Luke Bethman
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I have had pretty good luck with Lesonal base on that color. Eventually when that color gets a bit older I’m sure it will be harder to match. I remember getting a swarm of Toyota 4M9 that had seen just the right amount of sun that made tinting mandatory. Usually have cut out half the red and then done spray outs. I do enjoy reading that code out of a door job. good for a lol
yeah that looks really nice! good job!
agreed, clearing the whole bumper will be ideal. a heat gun (and wet rag or water bottle) should help heat shrink and get the bumper cover back to a shape that should need less filler
i would think that having experience in the shop would help with writing estimates. some advice might be just making sure to write thorough estimates that you would want to work off if you were flat rate, that will keep the guys in the shop happy and allow the shop to make some money as well. other than that i would say that trying to explain things to the customer in a way that they will understand. that seems to be the biggest comment i get from jobs that i do land is that we explained things in a way that made them feel like a bigger part in the repair process. hope that helps some..
who would have thought? was browsing thru amazon and found 3m platinum plus filler for 36.00 a “gallon” with subscribe and save. between 8-15$ cheaper than local distributors. i did get charged tax which shouldnt be the case but still less money for a good product.
one thing i could add is that we’ve been using dupont sontara drop cloths for masking off for primer instead of using 36″ paper. we only have to do light masking with 6″ paper and can reuse the drop cloths. heck i think we’ve had them for over a year now.
only place i could really find to post this.. got a gallon of lesonal glamour clear way back when i got my lesonal bank and used it on a restoration. recently wanted to try and get a slower drying clear for larger jobs and got another gallon of glamour. all i gotta say is it looks great
i haven’t been able to see the long term results yet but akzo apparently dropped their etch primers and have gone to the pretreatment wipes for all bare metal etching. seems pretty nice although i can see how spraying might be easier in many cases especially in tight or where there are lots of stampings in metal. if not though, there is still PPG DP although I think you can get it in a low voc formula now.
http://www.globalsafetynet.com/akzonobel/pdfs/akzo_369_english.pdf
my first paint booth i built was made of the heavy silver tarps and i attached the shop lighting to the tarps and hung them down from the ceiling. i also had 3-4 box fans set at medium speed at one end of the booth up in the ceiling facing down towards the ground and put the tacky 20×20 filters on them. at the other end i had 2 box fans at high speed with regular furnace filters on them for exhaust. it wasn’t ideal but i did paint quite a few cars there with decent results. i have realized that after having a completely framed in booth with seals, doors, etc, it seems it takes a lot lot less time to prep the booth for a paint job. seemed like before it was sweep, blow down the tarp walls, hose down the place, blow it down again, hose down again just to get a decent job. having a clean workspace is critical for getting clean paint jobs and even in my downdraft booth at work i can slack on that and get dust. the 2nd booth i have at my personal shop i built with a squirrel fan intake at the ceiling and a large fan ducted down to suck from the low part of the floor all along the other booth edge. it is framed in with plywood and quad-fold doors. it was probably 2000 worth of materials and lighting but definitely not portable. i did do some work out of a small shop for a couple years and made 2×2 walls that were hinged at the ceiling with plastic sheeting and i would winch them up when i wasn’t painting. that might be a good bet to try since it didn’t take much time to disassemble the booth between paint jobs
i’ve been using “cheater” valve style air regulators for years without problem. I have a diaphragm regulator on the wall that is set about 20psi lower than the shop air to allow even pressure when the shop air fluctuates. i like the digital gauge that came with my tekna and am going to get one for my sata rp.
I would recommend lesonal as a mid level option (its what i use all day at work and like it) or limco as a more budget option. I’ve been really impressed with that line the couple of times I’ve used it. The Lesonal formula for that green is not a 3 stage so that should make spraying it a bit easier.. Good luck!
glad to hear about the preference of platinum over the plus. we’ve been using upol gold for a while, before that we used the keystone platinum plus which both were decent. i liked how the keystone spread on but didn’t sand so well initially and the upol seemed to build well and sand pretty well. i only tried one gallon of fantasik and didn’t like it at all. the last few gallons have been the platinum plus and i gotta say its much better in all areas. if the regular platinum is even nicer then i’ll be really happy. as far as glazes go i’ve been using dolphin for the past 4-5yrs with good success. recently tried some platinum plus glaze and it seems to be pretty good too, it has a thicker build than dolphin so we’ll probably keep both around depending on the job. i like how dolphin flows out. also for fiberglass and thicker fills i’ve been using upol fibral lite and have been very pleased. what are you guys using for fiberglass filler?
sprayed autobase plus for a few years also and had trouble with blending as well. seemed to cover too good and made blending really hard on difficult colors. i would try to spray down the blend panel with blend add and let it flash and then put a coat of paint down and blend it out. that and mixing rts base 50/50 with blend add and trying to blend it then. i guess you could get a halo from that but worth a shot. one other painter said he would blend add the panel and blend into it with base while the blend add was wet. that was with a sata rp 2 w/ 1.3 tip. i would also think slower reducer and lowering pressure on the blend coat might help too
The SATA 100 rp 2.0 tip is a great primer gun. I tested the 100 hvlp with a 1.7 but seemed to use a lot of air and was slow. The rp version puts primer down smooth and fast. I still have my old klc-p with a 2.5 that thing is a hose, love that gun too. But try the 100 rp it rocks
Not sure if this will help but sometimes I’ll look up formulas online or try to get new variants
http://www.qnetonline.nl/SIKNA/SearchForm/SearchMethod