In
this article we will Spray a Pantera with Auto Air water based paint. Auto air
provides a very wide range of colors. They have base coat sealers, base coats,
semi opaque, transparent, fluorescent, pearlized, metallic, iridescent, color
shifting sparkle and candy colors. If you want to do special effects this
paint provides endless options. You can spray a panel, force it to flash off
with a hair dryer, re-tape it and re-spray it in less than five minutes. Auto
air paint is shot without reduction and requires approximately 5 quarts to
complete the Pantera. Additionally, one quart of transparent clear is
required. The polyurethane clear top coat is reduced and catalyzed to the
manufacturers specifications.
See
www.autoaircolors.com
for more information on paint.
The
paint is allegedly non toxic. You can spray with a dust mask or a respirator.
I use a NIOSH approved cartridge respirator for this stuff. If your car
requires paint only with no body work or other repairs it is possible to just
mask off the car and paint over the existing paint after sealing it.
The subject Pantera was a low mileage car with stock green paint in poor
condition. It was the Fr. Bill Slikas car that was featured on Autoweek. There
was rear flare damage and numerous areas requiring attention. There were
numerous areas with bubbling under the paint. There was pre-existing minor
body work which required removal to get to metal. We will paint this Pantera
with Auto Air Color Flair blue / copper color shifting paint. As you walk
around the car the color of the car changes depending upon the viewing angle.
As this car requires a lot of work we will do a full disassembly & strip
to bare metal.
Disassembly:
The first thing to do is to take out the battery. Remove the bumpers,
mounts, all side lights, pull all the glass, headlight buckets, doors,
hood and trunk lid, emblems, etc. This is a good time to strip down the
doors, pull the trim strip, replace the cat whiskers and rebuild the door
lift mechanisms.
Strip:
Mask the car. Strip the body and all the metal extremities to be painted
with aircraft stripper. It is real nasty stuff. You must have good
ventilation or you could die. Wear eye protection and a respirator. You
will need chemical resistant gloves. Keep paper towels and water near by.
If you get it on you, get it off quickly or it will burn you. Pour the
stripper on the metal and spread it with a brush. As it bubbles and lifts
the paint, use a flexible scraper to take it off. Use care doing this as
you do not want to scratch the metal. Repeat this process until you are
down to bare metal. Re-mask the car.
Clean:
Get lots of big spontex scrubby pads at the Home Depot. When you are down
to metal, use windex or equiv. with the scrubby pads to clean the metal
off. Wipe it down quickly as we do not want to encourage flash rust. When
the metal is relatively clean, spray it with 90% alcohol. Hit it with the
scrubby until when you wipe it down the paper towels are clean. Remask the
car.
Power
sand: all the metal to 400 grit with a da sander. Use some metal cleaner
now such as prep-sol. Pre, acryli-clean etc. and clean the panels until the
paper towels are clean when you wipe the panels off. At this stage of the
game you can still use paper towels but later you will need to use lint
free towels. Re-mask the car.
Repairs:
to get into all the repair techniques is beyond the scope of this article.
This car required us to make a patch panel on an English wheel for the
rear flair and tig weld it in.
We removed cracked lead in many areas and re-soldered it using no lead
solder. There were numerous small dents which were PDR’d, as well as
conventional panel smoothing using a hammer & dolly. For reference,
Solder is non structural with a tensile strength of < 3kpsi. No lead
body solder is over 9kpsi, fiberglass filler is approximately 10Kpsi,
reinforced long strand glass is appx. 25kpsi. Where filler was required,
Evercoat Fiber Tech was used. It is a reinforced fiberglass filler
formulated with Kevlar and other high tech fibers. Evercoat metal glaze
was used over all filled areas for blending.
Prime:
Evercoat slick sand was used to prime the entire car. It is a very high
build catalyzed polyester primer that is applied without etching the
metal. Four wet coats are applied using a high solids primer gun such as a
Devilbiss FLG-3 with a 2.2 nozzle @ 40 PSI.
Block
sand: 3M Dry guide coat was used to coat the entire panel as it gives
superior contrast. Adjustable flexible long board sanders from Eastwood
were used to block out the car. First cut was made using 220 grit paper
working to 600 grit using an X pattern. After block sanding, the car was
blown off, cleaned and remasked, four more coats of Slick sand were
applied and the car was block sanded again. Blow off, clean and remask the
car.
Clean:
Blow off the car with high
pressure. Blow everywhere. Then blow it off again. When you are done, blow
it off again. Re-mask the car and blow it off again. Tack cloth the car.
Base
coat: Spraying the Auto Air paint is not like spraying lacquer or enamel.
It is sprayed on near dry/light wet and very quickly. Use a good gun like
a Devilbiss GFG plus,(DP) with a 1.2 nozzle @ 40 psi. For a jam gun I used
an Astro Star with a .8 nozzle, this gun is a Sata Mini Jet clone.
Multiple coats are applied to get full coverage. Five coats of semi opaque
black are applied as a base coat.
Color
coats: I sprayed on 5 color coats using the DP gun
with the 1.2 nozzle @ 40 psi. For the jam gun use as above with the .8
nozzle. I then sprayed three coats of auto air transparent clear over it
to lock it down and make it more level. As this paint is very porous, the
transparent clear helps to even it out. Re-mask the car, blow off and tack
off.
Clear
Coat: This is the toxic and
explosive part. Failure to heed the
manufacturers directions here may result in death and destruction of
property. I don the full space suit with forced air respirator with the
explosion proof exhauster @ full blast. For clear coating I used the House
of Kolor UC35 catalyzed polyurethane clear with a touch of fish eye
eliminator just in case. Use the DP gun with a 1.3 nozzle
@ ~ 42PSI at the gun. The key to success in clear coating is to
first lay on two dust coats allowing 10 minutes between coats to provide a
tack base for the clear. If you do not do this it will probably run. I
sprayed on four wet coats which is one more than the spec calls for. The
next day I power DA sand with 2000 grit, vacuum, blow off, re-mask, blow
off tack off and re-spray three more wet coats.
Spray
strategy: When spraying make sure you have a spray strategy and stick to
it for every coat. For example: right roof, left roof, left
rear, jambs,
rocker, right rear, jambs, rocker, cowl,
right fender, l
fender, or whatever
works for you.
Pressures:
Try to follow the manufacturers suggestions. My numbers are adjusted for
my temperature, humidity, phase of the moon etc. Your requirements may
vary.
Reassemble:
Install the glass, put the hood and rear lid on, put the doors on, put it
all back together.
Buff:
I did not buff this car out. The clear did pick up some lint. If you
desire to buff, power da sand with 2000 or 3000 grit and buff it out.
The finished car is as seen in these
images:
