Painting my Disco

Hi,

I have to respray some of the panel I had to replace on my Disco, post crash, and I now have another car to restore which will need spraying as well.

Just wondered what size of compressor I should buy to paint the panels, spray underseal etc. I'm not going to use spray cans it will cost me a fortune by the time I'm done.

I was thinking of getting a small Clarke compressor but having no idea what I'm doing I don't know if the small ones would work?

Also because I will be respraying the panels in my Garage which is not going to be heated will this cause any problems, what type of paint should I use Cellulose or something else , I remember as a kid spraying an old MK2 Escort and the paint ended up looking like orange peel. Was funny because the car was vista orange.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Buy at least a 50 litre compressor, otherwise a small one will be struggling to keep up. You will also need an air dryer, fits in line and removes water from the compressed air feed, very important if you want to get a good finish. If you can find anywhere that stills sells cellulose paint don't forget an air fed mask as well. Most paint is now water based, and a pain to work with. It may be worth investing in an infra red heater to bring the temp up in the garage as well to aid drying amd prevent any problems.
Look on yell.com for local body repairers (not the big chain ones, smaller independants) and go and see them for advice. It may work out cheaper to do the prep work yourself then transport to a professional to have the paint applied. Smaller bodyshops will quite often do a respray for 3-500 quid if you prep everything yourself, cheaper than buying all the kit.
I have heard you can get a reasonable finish with hvlp sprayers (high volume, low pressure). There is also the option of using a roller, plenty of people have done it and achieved brilliant results for not much money.

As ^^^^ I'd recommend doing the prepwork and taking it to a bodyshop for them to do the actual paintwork if you want a really good finish. You need a proper booth to get top results on a car.

Doing it this way means that you ensure that the stripdown is done properly. When I get my D1 done I'll be stripping everything out, including rear & alpine windows, all lamps, bumpers off, door handles out etc etc - its these details that are frequently skipped over and masked off instead. Fine for a quick job but if you want it to look A1 then it needs to be done properly. IMHO

If you want to have a go, then I'd say 50l is the absolute minimum and you'll need a high CFM pump in order to keep up, ideally a 3hp one. You should get a HVLP spraygun (look for the cup on the top of the gun) as these generally use less air. Even so you'll be using between say 6-12CFM through the gun alone.

I haven't done this myself, but looked into it a while ago when I was about to restore my S2 landy.

Thanks guys, good advice as usual

get the biggest compressor you can aford