Any Tips On Painting The Tub

I am getting ready to paint the cj. I waiting on parts to come in fender, windshield frame. Then going to try to paint the jeep. I have spot welds that I am going to fill with bondo. Any and all tips will be great thanks!

 

Reproduction tub? If so I wouldn’t fill the spot welds until I used epoxy primer. Prep is 99 percent of the finish. Don’t use any 1k paint or primer.

 

Prep work is the most important thing to a good paint job

 

Howard,
No experience in painting cars. Unless the raddle can is experience I do not have a gun and not slot of money.
Sterclan,
What is 1k paint or primer?

 

I suggest you get this book and read it all. That would be a good start. How to Paint Your Car on a Budget (Cartech): Pat Ganahl: 9781932494228: Amazon.com: Books

Lots of great help on the autobody101 site. Learn how to paint your own car!

 

anything that air dries ie lacquer based paint. or a spray can. 2 k means it has an activator or hardener. Tim has a good point that site and book are a great starting point, and like Howard said practice makes perfect.

 

Thank you! I will

 

Body prep is very important, what ever is not sanded down smooth, will show in the finel stage.

 

prep is THE key to a good finish.

 

Regarding prep, I would note that the factory finish on Jeeps in the '70s was nowhere near the smoothness that you see on hot rods and exotic cars today. Even your most inexpensive cars today have vastly better fit and finish than Jeeps had in those days. For CJs, Jeep would spot weld together the new steel bodies from their stampings, apply the e-coat primer (electrophoretic coating - I'm sure by the '70s that's what they were using) by dunking the parts in the e-coat bath, spray the single-stage top coat and bake.

Some bodies got seam sealer, but I'm pretty sure no extra filling and smoothing or filler coats were applied. Skimming and blocking to fill spot welds, for instance, was never done. So if you do a lot of skimming and blocking to smooth out the minor flaws, you are doing way more than Jeep did before delivering these vehicles.

Plus, colors in the day were not as shiny as the routine base coat / clear coat used on modern cars. The cars looked good and shiny, but they did not have the gloss and depth of modern finishes. If you want a factory finish, I suspect the closest will be single stage acrylic enamel. No urethane, not BC/CC.

For service work, you don't have the ovens that Toledo has to bake the paint. Instead you depend on catalyzed finishes with two components - 2K - paint and hardener to give you a durable coating without baking. Before they react with the paint, these catalysts are terribly poisonous (cyanide based) and proper PPE is a must. You have been warned.

The point of all this - I think when Jeff says PREP he means getting the surface properly prepared to accept the paint, getting a good bond between the body surface and whatever primers and top coat you use, and selecting methods and materials that will bond properly to the substrate and be durable as well as attractive. All the filling and blocking that the hot rod guys do in search of that perfect mirror finish is only cosmetic, and there is a lot more to prep than that.

 

ok the spot welds are fine. I am sorry to ask but what is PPE? I've been doing a lot of reading, and I do not have to tape the door etc. because I have none of that on the jeep. Just the tube, fenders, roll bar, hood to paint. Plus the little things like the windshield hinges and any other stuff like that.
Thank you all for the insight.

 

Even when using an enamel I would use activator the finish will last way longer.

 

Yeah ... I found the "American Hot Rod" series about the Boyd Coddington garage in La Habra CA very interesting. American Hot Rod - Wikipedia

The body guy Greg Morrell was great, but he mixed up body filler and skim coated every panel, then blocked them down to perfectly smooth. He owned a beautiful shoebox Ford woody wagon that was - what else - gloss black. Nothing shows waves in the body work more than black. Obviously it was a rolling advertisement for his skill at getting all the panels perfectly flat. Apparently he works for Chip Foose now.

I am enjoying driving my Cherokee, but I would have been happier if I'd paid a little less because of a few dents. It's a Jeep, after all.

 

I am currently working on a square nose chevy going black single stage urethane i am 80 plus hours into making it flat and smooth, three applications of primer with blocking between each application,one sealer and paint followed by more blocking(bad paint application,complete with giant runs) and it sits now waiting for the final paint to go on tomorrow afternoon. I guess what im saying is even with years o practice it still goes bad sometimes,when and if it does just take a break and go back at it.

 

I guess you can always sand it down and start over. All it costs is materials and your time.