I’ll cut the fuel tip here and weld this top shut and make a desktop lamp out of it. It will look really cool. I did one before and I had people wanting to buy it but it was a gift from my father-in-law.

We’ll be doing some videos on that when I start working on it as soon as it gets warm, probably within the next month or about six weeks from now.

I’ll be flying a lot and will be busy in the coming days. I’ll be in the morning show in a couple of states. I don’t want to reveal everything right now. I’ll let you know soon.

Question: I just painted my 2003 Chevy Silverado SS to jet black. How long should I wait to buff in order to get real good shine? [14:22]

What kind of clear did you use? High solids or low solids? If it’s high solids, I would wait about a week. However, if you’ve painted with low solids, I would wait maybe 2 weeks. As long as you give it about a week or two to cure and set up, then you should fine with color sanding and buffing.

If you’re doing black, you can cut it with 2000-grit. You can even finalize it with 2500-grit or even 3000-grit if you want to put in the time, so you’ll have an easier time buffing.

It all depends, you can sand it and flow coat it the next day or two. But, I would give it a good 10 days.

Question: What is the best way to blend pearl colors especially white? [16:11]

The idea with blending is to trick the eye. If you’re painting a full door, you can blend into the quarter panel and into the front fender. If you’re painting the front fender, you can blend right into the door and end it. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Question: Any low cost paint recommendations? [17:45]

You can buy Dupont, Nason or Shopline. There’s a lot of other cheaper brands out there. Omni is pretty cheap as well.

I wouldn’t go that cheap on clears. I think it’s fine to buy cheap bases, but not with clear coats. If you can afford a $150 to $250 of clear, go with it because you’ll get good finishes.

If you’ll buy the $75 to $80 kits of clear, you’ll most likely get tinting in the clear. It will be a little yellowish. You’ll get a lot of dye back after 2 to 3 weeks.

The shine will shrink up and look dull. However, that can be fixed by color sanding and buffing.

Question: When you’re painting cars, do you replace the stickers like the ones on the door jambs, or do you just cover it? [19:26]

You could do whatever you want to do. If you have pinstriping or decals on it, you can sand them off and just paint over and put new decals on top of it. You can even salvage some of them.

Question: Do I have to use separate spray guns for base and clear or can I just change the tip size on the same gun? [20:21]

You can use the same gun for everything. The only time you will need a different tip size is when doing primers like thick 2K polyester primers. You need a 2.0 to 2.2 tip size for it. Then, a 1.4 tip size will be perfect for your base coat clear coat.

You can still shoot primers with a 1.4 tip size but you need to reduce your primer to 10 or 20% and make it a little thinner.

Question: What should the pressure be on both the gun and the compressor, if you’re using LVLP spray gun? [24:30]

I like the compressor to at least have 80 to 90 pounds coming out of the hose from the compressor. On my gun, I adjust it to about 26-28 psi. For clear coat, you can go a little higher at about 29-30 psi. I usually stay right below 30 psi.

Your LVLP spray gun should be set up basically the same way. It’s using lower volume. You may want to take a couple of pounds off and see how it’s sprays. I don’t spray with LVLP that much though. You can pressure down about 2-3 psi.

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I discuss all of these within the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Program so go check it out. If you’re a total newbie and want to start with a small project, grab your FREE 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual now and go for it!

It’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint. Join me again next Thursday at 9pm Eastern, invite your friends and family to join if you like! J

Don’t forget to Like, Share and Subscribe to my videos. Thank you everyone and I hope you enjoyed today’s show.

Talk soon! Cheers!

Tony

Other Helpful Links:

Secure Your LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Slot Now! 

How To Import Unique Cars and Sell for Profit Flipping Cars Made Easy!

Discover Auto Body Preperation Tactics

The Basics of Painting A Car From Home!

How To Paint Using (HVLP) High Volume Low Pressure Guns!

Live DIY Auto Body & Paint Talk (your questions answered) with Tony Bandalos