How To Paint Your Car On The Cheap

Why You Need These Automotive Paints

Let’s face it! You’re a beginner, which means you need a little bit of help. Nevertheless, without the ideal paint for your vehicle, you will never be happy with the result.

Now, you don’t want to go through all the hassles and still end in a mess. For this reason, you need a beginner’s tool.

Below are a couple of benefits you get to enjoy with these paints:

Save Time and Money

Rather than running to an auto body shop that has high-end equipment and expertise necessary to do the job correctly, you can save a couple of bucks if you just DIY.

You can easily apply the color to blend with the existing paint – like a pro.

Make an impression

Once you have your automotive paint for beginners applied, you can quickly boost the appearance of your car.

Aside from that, you can also get rid of the peels, rusty, and rickety surface, with a fresh coat. And nothing screams confidence and success like a sweet ride!

Increase Resale value

If your vehicle is looking all beaten and faded, it’s likely to repel potential buyers or cost a lower price than its real worth. However, if the outlook is catchy, it’s going to sell at a much higher price.

Be that as it may, automotive paint is an integral part of it. In today’s economy, what glitters can sell rapidly -no B.S.

Video

Don’t Paint over Problems

Getty Images

You wouldn’t paint your house if the siding was falling off. Never put a thin, superficial, cosmetic cover-up over a structural problem—and painting over dents or rust without addressing serious issues is just that. If your vehicle has lots of dings and some rust, painting over the problems will only make them worse in both the near and long term. A shiny, fresh coat of paint will likely make body damage even more visible, while rusting panels will continue to rot if they’re not properly tended to. Paint is cosmetic, not a means to cover up bodywork issues.

How Long Does Car Spray Paint Last?

With 20 spray cans, as mentioned earlier you will get three coats of paint. If you wax your car regularly, this should last a couple of years.

There are car owners whose paint lasts for more than 10 years of good-looking paint from car spray paint. What matters most is how well you take care of your car’s paint job.

How much clear coat Do I need to paint a car?

How much will you use? Anywhere from 3 – 4 quarts of sprayable clearcoat. A 1 gallon kit MIXED will give you 5-6 quarts of sprayable on average. NEVER mix all of your clear coat at once, you may not need it!

Painting The Car

On the picture above you can still see the mist after primer coat. After the mist is gone, we have to check the body for other mistakes we may have forgotten or missed. As you can see on the picture below we found some. How to proceed then? This is where we use black spray can. It is called a checkout spray. We use black because it’s best for check after sanding. Then the process is the same as before: sanding – filling – sanding – primer coat.

After this we start wet-sanding using sand-paper #800 until black color is gone and the surface is glossy (especially important for enamel). Don’t be afraid to sand it to the original coat, it’s better than leave any pits. When you fix all the mistakes, wet-sand the whole body with sand-paper #800.

Masking is gone because of water, so we have to mask it again. After complete masking, the car and plastic bumper are ready for enamel.

When we prepared the car for enamel we decided to move it to my friend’s garage (proper ventilation – less dust – very important). When spraying hold the spray gun 15 – 25cm from surface and spray it in smooth level strokes. Overlap strokes by 50%. Snaps below were made with my phone right after we sprayed the car, so the quality of these snaps is not the best.

The pause between enamel coat and clear coat is really short. Enamel is glossy right after spraying. But it gets matt after a while when it dries out (in my case I barely cleaned my spray gun after enamel coating – anyway it should be no more than 90 minutes). Then you can start applying clear coat.

When you have diluted the clear coat, do not wait as hardener does its role. I did two heavy layers of clear coat, but you can make more. If you do light layers make more than 4. Give it about 15 minutes before applying next layer.

I finished at about 11pm and I was very tired so I left everything as it is and went home to get some sleep. Next day I started with cleaning. Take all the masking off and mount all the parts back (be very careful not to scratch anything). It’s good to mark unmounted parts. I didn’t and I had some troubles to find where they belong. Do not make the same mistake. Here is the final product (wheels are different as I had to change them for set with winter tires).

I wanted to write something about polishing but I didn’t polish because I wanted to airbrush some stuff on it, then give it another clear coat and then polish it. I even had prepared airbrush designs.

Unfortunately something happened (I was in accident and hit the rear side of police car) that ruined all my plans and I had to invest some money just to stay on wheels. The road was icy, the police car was parked in the middle of the road because it was at a crash scene (few cars were off the drive already) and I panic and hit the brakes (DO NOT HIT THE BRAKES ON THE ICY ROAD, NEVER, NEVER!!!)

And here is video from the scene.

If you don’t see the video here is the link to youtube

Here’s How To Paint A Car

Before you get started, you’ll need two things above all else: time and space. Give yourself enough time to sand, repair, paint, and dry your vehicle. This is a crucial step that can save you big headaches with smeared or damaged paint. Space is vital, because unless you’re a machine (you’re probably not), painting a car will take time. You’ll need a safe space to store the car where the paint job can be done without damaging the paint or annoying your neighbors.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s do this!

1. Clean your workspace to get rid of unwanted dirt and dust.
2. Sand your vehicle until you get an even layer of metal, in the case of rock chips, or below the clear coat. This will take time, so work methodically and during when you won’t need to use your car too much. Each time your car leaves the garage, it will need to be cleaned again or else it could oxidize and rust.
3. Wipe down the vehicle with a clean lint-free rag and paint thinner to make sure all paint residue is gone.
4. Tape off and mask the areas that you don’t plan to paint, such as windows, trim pieces, and wheels.
5. Mix your paint with thinners according to the directions or The Drive’s guide for How To Mix Automotive Paint.
6. Spray on the paint using gentle, smooth motions, keeping the sprayer perpendicular to the surface for the most even application. This process will take 3-4 coats. You’ll want to take half an hour up to a day after each coat is finished to allow drying. 
7. Take the fine-grit sandpaper (2000-grit or higher) and smooth out any imperfections in the paint before applying the clear coat.
8. Apply the clear coat (same way as the paint). Expect to do this in several coats and then leave the car alone to cure. This may take a day. 

You’re done!

FAQs on Painting a Vehicle

You’ve got questions. The Drive has answers.

Q. Does Repainting a Car Affect its Resale Value?

A. It can, but more often than not, when you’re correcting the paint or fixing some damage, it’ll increase your car’s value. 

Q. How Long Does the Whole Process Take?

A. You’re looking at between a few hours fixing a spot to 40 to 80 hours painting the whole car. 

Estimated Cost of Paint For A Car?

We did some research to give you some good paint options. You can find the most accurate paint costs by searching for something like ‘automotive enamel’ on websites like Amazon. 

Remember, the typical automotive paint job is done in three coats:

~2 coats of primer/sealer + ~2 coats of base coat + ~2  coats of clear coat

Note: Every painter has their opinion for how many coats the job will take, and it also depends on what color you are painting over, for example, if you are painting a red vehicle white, it’s going to take more primer and possibly, even more, paint to cover the job.

Polyurethane/urethane

Shops like Maaco use it, and you should too if you want a quick, cheap, and solid solution for putting a coat of paint on a vehicle. 

Synthetic Enamel Paint

Enamel is an oil-based paint that has been used to paint cars since the 1930s.

You’ll see a lot of classic paint jobs that have enamel paint, however, urethane paints are a more futuristic option.

Plasti dip

You could always apply plasti dip on 4×4 vehicles that protect the body panels with a rubber layer that can be peeled off in the future. Plasti dip is also a relatively inexpensive option.

• Lacquer/Clear lacquer

Lacquers are good for automotive painting, especially for a clear coat.

• Vinyl Wrap 

That’s right, you don’t have to apply a high-quality paint–you can apply a vinyl adhesive wrap quickly and easily that changes the color of your vehicle instantly without the hassle of dealing with spray paint.

Truck Bed Liner

Want to try a new look? Older vehicles and offroad vehicles look great with a heavy-duty truck bed liner sprayed onto the body panels. 

This is another great way to avoid having to detail the outside of your vehicle – instead, you can just spray it down with water and it will look good as new.

Note: The quality of the paint really does matter, so if you care about your ride, you’ll get a professional paint job or at least use high-quality paint.

Read More >> How Much Does It Cost To Paint Just A Bumper?

How Many Spray Cans are Needed to Paint the Bumper?

The bumper of your car is more vulnerable to paint damage. This shouldn’t come as a surprise especially when you consider its location.

Having seen that you will need 20 spray cans to paint the entire vehicle. You may be wondering, how many do I need to paint the bumper?

4 cans should be enough for your bumper. It will give you three coats of fresh paint that will leave the bumper looking fresh.

When you compare the cost of four spray cans and the $200-$400 you can be charged for painting the bumper at the auto shop, spray cans are way cheaper.

Once you learn how to spray paint, you will never have to spend a lot of money at auto body shops for bumper painting.

Though affordable, painting your bumper with spray cans is not easy. The preparation process is more complicated than painting itself.

Spray cans are very flexible when it comes to painting. However, you need to be very cautious.

To get the most out of a spray can, work insufficient light and do the painting in an enclosed garage. This will prevent the contamination of paint by debris.

About This Article

Co-authored by: Kyle Hall wikiHow Staff Writer This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Kyle Hall. Kyle Hall works on the content team at wikiHow. He helps manage our team of editors and creates content for a variety of wikiHow projects. Kyle continually looks for new ways to improve the content at wikiHow and make it more helpful and enjoyable for readers. He graduated from Eckerd College in 2015, where he majored in Political Science. This article has been viewed 20,522 times. 8 votes – 100% Co-authors: 4 Updated: January 22, 2021 Views: 20,522 Categories: Customizing and Modifying Cars

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