Paint Your Wagon - with a roller!

[Poseidon]

Great looking LT, the color is great (good move keeping the roof white!) Great contrast colour..

Any help would be great Andy, I'm hoping to have another go this coming weekend (Sat afternoon and Sunday) providing the interior is done as the van is now away...

More than Happy to help you flat back on yours too! :O) I have gotten pretty good with wet and dry!

I feel lost that isn't not on the driveway!

[CovKid]

I thought that the roller was soaked with paint, I guess it wasn't, whats the correct way of getting it soaked? And when I go to remove the roller from the tray how should I get the excessive amount of paint off the roller so that its not soaking wet and dripping everywhere?

Just take your time. The roller is full of holes so when you first use it, theres a likelihood of getting small bubbles. Roll it in the paint, squeeze out in tray, roll in paint again and so on until roller looks fairly bubble free. A few uses of the roller does seem to expel bubbles so maybe run it off on an old board first?

[hi_tower]

Ive been troubled with air bubbles in the paint whilst doing my van. I thought I would try a Stanley Dynagrip roller that I picked up in Wilko. It was more expensive than the mini rollers I have been using and a slightly bigger diameter, but the finsh is miles better with this roller. It doesnt seem to deposit as many bubbles in the paint and the ones that are left seem to pop easier, so I dont have to keep going over and over the same spot, which eventually causes the artex effect.

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.j ... arch=false

[DivingDaisee]

Okay so I started getting rid of the rust...this is gonna take forever! Need to do lots of welding - right after I buy a welder and learn how

Well I didn't need to weld the windows so I started with them - 19 hours this weekend and only 3 finished! Here's some pics...

Sliding door drying ready for the window to be refit - just found that this is leaking - but then they are the original seals!


Rear drivers side window refitted - just needed to refit the filler as it streched a but


Got a bit more organised on this one... window out


This corner is not getting covered by the rubber! Needs building up!


Got the angle grinder out


inside as well - carpet will need some attention after!


Hit it with Vactan and body filler


Corner rebuilt


Masked with plastic bags - I'm so prepared


I used a can of rustoleum spray paint to treat the window edges. It's RAL3000! Not really the colour we want but almost exactly the colour we already have. I mean to roller the whole van when I have got the rust under some kind of control. Having lots of fun so far.

[desmond]

Desmond, your paint isn't thinned enough if you're having major probs.

You shouldn't need to sand very much at all between coats if you've thinned it enough. What might be a minor blemish on one coat will be twice as bad on the second and so forth. Go back through the WIKI and make sure you've read everything carefully.

OK, I've finally seen the light. I made the paint a lot thinner on the bottom half, to the point where it was dripping on the ground a lot, but the finish came up a hell of a lot smoother than the top half. I found that there were bubbles when I coated and the way to get rid of these were to go over it with the roller lightly as it starts to dry, with no paint on the roller.

Anyway, thanks for your patience Covkid and thanks for the advice from everyone. I haven't cut back yet as I don't want to lose the "glossy" shine for the moment. Even though you can tell it's hand painted when you look close, it still looks great!

So, here are the photos:

BEFORE:


AFTER:













Cheers!

[CovKid]

Go Des go!!!

And is that a bottle of vactan I spy there DivingDaisee??

[Poseidon]

Andy (Carrotman) came down to give me a help with the first coat, and `i must say, I'm impressed with the quality! :O) Pretty happy to carry on now, hopefully it will all go well. Just need to wait a few days till I can start the flatting and then the second coat..

Big thanks to Andy for coming down to help out, It was good to have the guidance and extra pair of hands!

[chrisray]

Andy (Carrotman)
Big thanks to Andy for coming down to help out, It was good to have the guidance and extra pair of hands!

[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3226/279 ... 4b5760.jpg[/img]

Which 'white' is that? My local Crompton tools do this paint but they have about 4 different shades of white :S!!!!

Even though on the main website there isn't 4 different shades, which I'm slightly confused about.

[CovKid]

If you read my WIKI article, it mentions that Rustoleum do the full RAL range so you'll need to find the equivalent or which RAL shades make up the white you're aiming for. Most on here did as I did and went for something near enough or in some cases went for something different as a change.


http://www.e-paint.co.uk/RAL_Colourchart.asp

You may find this helpful but viewing colours on a monitor is not the same as getting an exact match since few have monitors that are accurate enough. What you need is a proper RAL chart but these are incredibly expensive for obvious reasons. If you can find a sprayer who has one, he/she may be able to ascertain the colours you need. I would imagine theres a high-tech gadget that can read colours these days.

I used to be in the print trade and got incredibly good at looking at any colour and being able to tell, with some accuracy, what colours from standard printers tones, made up that colour and full time body shop bods possess a similar ability. It would be useful if we could match all the VW colours used to RAL shades or mix percentages though.

Incidentally, my neighbour bought a new car and in common with many new cars, the finish is far from flat if you look close up. In fact you could not tell the difference between the best rollered areas on my caravelle and the finish on his! Those who have managed to mix a perfect batch and mastered the roll technique will vouch for that I'm sure.

[Poseidon]

Mine is the RAL9010 (Pure White)

I was looking at trying to get a second coat on this weekend, however, I ran out of time, so will do the second when I get back from Scotland.

[matcapp]

hi all. ive painted mine and its a pretty good job. i found that the latter coats were better when thinned more. As above people have mentioned that when flatting back the gloss sheen is lost, what is best to fix that? Should it be done in panels or should very little water be used on the wet n dry and should it be done gently?
many thanks.

[CovKid]

Doesn't matter about lost sheen between coats. Just make the final one a thin sparing coat with a little more thinners perhaps and hey presto

As always, and same with spraying, its 90% preparation. I will say this though, a lot of new cars have no better a finsh than you can achieve with a good roller coat and in many cases you can outdo even those.

Over 31,000 hits on this thread since I started it and I'm starting to see other T25s in my own area that have been rollered so perhaps its worked its way across the UK now. All good stuff. Does work well though doesn't it and for a vehicle this size its a very economical way to put new lfe into tired paintwork. Some have achieved better results than others but most seem happy with it and for those (like me) that really can't justify a £2-3k spray job, its a great solution. Plus you get to drive it in between.

[Pepperami]

done a bit more today.

[Cruz]

Anyone in the preston, blackburn, accrington area know of a pound shop that sells the foam brushes?

[CovKid]

Foam brushes - try ebay or a paint and decorating store if you're stuck.

Tell you what Pepperami - that looks damned good! - check the WIKI - you're in it!