Camaro Restoration – Part 10 Primer Surfacer

Not that the metal work is done, we can get on to the primer surfacing of the car, now this to be done right needs to have attention paid to the smallest details, first go over the car looking for any small imperfections in the metal work, it does on occasion happen that you'll find one or two.

After your sure that you don't have any small dents, dings, or ripples that need attention you can begin to clan the car and get it ready for masking, make sure that you have a can of metal prep cleaner, cover the entire surface of the car with the metal prep cleaner, pay attention to detail, take your time.

After you have finished the cleaning phase, you can move on to the masking, unless you have removed all of the windows, chrome, and bright work, you'll need to mask the car, if it's just a shell, you don't need to worry about this stage.

For this article we'll say that you didn't remove all of the glass from the car, so you will be masking the car, this is really one of the most important parts of the process, you need to have your paper, tape, and razor blades ready to go, and again I can't stress enough, take your time on this.

You'll either be spraying epoxy primer, or urethane primer, and either one of these products is made to stay on the parts that you spray it on, so let;s discuss it a little bit, first of all you need to be sure that everything is masked, and nothing is masked that doesn't need to be, this is where you'll need the blades.

What your looking to do here is cut the paper to match the parts that your masking, and believe me when I say, the over spray will get every where that you fail to mask, I learned this the hard way, it can take days to clean those kind of mistakes up.

Spend time and cover everything that you think doesn't need to be painted, now we'll get in to the primer itself, first of all get you car in to the spray booth, or the area where you plan to paint it, once it's in the paint area make sure that you ground the car by hanging a chain from the car to the floor.

Grounding the car will help to insure that static electricity doesn't accumulate an pick up miscellaneous dust and other contaminants from the air, now that you have gotten in the booth, and grounded it, you can get ready to spray the primer.

What You Need:

1.A Spray Gun

2.Primer Surfacer

3.Mixing Cups

4.Stir Stick

5.Reducer

6.Catalyst


Now that you have these things you can begin the mixing process, you should always follow the manufactures recommendations when mixing the primer, they know what the best mixing process is, if you think you'll more help then what's on the side of the can, ask the paint company that your buying the product from

Once you have mixed the primer, rather it's urethane or, epoxy primer, you'll be spraying no less then three coats on the car, this usually works out to about one gallon of spray- able material, when you begin to spray the primer you'll need to know a couple of things.

The first thing is that you should always hold the spray gun parallel to the surface of the car at 90 degrees to the surface, or with the spray head facing directly at the car, the gun should spray an even fan with no voids of primer in the center, when the gun is set at 35 pounds of air pressure.

You should always keep the gun 6-8 inches from the surface of the car, any closer and you will more then likely get a run in your primer, any farther away and you'll get a dry spray, you'll also get dry spray if you move the gun to fast, or a run if you move to slow, you have to figure out the right speed.

Once you have these techniques down you only need to remember one thing, you must overlap each paint line 50% to get even coverage on the car, I'd suggest that you practice these techniques before you get serious about spraying your car, learn the speed, the fan settings, and how different air pressures affect the gun that you use.