i have decided to spray my whole beater car with wheel paint from autozone. the gun-metal ones used for the wheels. how well do you think it will hold up, and how many cans will it take to cover a ford crown vic?

 

my roommate's dad went to home depot, got the color matched and then painted his car with a roller

 

 

 

my friend did that to his crx like 3 times. it held up ok but the finnish wasnt too pretty. lots of unsmooth bumps. came out a flat color with no gloss

 

Find some primer that is the closest color to your paint. Do a few coats, and wet sand. Spray paint a few coats and sand in between a few of them. Finish it off with some clear coat and you should be fine. I've painted a few fenders and valances for some friends and they turned out really nice.

 

Sport Compact Car did this with their project 240SX. Apparently with good results. They got letters back asking how they did it. They said that they used 6 cans.

Why not use Duplicolor Mirage ?

 

duplicolor does magics... at least it did for my engine bay dress up =)

 

I say 6-8 cans....

 

i've already painted both my bumpers with duplycolor and a clear layer on top. no primer. you can see its been painted but looks way nice after all the chips and bumps at 130k+. the whole car though... naah. it looks too ghetto. especially the roof and hood.

 

OMG. Ha ha. Spray Paint a Crown Vic. That is awesome. ALOT of paint man. ALOT

 

Damn.. that's really gansta style

 

macco 200 bucks?

 

it's gonna be a lot more than 6-8 cans i don't think it's worth it.

 

I painted my Bronco black using acrylic urethane enamel using a compressore and bulk paint from CarQuest. I spent $600 on the paint system (primer/base/clear) but I'm sure there's cheaper paint out there.



Assuming you want a NICE job, not just a crappy job...

When I was prepping the surface I found that each panel (hood, a fender, a door) would take a whole can of primer to do 2 coats. So you're looking at 8 cans to do 2 coats. If you're doing a "blowover" (same color) then you just need like 2 coats (8 cans) if the paint surface is already good, or 3-4 coats (-16 cans) if you have done any filler/putty work.

If you want to do a colour change, or a paint type change (cellulose to enamel etc) then you really need to sand down the old paint to give it something for the new primer to eat into. 2-3 coats of primer (8-12 cans), 2-3 coats of color (8-12 cans) and 2 coats of clear (8 cans) is about the best you can do in aerosol cans. If you are in a dustfree environment and you take you r time, and you are smooth with the application then you should be ok. I typically only use 90% of an aerosol can when painting the car (I do a lot of accident damage repair on my offroad bronco!) because the LAST thing you want is to have the can spit on the paint.


But if you're going to the length of finding a dustfree environment then you might as well rent an air compressor and paint stuff. I can't see you paying more than $50 for a day or two. Spend about 400 on the paint and you'll get a much better result.


If you 're gonna be happy with a crappy matt job, just get 8 cans of the color you want and have at it. Try not to *entirely* cover the headlights in paint.

 

My first college car was 86 Dodge Colt (rebadged Mistu Colt) I got for $350.00 back in 1998. After 12,000 miles and 1 year later decied to sell it and thought I'd paint it. Got a bunch of Krylon cans from Walmart and started spraying at the roof, by the time I finished the roof & door pillers - I got bored and sold it.
Get this - I got $850.00 for it and the guy that got it thought it was a custom 2-tone paint job

 

i did this to my winter beater last winter. spent $12 on cans of spray paint at Walmart. Made the wing out of cardboard, ducttape, and hot glue. I used to have cardboard hood scoops but they were ripped off. I get more comments about this car then the maxima gets. these pics were at the end of winter. muffler was also ripped off.

 

Hey 1HOTMAX, dont do that on your max, just rent a compressor with a good spray gun and do it the reel thing. Doing 3 coats will take something 20-25 cans +.

Good luck.

AA