Need advice

Lit549 said:
Man your on the money, i dont like the 6:1 as its too flat. I went with that as it says its "most popular". At this point i am probably sending the car to a painter, im tired of fighting it!
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When I was painting my first complete, which is the 67 Mustang I have now, it was a disaster. Easily one of the most stressful times of my life. Among the highlights of things that went wrong during the process:

  1. Squatting down to paint side of the car, my ass hit one of my fluorescent lights mounted low on the wall, and shattered it. Not only did it scare the shit out of me but I couldn't stop painting because I couldn't have a dry edge, so I lost my light on that side and had to walk/crunch through broken glass.
  2. My paint gun fell off the gun stand in the booth while full of expensive ass basecoat, and went everywhere.
  3. I was having bad moisture problems and getting water spots visible in the basecoat.
  4. Moisture problems resulted in a recommendation to add a desiccant snake to end of my line, but the desiccant was coming out of the snake and plugging up my gun.
  5. I was getting horrendous tiger striping in the base coat.
  6. Sweat was dripping out of my glove and onto the basecoat in two spots.
  7. My gun was not up to the task so a borrowed gun was sent to me.
In one of my numerous calls of despair to Barry, I lamented that I was so frustrated I was ready to throw in the towel and take it into Dutchboys in town to have them finish it. I was over it. I know Barry well, but during this particular convo he said something I'll never for got...."If I had quit every time something wasn't going right I wouldn't have what I have today, so get back in there and finish the ******* job!"

Suffice to say, I ran back into the booth, tail between legs, and finished the job. And it came out beautiful. Barry told me all the tricks over the phone to fix it, they worked marvelously, and that experience made me such a better painter because of all the problems I had. They were learning experiences. I swore I would never paint again and ever since then, I paint a lot. I feel most comfortable in my own skin painting now because of these past nightmares.

That paint job, by the way, when the car was in the interior shop getting the headliner installed, they were marveling over the paint job and asked who did it, saying it was 'by far the cleanest paint job we've ever seen on a car come through here.' I was beaming with pride when I said I did it, and then they asked if I did this for a living or something, which made me beam with even more pride to get to say no, I'm just masochistic.

All that to say, your epoxy looks really good, so get back in there and finish the ******* job.
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the harbor freight dryer comes on sale pretty regular. works really well especially for the diy in the garage. remember those snakes get loaded up pretty quick.
 
Typically you want desiccant to be close to the end of the line, so the water has opportunity to condense out of the air.
Best practice is to have a long length of pipe between the compressor and hose, and have the desiccant at the end of the pipe.
 
Almost all filter companies say any filter must be at least 15 pipe lengths from the compressor.
At home, my dad500 is 3 feet through the wall to the compressor, but off the compressor, I have around 50 or so feet of copper tubing rolled up hanging on the wall outside.
 
my plan was to put my compressor just up the hill from my shop. run the supply line a couple of feet underground to the shop then into a trap . time got away from me so i bought a dryer.
 
Lizer said:
I really hated the snake. Was very bulky and very heavy, not maneuverable.
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I installed mine at the wall so no weight to lug around. I stopped using them once I installed my Harbor Freight dryer. Never looked back after that. :)

Don
 
Barry said:
Almost all filter companies say any filter must be at least 15 pipe lengths from the compressor.
At home, my dad500 is 3 feet through the wall to the compressor, but off the compressor, I have around 50 or so feet of copper tubing rolled up hanging on the wall outside.
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Check out my compressor modification in the tool forum. It has been a game changer. It cools the air from the pump before it even hits the tank and removes a lot of water.
 
Barry said:
Almost all filter companies say any filter must be at least 15 pipe lengths from the compressor.
At home, my dad500 is 3 feet through the wall to the compressor, but off the compressor, I have around 50 or so feet of copper tubing rolled up hanging on the wall outside.
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Just a roll of soft copper? What diameter? I’ve kicked this idea around a bit just out of simplicity and space savings. You have a drop right after to drain moisture?
 
Whitesnake said:
Just a roll of soft copper? What diameter? I’ve kicked this idea around a bit just out of simplicity and space savings. You have a drop right after to drain moisture?
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It's 1/2 inch dia.
Bought at home depot comes in a roll-in box, bought it around 22 years ago; buying copper now it might be cheaper just to buy a house??

Copper hook right to tank and hand-rolled maybe 2 to 3 feet dia hanging on garage then goes in the garage to a 1" x 2 ' drop pipe.
 
Barry said:
It's 1/2 inch dia.
Bought at home depot comes in a roll-in box, bought it around 22 years ago; buying copper now it might be cheaper just to buy a house??

Copper hook right to tank and hand-rolled maybe 2 to 3 feet dia hanging on garage then goes in the garage to a 1" x 2 ' drop pipe.
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Pretty much what I had in mind instead of soldering up a manifold up down up down up down etc with ball valves at the end of every drop. Figured if I just hung a roll of copper everyone would get there panties in a bunch saying the water is gonna sit in the low spots of the roll lol. But I like the simplicity, and very fast to install!
 
Toolin said:
Nice paint! Just what is a desiccant snake?
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It’s an air hose with desiccant inside it. They’re about 3’ long if I recall. It screws on to your line air line and dries the air as it goes through the snake. Very heavy and bulky and not a good way to tell if the desiccant is used up.
 
25 years ago when my built the shop I ran 1" black iron pipe through the attic across the shop that sloped uphill and then down a drop with a drain at the bottom. I tapped off the side of that for a separator. In the winter that didn't work at all. All the cold pipe condensed massive amounts of water. So I had to rethink this. What I came up with in the picture is running 1" copper from the tank up to the ceiling then downhill to 2 separate drops with drains one is for the hose reel and the other for a filtered separator. I don't get any water in the drops or the separator. Since then I added an aftercooler to the compressor because when I was media blasting outdoors I was seeing some water because that bypassed the in shop system.

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