This car was my first serious attempt at restoring and maintaining an automobile, which means that it had to suffer as my guinea pig while I learned the basic skills required to do so. I have a few pictures of what the thing looked like when I first bought it, but I'm far too lazy to post them right now. All that you need to know is that it lacked anything that even fell short of a proper paint job, and that it was, at best, a poorly-maintained stock IROC. Over the course of last winter, I performed an experiment after a woman screwed me over with a lease. Without enough money to give my car the paint job it deserved, and unwilling to trust my car (again) with a discount paint shop, I attempted to produce a pleasing paint finish with Rustoleum. These are my results. I'm not about to trumpet my experience and tell everyone to go rattle-can their cars with 3 dollar paint, but so far, I'm very satisfied with the results, and have even painted my Berlinetta with a metallic blue variant. These pictures were taken a few months ago after I finished the first stage of buffing, and aside from a few imperfections, I would say that it turned out a lot better than I anticipated.

Looks pretty good. Nice job.

No joke and all kidding aside; congrats!

Determination, innovation and dedication got those results! You have paid some serious dues on that car my friend; you've gained experience and knowledge that no one, nowhere can ever take away from you; all because of a rotten landlady and a desire to have a sweet rod.



(o.k., scratch the rotten landlady comment - replace with "ex-girlfriend")

So what was your process for painting your car? lot of sanding I'm betting. Did you use a rattle can clear coat too? I've been kicking the idea around.

Believe it or not, there's no clear coat on this car. I initially set out to paint the thing with the Rustoleum roll-on paint, but that would have meant wet-sanding that led me into sometime next decade. As for sanding, you'd probably be surprised. I would argue that I did next to marginally more wet-sanding than if it were automotive-grade paint used.



This is what the car looked like when I first got the thing. The hood is probably the most honest example of what the whole car looked like. As you can see, I'm conducting an engine swap in the photo because the kid who owned this car before me thought that it was some kind of magical hotrod that never needed oil changes or coolant.



For a 305, she's rather on the mighty side, and if it wasn't for financial constraints, I'd have dropped an LT1 in her last winter. : ( -Again, that ex-girlfriend's fault.

I'll put some more pictures up in a few minutes. I'm open to suggestions here, because I'd like to get back on track with this car, so any input that any of you loyal thirdgener's can give would be appreciated.

Looks damn good for doing it yourself!

The painting process for this particular car was actually rather elaborate, mostly because I first had to sand all of the old paint off. Before attempting the job myself, I took the car to a paint shop (twice) for so-called professional paint service, and I was VERY displeased. They promised to do a better job the second time, and all they really succeeded in doing was cracking my spoiler, and wasting a gallon of red paint. They did such a bad job, the car was somehow rusting from beneath their primer, which left me with two options -take the car back to the paint job for a third folly, or just do it right myself.

Sanding the car was terrible, and it's not a job I would recommend unless you absolutely must. I used 100 grit for the metal, (Orbital DA) and 120 grit (orbital and hand sanding) for the urethane parts. I should have probably used something more gritty but I was fed up with the car, so I honestly didn't care. Once I got the surface down to metal and cleared the very small amount of surface rust in certain areas, it was time to primer the thing.

*Rustoleum process*

Obviously, before you paint anything, you should make sure the surface is clean. Anything on the surface will become part of the paint job, which means that good lighting is an absolute must. (Something I WISH I had)

There are some advantages to painting with rattle-can rustoleum, but mostly just a bunch of disadvantages. The first is that you must remember that a can of rattle-can anything is going to be part paint and part propellant. This means that when you're painting and watching to coats go down, you're actually a deceptive idea of how much paint is actually getting laid down. It took me a while to get an idea of how much paint was needed in order to generate a proper finish, but in the end, I came to this conclusion:

Medium-sized panels like doors and fenders will require about two cans to produce ONE full coat. You'll know how thin the coats really are when you decide to wet sand and find yourself burning through to primer after the first few minutes.

Large panels, like the hood, will require many cans. Painting large surface-areas like the hood presents one of rattle-cans' biggest shortcomings, which is the tendency for the propellant to receive a slightly different trajectory than the paint due the the density differential which causes a clearish "gunk" to get blown north of the target area.

*This means the hood will need a lot more wet sanding than the rest of the car*


I wish I had taken some pictures of the whole process. To tell the truth, I just didn't expect it to work. The whole job cost me about 120 bucks between sanding supplies, paint, and a polisher/angle grinder to do the high RPM buffing. The paint seems to be holding up really well after its first year, and from what I can tell, seems to be only slightly weaker than the stock paint.

I still wouldn't suggest this job to anyone. Painting your car with rustoleum is probably a really bad idea, and if you are serious about preserving your Thirdgen in a faithful manner, you'll have pay the extra dollar to have a professional take care of your paint and body work.