Hot Rod Restoration: Spraying Primer

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Joel Jones, I own Jonesy's Inc., a company that specializes in auto restoration and customization. O.k., we're in the booth, I've got my gun loaded with paint and now we're ready to get the gun set up and then actually spray some primer. So, the first thing you're' going to need to do when you actually get your gun set up, is you're going to need plug the compressed air into it, pull the trigger down so that the air flows but the paint doesn't and then adjust your air pressure regulator to the manufacturers' specification. For this gun, this inlet pressure needs to be 23 to 24 PSI. So we're going to have the needle come up and then we'll get that adjusted. The next adjustment that you're going to need to do is the actual paint flow, and that's this knob right here. To start out with, you push this all the way in, you turn it all the way in, and when you pull the trigger you can't pull back, and so as you rotate this out you'll be able to regulate the flow of paint that goes from the cup out the gun. So you set this back to where you get a nice, wet pattern and then the knob that's right above it, controls the actual fan. If you turn it all the way in, all of the paint will come out of the gun and be a little dot, and you want to adjust that, rotate that out so you're going to get a nice fan pattern that's about six to eight inches wide. Once you have that and it lays down nice and evenly, you want to spray a test panel right on this piece of masking paper on the side of the booth, to do two things. It cleans out the gun so that the gun doesn't have anything but fresh, quality paint in it, so all the solvents will get flushed out of the gun, and then it will also get you ready so that you know how much paint is flowing out and how much you're going to be laying on the vehicle. Once you have your gun set up you're going to back up and you want to start at the back of the booth. The air flow in this particular booth comes from the back of the car out the exhaust in the front of the car. So you want to start painting from the back so the over spray is carried over the car and then out and not over spray going into your new, fresh, wet paint. So you're going to start by running your spray gun across the back and then what you want to do is you want to start on one side and do one section at a time, starting from the bottom and carrying up. So you're going to start and you're going to be spraying your paint from here going all the way up with about a 50% overlap. So what that means is, if I put the gun like this and I spray and I try and keep it about six inches away from the panel, my next pass I want to have 50% overlap, and when I actually spray this, you'll see a nice, wet patch of paint going right through here and then another nice, wet patch of paint going right through there and you want to warp across the panel. Once you get to the middle of the panel, you want to go to the other side of the vehicle and pick up that wet and then carry wet paint across the panel to the other side. So I'll come around here in the booth and then immediately pick up that wet edge, and then continue to the paint across the top of the trunk over onto this and down. Once you do that, you're going to want to leapfrog back to the other side of the car and again, starting low, you're going to want to paint this quarter section up to about here. Once you get up to about here, you're going to want to get a couple of steps, something so you can get up and have nice perspective and you're going to want to carry that wet, that wet edge all the way across the roof of the car. You're going to come back around the other side of the car, pick up that wet edge, that's going to be right here in the middle and carry it across all the way down to here. Once you've gotten it back all the way down to here, you go back over to the other side of the car, paint the passengers' door. Once you've painted the passengers' door, you come over here and you paint the, the drivers' door, and you alternate back and forth and then again, the front, the hood, all of that gets painted in the exact same manner as we did the trunk. You start at the bottom, you work your way up to the middle of the panel, and then you go to the other side of the car, pick up that wet paint edge and carry it across to the other side of the car."