THINGS YOU REQUIRE:
Air compressor.
Don't worry about having a big tank, I have a 40L electric compressor that cost me $150 from bunnings. You don't need a big compressor for small work you'll be doing at home. I could easily paint half an mx5 with this compressor so you do not need a big one.
Spray guns.
I suggest buying two spray guns, a primer/high fill gun and a gun for your colour and your clear coats, cleaning primer guns takes forever and you never really get all the primer out so it's best to have two! Do not go out and buy the most expensive, awesome gun!
Go to autobarn/super cheap and pick up two $30 guns for your first attempt, you won't notice the difference between a bad gun and a good gun your first few jobs! If you enjoy painting and want to up your game you can buy a good mid range gun like my first gun (devilbiss gti pro) for about 400-500 brand new or less if you shop around. You can pick them up used on ebay for 200ish, they're more than satisfactory for backyarder jobs.
Wax/grease remover.
pretty self explanatory, use it to clean any dirt and grit of your panel.
paint/primer/thinner/hardener.
Your local paint shop will take care of you in this department. You have two real options here, acrylic and two pack.I prefer two pack but it might be best to start with acrylic, especially if you don't intend on buying an air fed respirator or renting out a spray booth.
Sandpaper.
Generally stick to wet/dry paper, for panel work you'll only need gritts in the range of 180 up to 1000 so that's. 180/240/320/400/600/800/1000
Scotchbrite pads.
These come in handy for dulling down clear coat buy the grey one, the red/purple one is a tad to strong.
A decent orbital sander:
Mine cost me 80 bucks from supercheap, it's powered by the air compressor and is speed adjustable. It has a 150mm pad and does a fantastic job for the money. Electric ones can be pretty nasty.
Sanding block.
If you want your repair to be flat and nice, buy one.
safety gear:
Go out and buy yourself a decent respirator, especially if your using two pack. Two pack paints have isocyanates in them. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS IN YOUR BODY.
Good weather!
Ideal painting temps for backyarders are anywhere betwen 20 degrees to 25 degrees! it's cold enough for the paint not to react to the heat but warm enough to allow the paint to dry adequately before the next coat! As far as backyard spray booths go, well I've never done a whole car in my backyard. However if you want to have a crack and have a garage or a car port wash it down with water then go and buy some plastic sheeting and hang it from the roof around the car then just slice open a portion to use a door! That's how I'd do it anyway. A few fans would help with ventilation.
Note: If you can it's probably wise to hire everything before you go out and spend 500 bucks only to realise you hate painting.
STEP 1: PREPWORK
Suss out your repair and plan the job! cannot stress this enough! Don't start work on it until your confident you've worked out a plan of attack. The story goes he bought the bike with this dodgy patch work on the tank but now he is trying to sell it and nobody is stupid enough to do what he did and buy a bike with this on the tank. I didn't take a photo before I began to mask up the "hornet" sticker. Sorry.
We had NO idea what was under it but it had obviously been used as a patch. My first thought was there could be a hole or a leak after the previous owner had obviously dropped the bike so I wasn't about to take the patch off, I decided to work around it just to be safe.
I sanded down the edges with my orbital so you couldn't feel the height difference between the tank and the patch. I used 180 initially, then went to 240 then finally 400 feathering out onto the tank. I then grabbed the scotchbrite, dunked it into some water then rubbed the surrounding area to dull the old clear coat so it's ready for primer.
Now we've fixed the patches hard edge on the tank but it's still rough and not straight at all so I mixed up some body filler and placed some over the top of the patch then sanded it down flush with the panel using 240 gritt paper then 400 over the top so it was nice and smooth. When your learning you might need to reapply bog, it's very hard to get it perfectly flat after one application of filler, you can apply as much as you want it just takes more time waiting for the filler to set. When I first started I was using 3/4 applications of filler to get it just right so don't feel disheartened. Mask up the area you wish to prime like so. See how the masking tape has been folded over and re-taped? Do this to eliminate a hard edge effect when priming. It's a pain to remove this hard edge and will drive you insane, masking correctly is a lot easier, trust me.
Now grab some plastic or whatever else you have lying around, drape it over the tape get a razor blade/knife/scissors/fingers and cut/tear the plastic then tape it down over your tape like so. this eliminates over spray, you don't want primer everywhere, especially when we're not planning on repainting the entire tank.
STEP 2: PRIMING.
Finally, time for some trigger action! For your first coat just very lightly mist over the body filler, the idea with priming is you get heavier and heavier and move in an outwards direction. Your first coat should simply be a bonding layer that seals off the filler. You should be able to see through it.
four coats later it should look like this. Your fourth coat should be HEAVY it doesn't matter if you get runs or sags in the primer, you can sand them out the basic idea with priming is get a feel for painting and how it comes out the gun, enjoy yourself, every stuff up can be fixed in a primer coat, not so with colour and clear.
Straight after laying down your fourth coat unmask it, not fully but just pull up the tape edges, I got a little carried away and primed right up to masking creating that "hard edge" I was talking about before. If this happens to you simply grab some thinners on a rag and wipe over the edge, be very careful and precise when doing this but it will save you time later! it's worth doing even if you don't prime all the way to the edge as it will remove any primer that snuck under your masking.
Step 3: Final prep before paint.
I was using "primer filler" which is like a sort of spray on body filler that will seal the repair. This means now I have more sanding to do! Start out with 180 and try to get it as flat as possible then move to 200 working your way through the gritts (320-400) before finishing of with 600 lightly sanding down the edges of your filler and rubbing over onto the tank making sure it's perfectly smooth.
Congratulations your almost ready to paint! Because this is such a small panel my friend decided he wanted to me to paint fresh clear coat over the entire tank. I grabbed my scotch brite, dunked it in a bucket of water then went about softly rubbing over the entire tank, don't rub hard you will leave scratches in the original paint, just rub the scotch brite softly for 5-10 minutes over the panel then grab a rag dry up all the water and see if you can see a lot of reflections in the old clear. If you can't good work your ready to paint. If you can see a lot of reflections, keep rubbing. The trick here is to not over do it.
step 4: Painting.
The the easy bit! Panel repair and refinishing is 95% prep work, from here on gets easy. it might take you a few panels to get your technique down but after a few panels painting will be just as easy as changing your oil.
BBase coat:
On a repair like this your first coat should be much like your primer's first coat. Only cover the repair area and don't put it on heavy, this is simply a bonding sealer coat so do not over do it. Let it flash off and dry for about 5-20 minutes, a simple way to check if your ready for your next coat is dab it with your thumb in an area nobody will really notice, if you leave a little thumb print, it's not ready for it's second coat.
You should only need two coats of base coat for most colours but lighter colours like white and silver may require 4 or more to fully cover the repair.
The second coat should be a little heavier and as you get to the edge of your repair flick the gun towards the direction your traveling, the idea here is just spread some of the new paint around just in case the colour isn't perfect. Luckily for my case the match is dead on, but I still did this step anyway just to be safe. Base coat can lie to you, clear coat exposes all imperfections!
step 5: Clear coat
Home stretch now but if your going to stuff up, this will be where it will happen. Clear coat is unforgiving. However most clear coat errors can be fixed easily so don't worry to much! If you worry about making a mistake, you will make one. it's that simple.
First coat of clear:
Your first coat doesn't need to be perfect, it's a good time for you to learn what "dry spray" looks like. You can spot dry spray because well....it's spray....that looks dry. Clear coat you want to put on as wet as possible, it gives you that flat "wet" look detailers strive for. I'm sure you all know what I mean so try and get that look off the gun. the trick is knowing how fast to move your hand so you can apply the clear so it looks stupid wet, without the clear coat running or sagging all over your panel. If you get runs, don't worry, if you don't get runs first time out your going to end up with a lot of dry spray and orange peel. If you get a perfect flat, wet look job on your first attempt. Your way better than me and should consider spray painting as a career.
second coat of clear:
Wait about 5-10 minutes between clear coats, it doesn't dry like base coat so don't use the thumb print method I mentioned before, just do it by time. This coat you HAVE to eliminate ANY dry spray you put on with your first coat. Put your clear on slowly and be confident, overlap each stroke by 50% and make it look as wet as possible!
If it looks like this, congratulations your finished, wait about 24 hours for it to dry then throw the panel on the car/bike/spaceship then crack a beer and tell all your friends your a champion with a spray gun and that they should pay you to paint their stuff
If you got any runs or sags in your clear wait for it to dry then grab your 1000 gritt sandpaper and sand them out. When you have eliminated the runs polish the panel like you would normally polish your car. Most times you can get rid of runs and sags pretty easily, however if you sand through the clear coat and hit base coat you'll need to reapply a bit of colour then your clear coat. If your careful, you won't need to repaint or reclear anything
The trick to good backyard finishes is going overboard on the clear, id whack 3 coats of it on a full car simply because dust will get into it regardless of how well your backyard booth setup is so having another coat is just giving you more clear you can wet sand through to get out the dust before polishing it up! On a bonnet I did awhile ago a mozzie got stuck in the clear over night so I had to sand him out. Poor little guy.Hope this little introduction to spray painting/panel repair will help someone!
