Hey guys I am looking for some advice. Want to sort out the paint on our bus. Its a family van that we use all the time with the kids and its beginning to look tired with scratches, marks and a few small rusty scratches coming through. Can't afford a respray. Was just thinking a high polish but not sure. Want to basicly protect it and clean it up. Any advise on products. Or what is best to do. Cheers.

You could have a crack at respraying it yourself. it's time consuming (the prep) but not difficult to get good results.
A big advantage of doing this is that you can then keep it looking great with touch ups.
I'm currently doing the roof because I didn't do it the first time and at the same time I'm doing the nose due to lots of stone chips!, it's easier to respray it than fix half a dozen stone chips and you won't be worried about the odd ding because you can fix it.

Compressor was £300 (I bought a halfway decent one as I use it for tools as well now)
Paint is £75 for 2.5 litres (cellulose unless you want to kill yourself) and I used 5 litres of blue and 2.5 of white, although I've just bought another 2.5 litres of white for the roof. So about £300 worth of paint, plus primer and sundries probably another £200.

So about £800 all in and I have a nice compressor and a new skill set!

malum wrote:You could have a crack at respraying it yourself. it's time consuming (the prep) but not difficult to get good results.
A big advantage of doing this is that you can then keep it looking great with touch ups.
I'm currently doing the roof because I didn't do it the first time and at the same time I'm doing the nose due to lots of stone chips!, it's easier to respray it than fix half a dozen stone chips and you won't be worried about the odd ding because you can fix it.

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Compressor was £300 (I bought a halfway decent one as I use it for tools as well now)
Paint is £75 for 2.5 litres (cellulose unless you want to kill yourself) and I used 5 litres of blue and 2.5 of white, although I've just bought another 2.5 litres of white for the roof. So about £300 worth of paint, plus primer and sundries probably another £200.

So about £800 all in and I have a nice compressor and a new skill set!

Solid advice. I did exactly the same thing with good results. I’d reiterate that preparation is everything- paint magnifies flaws rather than cover them up. If I did mine again, it would not be in the winter months - too cold and you get a bit of orange peel.


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Those results look great. I’d love to have the confidence to give this a go myself so can I just ask what experience you have of body work prep and paint and/or is it something you think those of us without could pick up and achieve a reasonable job without (allowing for practice of course but not everyday work)? I’m not thinking show and shine but the ability to undertake some work knowing I could also prep and paint would be fantastic. Also how good is the environment in which you worked. I have a half decent garage but like many it is full of spiders, dust and leaves at times so I’m just wondering what you do to get around this.

I guess I need to find someone locally who has had the confidence to give it a go and go and ask some questions/see how it is done.

Cheers

Steve

I had close to zero experience before I started. I have a car port which I built a paint tent under using thick gauge plastic sheeting. I'm about to do the roof without the paint tent though.
A garage would be ideal. You might want to clean it first.
In some ways cellulose is very forgiving. It's easy to flat and polish even a crappy job up to a mirror finish and it's easy to go over bits you didn't do well.
It does show up bad prep really badly though.

I made a thread at the time (it was supposed to be just a blow over, it turned out to me more LOL)
https://archives.ssvc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=115429

I did the roof today. Not ideal conditions but the least wind for the last few and the next few days.
It's also quite hard to paint the roof!
I long for a garage, even when masking up the slightest breeze is very annoying.
By the time it's flatted and polished it will look grand.

By the way if you do it in the garage put a tarp down on the floor to stop dust being blown back onto your paint by the gun. I haven't done that here as I'm only doing the roof.

This is a pic of where I'm doing it The tarp is to stop crap falling on it

More than happy to have a go at this. But at the moment time is of the essence and there is not enough room in my garage to walk around the bus when inside.

funky_rick wrote: ↑Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:04 am More than happy to have a go at this. But at the moment time is of the essence and there is not enough room in my garage to walk around the bus when inside.

both of those things would stop you

Any tips on spraying..

Like how many coats of primer did you put down (high build primer) did you wet sand inbetween coats.
With Final coat, how many coats did you put down ?
How did you finish, once paint had cured, did you wet & dry using 1500/2000 grit, then compound polish..
Any Lacquer ??

I'm spraying a boot lid, starting small.. Well in fact I started with the ash tray, which has come out nice and shiny compared to my boot lid..

Shaun.

On the bare metal bits I did two coats of primer then wet sand
For the final coat on the bare metal parts, four coats and the parts with good previous paint 2 coats.
1500 wet and dry then 2000 wet and dry then polish (I used this followed by a fine compound but the fast cut gives a great finish just on its own. I didn't polish using an electric buffer. I found that too easy to burn the paint (which mean a sand back and respray). I used a mop on an air driven, 6 inch orbital sander. Takes a bit longer but you are not going to burn through the paint. The 3m stuff can go on without water which is much less messy and it's way better then 3G.

Get your filler primer from somewhere decent, the stuff I bought on ebay was very thin.
Try to put as much paint as you can on the edges

If you aren't going all the way back to bare metal and you just have some paint and some bare metal; this is when you might get finishing problems. What looks and feels like a smooth transition between metal (or your then primered bits) and the old paint won't be! When you paint it and polish it you'll see those bits.
I used stopper to fill those areas, sand then stopper again then a third time if you really want a good finish.
Ideally you'd lay down a guide coat and sand that back to check for dips. This is all much harder on a dark colour, white is much easier as it doesn't show imperfections as badly. Both my cab dorrs need redoing because they had a lot of filler put in badly and I removed it all and started over. I did them first and they have a lot of dips which nobody notices but me!

A halfway decent spray gun helps a lot with the finish as well but you could put cellulose on with a roller and flat it back to a mirror shine, it would just take longer! You don't need to spend a fortune though. I used this
If you use a mini gun (and I found this much easier to get a really good finish with) be aware that it's laying on much less paint than a big gun so put on loads of coats.

No lacquer, cellulose doesn't need it so it's pointless, also it can yellow. You can't put other lacquers on cellulose. You pretty much can't put any other paint on top of cellulose.

Thanks for the very detailed response, it's great to get real life feedback and tips. I'm only spraying my engine lid at this moment of time, but it's good to know that I'm not doing something totally wrong and more or less taking the same approach. It will be a long time, before I do the whole bus, but one day...... I will do it..

Ta,
Shaun.

I'd like to say it's fun. it's one of those things you remember fondly afterwards.
I'm wet sanding the roof as I type. I fecking hate this bit!