Paint is DONE!!

[Miasma]

My car is a 97 mitsubishi eclipse that I have had for almost 2 years now, and since I first got it the body was plain and in rough shape. So I always planned on painted it once the body work was finished. Over the long weekend I finally was able to paint my car. I have been working on building my engine as well, so to move my car I needed a trailer. After I got the car to the destination I built a make shift paint booth with poly film, and box fan, and some filters.

I used a 12.5 cfm 120 gallon compressor and an hvlp gun to the job. I spent about a year perfecting the body work the best that I could. I have a blitz rear bumper and side skirts which have been molded into the car with lots of fiberglass and bondo. I used the fiberglass layers to ensure strength and that no cracking would appear. Being that I was never a trained auto body tech, I spent many hours fixing mistakes and learning as much as possible.

I used a two part urethane base coat with is a black metallic paint, consisting of different blue, yellow, red, and green pearls. And then I bought a red pearl powder and mixed into my first stages of clear coat to create my top coat layer. Then finished it with clear coat. I used 3 layers of base, 2 layers of top coat, and 3 layers of clear coat.

Now I've got to finish wetsanding and buffing the car, which I expect will take me about 3 days to finish off and on.

This is the first start to finish car I have ever painted before, spraying the jams and engine bay. I'm very happy with the out come and hope everyone likes how it turned out.

This is what it used to look like...

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I call the color a candy black cherry...

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Can't wait to finally be able to drive her, but still have lots of work to do.

 

[Purple_Demon]

That paint is epic. Get a nice bright sun shot of it'

 

[CanadianTalonTC]

What do you got going on there for your makeshift paint booth?

Going to be doing my car this winter and I'm intrigued.

Joel

 

[Twinturbo120]

Wow, that is one badass color, nice work dude.

 

[Miasma]

It's really hard to get a good picture with my shitty camera , but will try. It looks really good irl.

I used a/c filters for the paint booth. Taped them to the sides and cut them out. Then I installed in box fan the same way on the opposite side of the booth. That way when it was on it pulled clean in air and out for circulation. Make sure to filter both sides of the fan if you do it this way though, or you will be sucking all the over spray into the atmosphere and everything near by.

Thanks for compliments!!

 

[Dnf]

Well isn't that a nice paint job. Thumbs up.

 

[mitsu90]

Thats defiantly different.

 

[deylag]

Wow that is a cool color. It really pops in the sunlight. Mad props to you for painting the car that well in a makeshift paint booth.

 

[Miasma]

I have a couple small spots with orange peel that I need to wetsand and buff out. Just got a new buffer for the job.

 

[Bud92gsx]

Ohhh sparkles.

I like it tho.

 

[Funfettie]

Now thats inspiration right there! I have been thinking about how to repaint my 2g and this gave me tons of great ideas! very cool paint as well!

More questions! What compressor did you use? spray gun type? anymore information you can elaborate on?

 

[Miasma]

Both the gun and compressor belonged to my dad who lives in edmonton, which is why I hauled the car there and setup my booth.

I can not remember the brand of his compressor, just that it was a 5 hp 12.5 cfm 120 gallon comressor. We set the psi at 33psi coming out of the compressor which gave us about 22psi at the gun and 12psi at the nozzle of the sprayer.

The gun was a blue point hvlp paint gun. It wasn't one of the super high end ones that are available but it did the job well for me. I had to use the same spray nozzle for base, pearl, and clear coat because the other one we had leaked.

As for adjusting your setting, I sprayed from 6" to the surface with about a 8" fan on the sprayer. It took me a little while to get the paint to spray correctly, but that depends on the user and the type of gun used. I'm sure any type of gravity feed hvlp gun work. Make sure that your compressor produces atleast 8.5 cfm.

 

[1greyawdtsi]

Nice man!

 

[Zmoney8907]

Where did you get the sheets of plastic for the booth?

 

[Marchev]

Love the color! And the home made booth! Nice job

 

[Miasma]

I went to home depot for my fan ac filters and the poly film. I used a heavy poly film that was 102" (8' 4") wide by 59' long. It gave me enough room to make my booth 20'x9'. More room would have been preferred, but I had to work with my surroundings.

Most important thing to keep in mind is airflow, the reason I wound up with some orange peel is because my fan filter clogged so some of the clear coat over spray landed on the car. If I had noticed this before hand, there would be very minimal peel to fix.

 

[jayson427]

Nice job man I'm way stoked to see the motor build, mounts and part combo your going with. You definitely have thought outside the box with a 3gen 2.4l bottom and evo head? (I think anyways) Either way bad ass dude! And my car has seen a uhaul trailer many times in 4 years . How much was the cost to do all of your paint with materials? I paid 2600 for my paint/body work job with house of color paints at a friends shop.

 

[boost97gst]

Thats some nice paint bro. Retro sytle with the flake in it. Amazing color and finish.

 

[Miasma]

Nice job man I'm way stoked to see the motor build, mounts and part combo your going with. You definitely have thought outside the box with a 3gen 2.4l bottom and evo head? (I think anyways) Either way bad ass dude! And my car has seen a uhaul trailer many times in 4 years . How much was the cost to do all of your paint with materials? I paid 2600 for my paint/body work job with house of color paints at a friends shop.

Yep that's the plan. I just got my cylinder head last week with cosworth springs and cams. Can't wait to get going on all of it. Going to take sometime though. I just started school again this year, so back to working on a budget haha.

I did all the body work myself but in total the cost of body repair would probably be a few hundred bucks.

The paint cost me about $550, for everything.

After considering the cost of paint, body work, and supplies. It's probably about $1200 bucks.

The trailer cost me $96 dollars there, and $83 dollars back.

In the end I saved myself a huge amount. The local paint shops in my area wanted about $5000 for this paint job. Because of all the in between stages of sanding for the pearl.

Paint took me about 20hrs to finish, including time to build my make shift booth.

Jayson427
I finally posted a build thread, I still have lots to do but it's a good start as to what has been done.

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/dsm-build-journals/469504-97-eclipse-evo-creation.html

 

[BossGreen]

That paint looks amazing! Good job, I plan to paint my 2g soon. I'm planning to do it myself and paint it green like the newer camaros. Again, looks great!

 

[rnitto]

Wow amazing job, wanna see more pics! You feel like you have a new car now