{"id":399,"date":"2017-09-29T10:27:20","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T10:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/52.207.233.110\/?p=399"},"modified":"2024-08-21T14:34:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T14:34:54","slug":"paint-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/touchupdirect.com\/blog\/?p=399","title":{"rendered":"Paint It Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You can\u2019t just park your car out back and paint it&#8230; But you can! Don\u2019t assume that the TouchUpDirect crew sells paint all day and then heads home with no color under their collective nails. We use our stuff, because we\u2019re gearheads too.<\/p>\n<p>Take this backyard sprayjob from a few months back: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.off-road.com\/trails-events\/trails\/backyard-offroading-in-san-diego-anderson-truck-trail-54278.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a high-mileage trail rig with failing factory clearcoat needing a respray of both the hood and roof<\/a>. Now, it\u2019s easy to match your original color (<a href=\"\/touch-up-paint\/automotive\/\">TUD will help find your correct factory match<\/a>), but this is TUD Life, so it\u2019s got to be interesting \u2013 we don\u2019t do anything that isn\u2019t. There had to be some way to mod the paint on this truck.<\/p>\n<p>After experimenting with a few paint schemes, including a repop of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tanks-encyclopedia.com\/ww2\/US\/M3_Halftrack.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">World War 2 halftrack insignia<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.navy.mil\/ah_online\/ftrStory?id=91717\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">North Atlantic high-seas anti-submarine camo<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bringatrailer.com\/2009\/06\/14\/original-paint-1981-toyota-sr5-4x4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a clone of factory \u201880s Toyota stripes<\/a>, we settled on another throwback: an old school FJ-style gel-coat white roof. Why? Less interior heat, no hassle with blending, and a retro-cred shout-out to \u2018froading Toyotas of yore.<\/p>\n<p>Painting like this is easy: <a href=\"https:\/\/touchupdirect.com\/explore\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">TouchUpDirect can equip you with spray cans full of your choice of colors<\/a> \u2013 several would be needed for a roof the size of a 4Runner \u2013 plus the necessary clearcoat. In our case, and because we work here, there were a few paint returns on the back shelf that needed using, one of which was a lush white from the gen-two Supra. To our pleasure, it was not a white-white, but one that had some grey and yellow in it, mimicking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fj.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the natural white of the old FJ40, 43 and 45 roofs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If there\u2019s one thing to do right when automotive painting, it\u2019s not the painting \u2013 it\u2019s the prep. <a href=\"https:\/\/help.touchupdirect.com\/en-US\">Following the rules when painting is a good idea<\/a>: if you don\u2019t clean, sand and reclean before masking the working surface, no amount of technique will make the color stick. We sanded, then sanded again, then cleaned and scraped and sanded some more. Because this roof was not going to be seen too often (and it was on a 250,000-mile 4Runner that\u2019s seen its share of dents, rock attacks and tree gougings), we were going for perfect adhesion, not a perfect look, and so some of the sanding was done with a palm sander. The roof\u2019s flat surface made this easier; however, it\u2019s no substitute for hand-sanding on visible body panels. Our goal was for the paint to go on, stay on, protect the metal, cool the cabin, and look good at 10 feet.<\/p>\n<p>To be frank, we got lucky: it would have been perfectly workable to rattle-can the whole roof (we will paint the hood that way), but we have a neighbor \u2013 a retired Green Beret; a man who knows how to get stuff done \u2013 who\u2019d recently recreated a small-block Chevelle he\u2019d owned in the \u201870s. In the process of shadetreeing this Chevelle, he learned to paint, and shot the car in his backyard to great effect.<\/p>\n<p>The rules for making your backyard paintjob turn out are universal \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the spray gun that made this job click. Buy good paint, do good prep and exact masking, understand the paint and the applicator, manage the clock, work out of the sun and on a day with no breeze (which is hard on a sunny SoCal day), and you too can paint quickly and correctly. All told, from parking the truck to pulling off the masking tape, it took six hours. When you follow the instructions, even big paintjobs can be easy.<\/p>\n<p>Look for a full story on the steps we took to make this six-hour paintjob work right coming up in Off-Road.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can\u2019t just park your car out back and paint it&#8230; But you can! Don\u2019t assume that the TouchUpDirect crew&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tud_fp_data":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[380,111,24,43,240,305,143,137,130,302,774,129,45,69,234,766],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-knowledge-tutorials","tag-automotive-maintenance","tag-body-paint","tag-car-care","tag-diy","tag-diy-painting","tag-diy-projects","tag-homemade","tag-paint-care","tag-paint-prep","tag-paint-techniques","tag-paint-tools","tag-prep","tag-touch-up","tag-touch-up-paint","tag-touchupdirect","tag-vehicle-painting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>DIY Vehicle Painting Tips for a Professional Finish | TouchUpDirect Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover essential tips for DIY vehicle painting to achieve a professional finish. Learn how to prep and paint your car effectively. Shop now.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/touchupdirect.com\/blog\/?p=399\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DIY Vehicle Painting Tips for a Professional Finish | TouchUpDirect Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Discover essential tips for DIY vehicle painting to achieve a professional finish. Learn how to prep and paint your car effectively. 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