Whats a good basecoat to use nowadays.

Just to add to the excellent advice given, if you are doing the jambs and underhood, etc, it's going to be iffy that 1 gallon of color (unreduced) will do it all. Start with a gallon do all the jamb work and underhood work and see where you are. Don't do any of the exterior panels until you know you have enough color. If you do have to get more, get some extra quart and gallon cans (available at any paint jobber) and combine your original gallon with a the additional base. That way if there is a slight difference in shade between them you eliminate it by combining them.

And as Shine has said in the past it is a very good idea to break up your gallon into 4 quart cans. This helps eliminate the tendency for a color to change shade slightly from settling.

And like TK said above you are probably going to need 1 1/2 gallons, possibly slightly more or slightly less depending on the color. I've done several 65-66 Mustangs in the past and 1.5 gallons (unreduced) is about what it took.
 
Also to add to the excellent advice above, one advantage to getting more than you need is in case you have to redo something. Later on if something is scratched or dented you already have the paint that matches. I always get more than I think I'll need.
 
MJM said:
That is REALLY valuable information for a beginner. Thank you.
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you will remain a beginner until you learn what an actual coat is.

Me starting from the industrial side, one coat was 4 passes. If it was a tray full of 10 or 40 parts, it was still 4 passes, one in each direction, turn it, til you have gone over all 4 sides and edges. But you were done painting then.

So much is based on coats, Time between coats, how many coats, because if you consider one pass across the panel a coat, its not really covered first pass, which tends to have you put more on which should spread out the time between coats. Thats still something I cannot figure out. I always like criss crossing at least, a side to side, flip the pattern and to top to bottom early at least, but metallics, if you are spraying the same direction its easy to get tiger stripes.
 
On completes(that means jambs and all) I usually use up about 5qt's of base(unreduced). That includes the enginebay etc.
I paint cars in pieces though so I may use a tad more.

If you are painting the underside of the car then 2 gallons of base is a pretty safe bet. When I painted at a shop and did restos, I always ordered 2 gallons of base for the body color. Now thats a base that reduces 1:1 btw. Not all of them do, and some have really poor coverage like nason and shopline.

Motobase covers very well and reduces 1:1.
 
anotheridiot said:
I always like criss crossing at least, a side to side, flip the pattern and to top to bottom early at least, but metallics, if you are spraying the same direction its easy to get tiger stripes.
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If that works for you AI that's great but it is not advice I would give to a novice.
Striping in a metallic is much harder to do now with modern basecoats than it was years ago with SS enamels etc. With a quality gun and proper technique it is almost impossible.

How to avoid striping and mottling is fairly simple. Proper overlap, 50-75%, more being better, between passes and spraying the basecoat in light medium, to at most medium coats. Mottling occurs from spraying a base to wet or overlap being to close. Usually double coating an area because of lack discipline in your passes. Striping occurs from improper overlap usually too much overlap between coats.

In a nutshell, you want to maintain discipline between passes. Make each pass exactly the same overlap. You want to spray relatively fast as it makes being robotic with your passes easier. You never want to spray a metallic wet. Medium at most. Use a high quality slow reducer regardless of temps.
If you do get in trouble you can use a blending agent like SPI Intercoat to dilute the base and help with any unevenness in the metallic. Keep in mind that with modern basecoats the only colors you are ever likely to have trouble with are silvers and some gold and beige's. And 99% of the time proper technique will solve it.
 
metallic is shot like anything else until coverage . then you do a good dust coat to get all the metal even . base or single stage .
 
shine said:
metallic is shot like anything else until coverage . then you do a good dust coat to get all the metal even . base or single stage .
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That's a lot harder for a novice to do and be successful than what I outlined. It sounds easier to someone but it isn't. Assume worst case scenario like a silver or gold. Darker metallic I can do it the way you described, but problem ones I can't with any confidence. My advice is also coming from a background of doing a lot of blending type work where that technique works very well. Still say for a novice it's a lot easier to control a metallic base with more coats sprayed lighter.
 
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Just great, it sounds like two of the colors I've chosen for the car (Gold metallic and SPI White) may not be the colors I should use. I've sprayed metallic once (Grey) for the interior dash and trim panels on the Barracuda. I think it came out good with no tiger stripping but, those are smaller pieces so it probably made it that much easier to not mess up.
 
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anotheridiot said:
you will remain a beginner until you learn what an actual coat is.

Me starting from the industrial side, one coat was 4 passes. If it was a tray full of 10 or 40 parts, it was still 4 passes, one in each direction, turn it, til you have gone over all 4 sides and edges. But you were done painting then.

So much is based on coats, Time between coats, how many coats, because if you consider one pass across the panel a coat, its not really covered first pass, which tends to have you put more on which should spread out the time between coats. Thats still something I cannot figure out. I always like criss crossing at least, a side to side, flip the pattern and to top to bottom early at least, but metallics, if you are spraying the same direction its easy to get tiger stripes.
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I'll remain a beginner until the day I die. I won't have enough years left to become a Pro, lol but......I understand what you're saying. Thanks for the reply.
 
Chris_Hamilton said:
If that works for you AI that's great but it is not advice I would give to a novice.
Striping in a metallic is much harder to do now with modern basecoats than it was years ago with SS enamels etc. With a quality gun and proper technique it is almost impossible.

How to avoid striping and mottling is fairly simple. Proper overlap, 50-75%, more being better, between passes and spraying the basecoat in light medium, to at most medium coats. Mottling occurs from spraying a base to wet or overlap being to close. Usually double coating an area because of lack discipline in your passes. Striping occurs from improper overlap usually too much overlap between coats.

In a nutshell, you want to maintain discipline between passes. Make each pass exactly the same overlap. You want to spray relatively fast as it makes being robotic with your passes easier. You never want to spray a metallic wet. Medium at most. Use a high quality slow reducer regardless of temps.
If you do get in trouble you can use a blending agent like SPI Intercoat to dilute the base and help with any unevenness in the metallic. Keep in mind that with modern basecoats the only colors you are ever likely to have trouble with are silvers and some gold and beige's. And 99% of the time proper technique will solve it.
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I get all this, but slower reducers and being a little bit heavy usually equals runs. This went back to a question I asked about stabilizer additives that Mipa suggested to use in the basecoat. Nice metallic deep blue, but no metallic, just pearl, so it does not spray like metallic and you cannot even go over your first pass with the paint already seeming dry. To me it is an accellerator that is a recipe to go buy another gallon of paint.

Thats all the learning, 50-75%, medium, light medium, what is a coat to you. Start at the top of a panel, across, 50 overlap, across, down to the bottom and stop? One time top to bottom and thats it?
 
MJM said:
Just great, it sounds like two of the colors I've chosen for the car (Gold metallic and SPI White) may not be the colors I should use. I've sprayed metallic once (Grey) for the interior dash and trim panels on the Barracuda. I think it came out good with no tiger stripping but, those are smaller pieces so it probably made it that much easier to not mess up.
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Well this makes it very important you buy a good base also. A good base will have much better metallic control than some cheap economy base
 
anotheridiot said:
IThats all the learning, 50-75%, medium, light medium, what is a coat to you. Start at the top of a panel, across, 50 overlap, across, down to the bottom and stop? One time top to bottom and thats it?
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Clearly thats not all that goes on for the job but that is what 1 coat is. Doesnt matter if your spraying clear, primer or base. Obviously primer and clear are sprayed a little heavier than base is but 1 pass over the surface is one coat and if you are reading any tech sheet then that is what they are referring to as one coat.
 
Shooting base like a single stage is a recipe for a delam. One pass 50%-75% overlap, not wet like clear, let it flash minimum 20 minutes, second, and third coat, if needed, same process. Spraying base with insufficient flash, or too heavy, will trap solvents and blow the clear right off the vehicle, eventually.
 
Regular old GM Pewter (382E) is just a metallic. Seemed like no two of those rigs were the same shade, I probably have 10 sprayouts of different variants of that color. Now that I am well prepared to handle most variants, they don't use it anymore. :rolleyes:
 
we bought a quart from Mipa to do one fender on a trailblazer. They have a few of these funny colors, silver to gold, silver to green. The Mipa was pretty bad. We have 3 now with this color, our 1 ton van, the trailblazer and now the avalanche, well, hopefully not long for the avalanche.
 
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