Painted my car for $125

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Not a typo .... $125 was the total cost ... took only 3 to 4 relaxing days .... mostly waiting for first color to dry before doing the second color.

I will explain how I did it and give pointers if anyone has a "beater type car" they want to brighten up.

No paint booth , no fumes , no stress , no masking , not a drop of paint on me , the floor , or the trim .

Looks like a million dollars going down the street .... most fun I have had in a long time. I did it over a year ago and it still looks great ... pictures to follow.

I turn 70 this year , am a retired auto body man and professional painter , owned my own shop since 1973 and sold it to my young brother in the mid 1990's .

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Early 1980's Oldsmobile Omega .... it was my late mom's car .... only had about 60,000 km on it (36,000 mi) ... has the excellent Iron Duke 4 cyl engine with throttle body fuel injection and gets up to 30 mpg .... we have some nasty winters here and I use it as a "beater" second car.

There is something therapeutic about having such a car ... never worry if weather is crappy , slush and mud and snow don't matter , parking lot dings don't matter .... a true utility car .

But the 30 year old paint had turned ugly .... insurance values the car at $500 and there was no way to justify spending thousands for a paint job .... plus it has a lot of small hail dents and some rust thru spots on the lower drivers door

Here is a "before" picture ..... I went to the car wash , used a coarse sponge , strong soap in a bucket of water , and scrubbed all the road film and dirt off ..... then a high pressure rinse .

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Some background ....

This Omega is an extremely hot car in the summer. No air conditioning and the fresh air vent was very poor .... and that is how my mom ended up with it in 1983

It was almost new at the GM dealers lot ... an elderly couple had bought it ... complained it was too hot .... dealer installed a sunroof to help move some air ... they were still not happy and exchanged it for a different car with air conditioning.

My mom was looking for another car and the dealer gave her a very good price .... but boy was that car hot .... I have owned black cars that were cooler .... the Omega dash controls are vent - heat - defrost and the vent only let a tiny amount of air into the cabin.

Once I owned it I also realized the water control valve was letting some warm engine coolant into the heater core so the vent air was even warmer than the outside air .... sheesh !!!!

Took a light and was going to take a look under the dash to see about changing the coolant valve .... and guess what I found perfectly hidden under the steering column .... two huge pull-out vents that nobody had ever seen or used ... including me.

Why do I mention all that .... ???? .... because even though those newly discovered vents ended the hot-car syndrome I decided to paint the top a lighter color that would not get as hot in the sun.

Here it is . First color done . I had installed a pinstripe to divide the colors and then painted up to the edge.

Did I mention I painted the whole car with a brush and Tremclad type paint ... ???

True story , and later I will tell you how.

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OK .... I lied ... but just a tiny little bit .... said I didn't do any masking ..... but wherever I needed to work some paint close to chrome trim I would put on a strip of tape.

The front header panel had a lot of stone chips which I simply brushed over and they partly filled in .... looks good from a distance.

Actually the car had lots of chipped paint and scratches and flaws all over .... but I didn't sand anything .... remember this is a fast economy job .

There were spots of surface corrosion and flaking paint .... I simply used a scraper to remove the loose stuff ... then painted right over it.

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Drivers side after top painted .... notice the spot of spray bomb primer next to drivers door handle .... bad surface rust spot there so I smoothed it out and primed it .... that is where I installed a pinstripe to divide the colors and needed a smooth surface for the tape to stick.

Pinstripe comes with a thin clear outer layer which is normally removed right after stripe is installed .... in this case I left the protective film on until the painting was done .... made for a perfect edge without having to use masking tape.

Turns out there was a lot of penetrated rust under that wide chrome trim at the bottom of the drivers door .... I removed the trim and sealed the holes with fiberglass ... then reinstalled the trim. Rest of the lower body was good.

I had a bit of old Tremclad black which I used to paint the drip rails on the roof as well as the front cowl grillwork around the wipers .... took about 15 minutes .... much easier than trying to fuss with the yellow in those areas .... looks good too.

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Four days later both colors done and about to drive home.

More details later but old guys like me need to take a nap after typing a couple of posts .... haaaa

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Two years later the car looks just as good , have been driving it since then , later I will take a picture and post it.

As I also mentioned I will explain how to do a paint job like this .... not very complicated .... but not recommended for folks who put lids on paint cans with a sledge hammer and dip paintbrushes up to their elbow .

As I said earlier , I didn't get one drip of paint on me , the floor , the trim , or anywhere .... not even a drop of paint on the rim of the paint can .... the stuff you see on the shop floor under the doors is sweeping dust I put there to soak up the oily type rustproofing I sprayed along the bottom .... more about that later.

thanks
Arnie

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That certainly is a 'ten-foot' car, just by your photos. So I have a question about Tremclad paint...I've seen terrible brushed and rollered paint jobs; do you not have lines caused by brushes and rollers, because Tremclad is a self-levelling paint, given a smoothish surface? And why it has a better time filling rock chips? Okay, two questions....

 

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This is the only thread I have started on this forum and have decided to also use it as an "about me" type of thread where I will share parts of my life regarding my 30 years as an auto-body shop owner and painter and how I got my start in 1973.

Typically , I am a very fussy painter ... always aiming for perfection ... stressful , difficult , and requires plenty of effort to achieve . I have also done a lot of trophy-winning custom paint jobs back in the early days . Since the 1980's our main market was collision repairs because that is what brings in the revenue to pay the bills.

I have also owned several station wagons , none of which I kept (darn)
I love this forum and only recently joined because I think I used to own the 1960 Frontenac featured in the thread below .... my first post is around # 38
1960 frontenac 2dr wagon | Station Wagon Forums

Meanwhile I will continue with my $125 paint job.

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The only rust-through on the Omega was the bottom of the drivers door under the 3" chrome trim .... the holes are where the clips were that held it on the car ... both the metal fasteners on the ends were still OK and I reused them.

First you need an exotic piece of rare hardwood from a foreign land ... which I just happened to have in my miscellaneous parts drawer .... true story ... I will fill in those details later .... it also involves helicopters .... I have had an interesting life ... haaa

I selected one that fit inside my flimsy and rusted door and then fiber-glassed the lower door inside and out to seal it off and give it some strength.

Normally I would have spent a couple of days steel welding new metal but remember this is a 3-4 day economy job. When I reinstalled the chrome trim I ran a thick bead of body filler inside it as an adhesive to hold it in place and also add some additional rigidity.

Before putting the inside door panel back on I brushed a liberal amount of wax-oil type rustproofing to prevent further corrosion (more about that later)

Most of those supplies I already had on the shelf but I estimate the cost would only amount to under $10 and about 4 hours of work .... 3 of those hours were waiting for layers of fiberglass to cure

 

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I have been a car guy my whole life .... my other hobby is helicopters and around 1981 I trained to fly the Bell 47G2 and loved every minute of it. It is an expensive hobby and I haven't flown in years but still love them.

Stan is a friend in Illinois and built his own turbine Helicycle kit helicopter. He has his own business specializing in old-school , hand built , curved wood staircases .... mostly for wealthy folks in huge mansions the picture is a 22,000 sq ft $14 million home where he installed the three level curved staircases. The stairs alone cost the equivalent of a 3 bedroom bungalow.

Often the wood is exotic and imported and rare .... rich folks always want something unique .... a few years ago Stan had mailed me a fragile gift and used some of his leftover sticks to strengthen the package and it is one of them that now holds the bottom of my Omega door together haaaa

The picture is from when Stan flew to the house to take pictures of his work after everything was finished. He built the helicopter in his shop and has flown it for hundreds of hours.

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Tremclad type paints , Rustoleum , and many other exterior oil based paints are air dried and much the same as automotive enamels in the 1950's , 1960's and 1970's

Then the acrylic enamels came along which you added a hardener and paint cured by chemical reaction.

I sprayed lots of it in the early days .... not easy to do ... had to get it on thick and wet enough so it would flow and be glossy .... too heavy and it would run or sag .... too dry and it would have a pebbly orange-peel surface.

Turns out I was a natural born painter and even my first paint jobs were better than any other shop in our city . Mostly I was paranoid about turning out a crappy job and would be embarrassed if anyone saw it.

The paint I brushed on the Omega is a low cost , off the shelf , air dried enamel .... but the same things apply to brushing as to spraying .... have to get it wet enough to flow , otherwise too dry the brush marks are obvious .

Other than that the most important thing is using a good brush and using the brush properly . More about that next post.

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Keep this post coming! good information, ive seen some pretty decent brush jobs in my day...roller ones too...

 

This is my family all chipping in to do a rustoleum paint job on our odyssey. It was about 50.00 in materials it took 3 days to dry to the touch but flowed out so well it required no polishing that pic of the roof is how well it laid out. The roof was rolled, the drivers side was rattle canned and the passenger side was a Wagner power painter. This was done to show what could be done cheap at home by anyone! If the car isn’t worth the cost of a paint job I say give her hell! Tremclad/rustoleum are oil based the main reason it flows so well. Thinned with mineral spirits at 50/50 out of direct sunlight and around 60 degrees outside .

 

Nice job and great to see some one showing others what can be done! I hijacked your thread a bit but I agreed with you and wanted to show anyone can do it! Great looking car too by the way. I liked the 2 tone.