Pleased with home made spray booth results - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

jcwells · #1 10-15-2003, 12:33 AM

After painting 5 or 6 cars over the years in my garage with tarps hanging all around, I finally decided to build a spray booth to help reduce my dust and bug problem, and provide a healthier spray environment. I built the booth using translucent reinforced poly tarps over a 2X2 wood frame. The air is pushed into the booth from the roof at one end through three 20 X 40 inch spray booth filters (using a salvaged furnace fan) and it exits the booth through 4 filters at the other end. The side lights are hung on the outside of the tarps and a twin tube 8 ft. high output fluorescent light hangs 18 inches above the ceiling. The ceiling frame has been hung in the garage in a permanent fashion and the walls are hinged so they simply fold up when you are done. After it’s folded up the clearance underneath is about 6 ft. 6 in. so the garage space remains useable. You can see most of these elements in the primer picture attached, with the base coat and clear coat pictures below.
By the way the vehicle is a 1982 240D and the only dust in the finish blew out from around the windshield cowl, which I can live with.

John

jcwells · #2 10-15-2003, 12:34 AM

Base coat step.

jcwells · #3 10-15-2003, 12:36 AM

Clear coat step.

FYI Dupont Cromabase system.

engatwork · #4 10-15-2003, 07:01 AM

Good job, good looking booth.

Antony · #5 10-15-2003, 09:44 AM

ENVY!! Both of the booth, and of the results

jbaj007 · #6 10-15-2003, 11:01 PM

Clever and well built. What a great home booth.

I've painted motorcycles and helped paint friends' cars, but never shot one of my own start to finish. Question... from the look of the masking, it doesn't appear that any sanding was done between the primer and base coat; is it just dry sanded carefully, or is this a function of the paint system? or just that you've done quite a few and find that, in your hands, you don't need to? HVLP? Looks beautiful.

jcwells · #7 10-16-2003, 04:59 PM

To answer:

The car was very solid to start with, with only a few areas needing any real work. The rear quarter and trunk had been repainted before so that area was stripped and metal primed. The balance of the car still had solid factory paint. These areas, plus the metal primed areas were primed, after a 400 wet sand, with at least 2 coats of primer surfacer. Any area that had been worked on probably got 3 or 4 coats of primer surfacer with block sanding between coats. Between primer coats I generally block sanded wet with 320 or 400 and the final sanding before color was 600 wet. So actually there is a lot of block sanding in order to get strait panels. I would expect more than 50% of the primer applied ends up being sanded off.

I use a Grayco HVLP gun with a remote pressure feed Binks 2 Quart cup. Most pros seem to use the gravity HVLP guns but I had purchased my gun for another (non auto) project and have since used it into auto work without any problems.

John