Looking to repaint my car. I have painted before, went to school. But I've never been a good judge of "I need this amount".

Car is the light teal, keeping same color. Painting other parts before, I noticed this color doesnt cover to well.

Condition of the car:
Roof has to go to metal and back up.
Nose has to go to rubber n back up.
GFX will be primer gray.
Rest of the car has nicks n scratches that I plan to prime, sand down back down to color and pray they are filled in.


How much you think I will need? Even in cheap brand paints, this damn color is freakin expensive!!

Think a gallon of clear will do as well?

 

My brother in law [a profesional painter by trade] just did mine 4 weeks ago.
Admittedly its a standard GM solid red colour, and we used just over 2 litres. We bought 3 litres of ICI 2pack and enough 2pack thinners to suit. He suggested DuPont which is all they use at work, but the ICI wasnt cheap as it was.

 

I use a gallon of color to cover mine. Add a quart if your doing jams as well. However that obviously depends on the quality of paint and color. You could pick up an extra quart just in case. Can't go wrong with extra. Make shure you use the correct primer where you goto metal. The primer will also help the paint to cover alot better.

 

My apologies as i forgot your not on litres, and to tell you the truth, i avoid em where i can.
Well i know it as "a litre of water is a pint and three quarters"
So 2 and a half litres is approx just over half a UK gallon, which aint far off half a US gallon.
And we undercoated with any old similar colour, and flatted, so you use less top colour, and as mentioned above, i didnt have to do door-jams, under hood etc etc, and if you were spraying silver, you could double what i used.

 

wow, one was half gallon, other full gallon.

I'm keeping the car the same color, so I dont have to do jambs. I do not have the hood I want on the car, so I wont be painting the hood at the moment. But when I do, I will do both sides. I've done my hood before, didnt use alot. Its fairly new, so it wont be "too" far off.

Yes, I know going down to bare metal I have to use self-etching primer or something, then go over that with normal primer, then paint, then clear *sigh*. That metal primer seems to only come in gallons or rattle cans they say

For "most" part of the car, I will be going over same existing color. Spots mentioned I wont be, so them areas will require more.

quytm, what color were you doing?
r1uk, you said you did red.

 

3 qtrs of base
1 gallon of clear

if you are a stickler for using just enough buy the clear in qrts and take whatever you use back. should cost close to the same either way

you should have plenty left over to fix any problems that will arrise

 

my paint guy said 3qts should do mine in red, but when we checked the price difference on 3qts and a gallon it was only ~10$ more so it made absolutely no sense to not just buy the gallon