Always enjoy reading up on these DIY Paint Jobs. My paint is just fine on my truck...but as I'm looking for another truck/beater/mustang, etc....I'm not gonna let the paint job on it scare me. I have seen surprisingly good results from both a roller and spray can.

 

Agreed. Panels are WAY to big to try and get the paint to stay wet enough for no over spray, or you have runs.

even a CHEAP harbor freight spray gun for $30 and some tractor enamel for another $30

 

When I say that I don't mean I laid it over to paint it lol. I rolled it onto its side in a ditch doing 60 on a dirt road.

 

Rattle can paint job video.

 

Yup, I've seen some great rattle can jobs too. My truck could be better even for a rattlecan job, but my goal wasn't to go for a showroom shine here so I didn't take all the old paint off first... which with a rattlecan the way to get a perfect finish is to start with bare metal since the paint is thin to begin with.

It's inevitable that it'll get scratched up, because this truck sees the woods fairly often and with the rattle can job I don't feel bad about it because I can just prep and re-spray, buff, wax and it's fixed. Total cost probably $1 in materials per damaged area. Even with a "real" paint job, after you repair enough scratches it don't look so good anymore.

I've had great paint jobs before. Complete waste of my time because no matter how much I look after it, some !$#%@ will come along and damage it. The nicer your paint job, the better the chance of this happening.

 

Just FYI most rattle can paint is WAY softer than "real" paint and no where near UV stable as auto paint and will fade considerably in a few years. Like Diesel Brad said, large panels on vehicles are way too large to use rattle cans and have the paint flow out before it flashes off or runs. I rattle-canned a beater tailgate and it looked okay, but still was a big enough panel that the paint left drying lines and considerable orange peel and that was with Rustoleum Professional paint that uses xylene as an evaporate, similar to auto paint. The orange peel from rattle cans is very very noticable. If you're going to spend all the time to prep the truck correctly before you paint it pay a local body guy $500 to throw some single stage urethane on it. If you remove the trim and mask the truck yourself cheap single stage paint should only run about $200. Hit up your local body guy and see if he has some older paint left over that he wants to burn up and just pay him to shoot the truck. If it's something you want to last a while spend a little more and do it the right way. If you're good with a gun buy some enamel and shoot the whole truck for $200 yourself. I have painted several cars with enamel and a $40 gun. The paint is rock hard, shines great, and last for years. Rubbing out not even really necessary unless you're building a show truck.

Those roller jobs seem to entice everyone, but as someone who worked in a body shop for a while I learned that sanding and prepping is the most time consuming and labor intensive part of the job. Why would you want to paint your truck with OIL BASED (a huge mistake if you ever want to paint it again with real paint!) Rustoleum paint, have to wet sand the entire thing in between every coat, and rub the crap out of it to make it shine? I'd much rather spend a few extra bucks and save a few hundred hours and have a quality product at the end.

You MIGHT be able to get along with rattle-canning a white truck as the white paint will hide some of the orange peel, but forget with any dark colors.

 

And this is why rattle can jobs suck. That paint is horrible! It has very dull shine at best, is streaky, and he painted over dents! I guess it's "better" than what he started with, but not by much.

 

I did mine in satin black. Looked good until I used a gloss clear. So the front half is a weird satin gloss and the rest is clearless. My profile pic is of the painted van

 

LOL, I figured it was something like that.

 

That looks very good!

Can you share some details as to how you did it? Did you have to thin the Rustoleum at all? Did you sand it all down to bare metal for the pieces you didn't replace? What kind of primer did you use?

 

Thanks. IIRC, it was thinned about 15%. The bed and fender were DA'd, worked over with the stud gun and body hammers/dollies, minimal filler where necessary, then primed with Rustoleum, blocked, primed, blocked...you get the idea.