$50 roll-on rustoleum paint job

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Before:

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After:

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I was inspired by this thread on the moparts bbs a while back but, since I drive mostly plastic-bodied saturns, I had to wait to try it out.

Then I got my benz.
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I am not a vain person but I could not stand having all those different colors.

Someone wrecked it in the LF corner. The rest of the car is from down south, but the fender and hood were scrounged from rusty New England. The hood even had a hole clear through.
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I cut the rust out and did minimal tin/fiberglass/bondo, figuring why put lipstick on a pig.

Chose mid-darkness blue paint, figuring it would hide many goofs. It worked! The directions say to dilute it like milk.

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First coat. What happens if you put milk on the side of your car? Yeah, it drips down.
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Although I never perfected the technique, it seemed to work to roller up and down to get over the body creases, then roller sideways to catch the drips.

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Long story short, six coats later, one is supposed to wet sand and buff. Left the cowl unbuffed. Will get to it. The paint dries shiny but gets a texture. Wouldn't call it orange peel, more of an acne. Only a couple light wipes with wet sandpaper (600 after coats 2 & 4, 1500 grit after final coat 6) got rid of the "acne." A little more got that velvety look you're supposed to use to get rid of orange peel.

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I'm not actually bothered by minor orange peel. I'm not just saying that. I thought GM did it deliberately on their black late model suburbans as a way to give the paint depth or that "wet look". Some of what you see in this pic is "bokeh", out-of-focus highlights.

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They sell spray-bombs of the same color rustoleum. As time allows I'm getting inside the door sills etc. Very few pics on the moparts thread of door sills and other areas.

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I didn't want to figure out how the emblems were attached, or try to reattach them and get them all crooked. So I completely covered them for the roller, then razor bladed a mask for the letters and spray bombed. Hoping to feather the colors together. (Rusto spray bomb takes a long time to fully cure for sanding, unlike thinned roll-on.) Note, there had been something going on with that fender before-hand, body-work-wise.

Now for the ugly, drips drips drips! Probably going to sand and re-do another couple thin roller coats. Was antsy to get the tape off the chrome and go driving again.

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But it's still a good cheap ten-foot job: (Yeah that lump of bondo
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sits where the hole used to be. Was either that or a shaker hood.)

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I think I could have escaped under $50. Only used a quart and a half of paint, bought three. Might return one and keep the rest for touchups. Ace had a sale on foam brushes and I didn't use many rollers. Sandpaper was $10 for only a few sheets each.

And if anyone thinks I wrecked a nice benz, it's not that nice.
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Still have to fix an exhaust leak. The glow plugs run manually because I was too cheap to fix the stock relay. The weather stripping is shot and wind whistles. Am up in the air about reattaching the trim (I don't have it all.) If I wanted, and had a sure way out, I could sit in the trunk and watch people walk by thru the 7/16" holes, or even nail them with a squirt gun.
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I DO have all the hub caps, and painted them the same way, but am fighting the masking tape with a razor blade. Seems the paint really stuck that stuff down.
 
Vast improvement IMO.

Glad that you had fun.

Only roller work I've ever done was with under body sealant to provide a "GT Bonnet" on an RX2.
 
It does look better.
I had two 123 240Ds.
A neat car in its way, although driving one will teach you patience and conservation of momentum like no other car in the world (reference intended).
 
I'll be interested to see how it holds up. I've painted a 94 Dodge GC and a 94 Plymouth Acclaim with Rustolium spray cans. The paint only lasted about 2 years before the UV killed it. I've since repainted the van with the same stuff, but clear coated it with 2 different kinds of spray. Only been a year, but it's holding up good so far.
 
Color fading is a good reason to stay away from the reds. The car was originally burgundy but it faded, basically, to yucky brown. "The process", diluting and many thin coats, is supposed to make the paint rock-hard, though the pigments are of course the same. Photos of several-year-old cars are in that moparts thread.
 
Noticed the interior in one of those pictures - that MB-Tex really holds up well!
 
Is there a story behind the bright blue color choice?



Me... I would have used gloss black or a charcoal grey.
 
I thought about gloss black, it looks awesome when done correctly. But I knew for a first paint job it was over my skillset. If you have a finish problem... matte in areas, gloss in others, scratches, it shows up quite well in black. Grey screams "primer". Most of these cars for whatever reason are yellow so I thought I'd go for something different.

Been paying a lot of attention to other cars' paint jobs since starting this project. Newer cars have less trim and stylistic folds in their bodies, and would paint much easier. However, this older benz looks more in place with a simple job that isn't a BC/CC.
 
It does look better overall, that blue is the colour of a local taxi company in my area which kind of spoils it for me, but I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding the car in a parking lot! The local taxi company has a infinity G35 sedan for some reason which looks a bit strange with that blue on it.
 
That would be a very odd color to see on a G35. Get a pic of it if you can.

Blue is a good choice for this kind of repaint. It's a forgiving paint color. It doesn't show defects as much as other colors and it doesn't fade weird.
 
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