Automotive Paint tools

tossing around the idea of painting my 86 4runner crawler

i have a 5" orbital sander and 5" angle grinder sanding pad currently

looking to see what other sanding tools i should get for a mediocre garage paint job

So far I'm seeing the eastwood contour sanding block and then either a electric DA sander or the eastwood air straightline sander

I havnt even started to shop for paint guns and tape yet but let me know what tools and consumables you guys like

Eastwood Straight Line Air Sander

That looks good enough to me, spraybomb time!

How nice are you wanting it to be?

Steve300xcw said:

How nice are you wanting it to be?

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nice for a crawler but bad for a show car

so far the plan would be to paint/sand with the doors and hood closed and remove the side mirrors and maybe the front and rear lights

theres some small dents and dent repairs that i'll throw some bondo on, and a couple big dents (one in the pic) that i cant pull that im going to have a body shop price for me

Get a paintless dent removal kit from amazon to pull out the bigger dents, or get a Vevor stud welding dent puller kit (also from amazon). The air block sander is a good idea, too. I recently painted the passenger side of my silverado - my first time ever painting a vehicle or doing body work. It wasn't hard, just time consuming. Don't get bondo brand body filler. I like this body filler - it's sooo much more smooth than bondo. Smears on similarly to drywall mud. I only used a 5" makita RA sander, and I thought it looked dead nuts straight, but after painting I can clearly see that I should have used a block sander. Oh well, definitely better than it was. I used a base coat/clear coat from a local auto paint supplier and a $50ish HF spray gun, same tip for both base and clear. Base went down wonderfully, but the clear flashed too quickly so it didn't have time to level and I now get to sand out all the orange peel. I did 7 layers of clear, so I have plenty of room to sand it away.

Damage is from rescuing a buddy who got stuck on the trail. The silverado has a winch, so I drove that out. Trail got tight on the downhills, and no way to back up the trail. Dragged passenger side pretty hard




Rustoleum rattle can primer. Sanded, more bodyfiller, more primer, more sanding...


Base coat


After clear. Some angles look great, some you can definitely see waves from the uneven sanding of the random orbital. Block sanding would have helped there. And yes, I have new fender flares to put on.





I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was actually a lot of fun, and I saved a ton of money. Body shops quoted me $14k to repair, so insurance was going to total it out. Since I was at fault, my rates would have gone up a ton.

If you can get to the back side of the dent shove a football basketball or whatever in it and then air it up to push the dent out closer. Then make sure it's not gonna tin can pop back in. Body work, get a long air sander and start the work part of body work

To prevent tin canning, get a plastic tipped hammer and tap around the perimeter of the dent to relieve stress. Pretty crazy how well it works. I used a come-along connected to a tree to put pressure on the dents, and I could see the dent release by just tapping around the perimeter. Then snug up the come-along a bit more, a bit more tapping...

Bodj Built said:

To prevent tin canning, get a plastic tipped hammer and tap around the perimeter of the dent to relieve stress. Pretty crazy how well it works. I used a come-along connected to a tree to put pressure on the dents, and I could see the dent release by just tapping around the perimeter. Then snug up the come-along a bit more, a bit more tapping...

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i've got a hot glue gun puller that worked for one dent

youve convinced me to get a stud welder setup

i"ll definitely try the hammer trick, cuz i ended up with some tin canning

TTMotorsports said:

If you can get to the back side of the dent shove a football basketball or whatever in it and then air it up to push the dent out closer. Then make sure it's not gonna tin can pop back in. Body work, get a long air sander and start the work part of body work

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i'll have to give my interior another look, i was trying to avoid it just because my interior isnt the easiest to take apart anymore

but youre right that would be a good way to get that dent

First time doing body work, restoring a 72 J4700. Digging around I found positive reviews on Astro Pneumatics guns for beginners. Shot epoxy primer out of their 1.5 HPLV gun and worked great. Bought a 1.3 HTE for the single stage I'm getting ready to shoot.

Get yourself a bunch of different size Dura blocks for sanding.

If you're just going to do one paint job, I wouldn't spend the money on a inline sander. Good ones are very expensive. Spend the money on some big Dura Blocks/sand paper and get your triceps all puffy and full of blood....................then buy beer cause your arms are sore.

Example of what you can get without all the fancy equipment. Just the few different sizes and shapes of Dura Blocks. Add in 2x4's and pool noodles wrapped in sand paper.

There's about 2+ gallons of bondo on that hood. Wasn't planing to use the hood, just needed to get a shape to pull a mold.




This is after taking it to 2k grit by hand.









That's like a $30k+ paint job kind of finish................all done by hand. In my case any imperfections would get transferred into the mold. So I had to put the effort in. But I'm just showing that's it's possible.

As others have said, work dents from the outside to the center. Remember that when dents are fixed, they will still look like ****. All you're after is being able to fill the low parts with just a skim coat of filler and the metal high spots aren't so high that sanding will cut through them.

Stud welders are stupid cheap for how effective they are

Stud welder work great for any dents with a crease. Instead of using the dent puller that comes with it, get a pair of long handled side cutters and a 12" piece of square tubing (alum is best if you have one laying around). Weld the stud on, grab it with the side cutters (dont cut through it), and use the tubing as a fulcrum for the cutters to pull on the stud. Gives you better control.

A set of cheap dura-blocks off amazon. If you plan to swap paper a lot, get the hook-it blocks and paper. You can remove the paper, and re-use it later. Stick-it paper doesn't do that because of the glue on the back. However, the hook-it paper doesn't work very well on normal blocks (pool noodles, etc).

If you are going to block any bondo, use the longest block you can. Makes the work straighter. Also, run the block diagonally, not inline. Gives you a wide sanding pattern, without leaving a line at the edge of the sandpaper. Use 80-120 grit paper for your body work. Anything courser than 320 grit needs primer, or you will see the scratches.
An orbital sander will work for most of your sanding. Just make sure to keep the pad flat. If you tip it on edge, it will cut grooves in the panel, and you will see them after paint. A straightline sander is mostly for sanding filler, or big flat panels. It will cut grooves if not held correctly also.

The darker the color, the more you will see imperfections. Whites are good for hiding dents.
Single stage paints usually have a higher build thickness, so they will cover faster (and hide some scratches) better than base/clear. Also cheaper. Just don't last as long.

Good hammer/dolly kit
Football
Shrinking disk
Guide coat (especially if beer is involved in the sanding process)

A cheap orbital sander and a cheap harbor freight paint gun will do a surprisingly decent job. I just redid my YJ tub last summer with exactly that. Then I painted it with epoxy primer and a single stage paint from Summit. I don't have any good pictures of the finish, but there is some orange peel, 2 or 3 runs, and a little bit of solvent popping from laying it on too thick.



Using longer sanding blocks will get a flatter/smoother surface than just the orbital, but it all depends on how far you want to go with it.
Guns tip sizes are typically matched to the type of paint they're designed to spray.
For paint, you can choose to use a single stage or a base/clear system. All systems should have a spec sheet available to tell you how much and which reducer to use, your application window, etc.