Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Painting the Exterior

Painting the Exterior

Once you have a panel stripped down to bare metal, primer it with a rattle can. Start with the roof in four quadrants and after four small sessions you will be done. The roof is not so noticeable, unless you have a friend with a helicopter, and it is a good area to start with.

Once you have it cleaned and primered, decide what color your want to paint it and go to the hardware store and buy the color of choice in a can of Rust-oleum, and those soft white sponge rollers. Pour some paint into a separate clean container and mix in a little mineral spirits. The paint will be of a creamy texture and you want to get it thinned with mineral spirits to make it a bit more soupy. Not watery mind you, but more spreadable. Say a third way between creamy and watery. Make sure the surface is wiped clean and begin rolling it on. When you finish let it dry. When you paint in a driveway or a garage be aware that dust is your greatest enemy. Ideally a dry, no humid evening when the wind settles down before sunset is the best time. The less dust and bugs that settle on the wet paint, the better.

You start on the top and work down because as the saying goes “S…” travels down hill. It is easy to drip and have runs on the surfaces below so start at the top. If it dries and you don’t like it take some fine emery cloth and water, smooth it out and try over. After each coat do this anyway until you have 3 or four coats built up and then move on to the next panel.

The resulting finish won’t win an exotic car show contest but an observer will have to look closely and still won’t know it was rolled instead of sprayed. The improvement will be amazingly good.

As you proceed along you will come to rusted out parts and that is what I will talk about tomorrow. Just primer around them and we will fix those before painting.