Hi

I am near completion of my locost kit car and am ready to start painting!

The body has been fabricated at home from aluminium and as the panels have been rivetted onto the chassis, it would be very difficult and time consuming to strip the whole thing down to spray. We have therefore decided to consider using brush/coach paint like the old cars!

Has anyone ever painted this way? If so I would be grateful to hear you advice and recommendations about which products to use and how to go about doing it!

Thanks

Take a look at: http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=67786

You will need to use an acid etch primer, I have bushed on "acid-8" primer and found this to flatten well, might be worth a look? But be careful as this might react with the topcoat (do a test piece first).

Cheers

Dan

[Edited on 13/7/07 by Bluemoon]

Genuine coach paint is difficult to get hold of, there is a lot of "brushable" car paint that is no use. Ally does need a lot of preparation it must be clean and you do need an etch primer, Acid 8 is good. If you are worried about reaction you should use Barcoat or similar. this is an alcohol based primer that is good at not reacting with any other solvent , however you do need to clean the spray gun out with methylated spirit as soon as you are done otherwise you risk knackering it ( voice of experience ) once it sets off there isn't any solvent that will touch the stuff!

even if you are built up you should seriously consider spraying, you can take the glass fibre bits off and mask up everything else, it will be a lot of work but you risk a lot more if the brush painting goes wrong. Again voice of experience I got proper coach paint for one of my land rover's this went on pretty well so when it came to paint the other side I bought brushable car paint which is a drippy runny disaster. I will have to strip the panels bare and spray the whole thing to get it looking right.

Caber