I knew a race mechanic that would always have the best sounding and running car in the county, but he was by no means a body and paint man. His solution to paint was to get the body stright enough and mix amaco clear gas 1 to 1 with rustolum oil based paint. Have to say it did always come out looking slick, just always thought this was strange.

MY father always painted his construction company and farm trucks bright construction yellow with paint brush and rollers using a oil base paint. Most of them came out looking pretty good, like a spray job with lots of "peal" in it. I don't think the oil base paint you can buy these days holds up like it did back in the day. I think they have legislated all of the performance out of paint these days, seems that way on house and trim and floor/deck paint anyway.

I seem to remember my grandad painting one of his stock cars with a spray gun that attached to a vacumm cleaner.

Hey my dad had one of those sprayers that attached to a vacuum. In fact I think he still has it,but never used it. Luckily graemlins/clonk.gif

In the old days they would paint a car with a powder puff.

AT the age of 16, 1978 I had one of those large White Chevrolet decals, the one that is almost as large as the tailgate, on my tailgate of my '64 El Camino. When I took the decal off, some paint came off with it. SOOO, I got the bright idea to repaint my tailgate with a 120v airless sprayer. Well to make a long story short, the gun wouldn't spray the paint, who whould have thought that I needed to thin the paint, and I ended up using a 4" brush to finish the job. I must admit from 20 feet away it didn't look bad. BUT, when it came time to clean the paint gun I used Gasoline. Well gas and an electric operated paint gun don't mix. So when I tried to operate the gun with gas in it, it caught the gun on fire. Plus all the gas I had used to clean the gun on the ground also caught fire. I had a good size blister on my hand and the fire was contained just to the driveway and gun. Which was no longer usable. This story reminds me of the time I was looking at my folks 68 or so Dodge Polara around the same time, which had a 383 in it. I went to rev the motor up from under the hood. What I thought was the throttle linkage was the Column mounted shifter rod. Needless to say the car went into reverse, traveled across the steet, up the neighbor's driveway where I finaly got the car stopped a few feet from the neighbor's garage door.

David, Thanks for making my day! Great story.

37 rattle cans of cheap flat black on a 69 Nova. Thumb and fore finger had blisters on them from holding the buttons down. For the rusted out rear quarters that flopped in the breeze we use a rivet gun to tack on beer cans cut open and flatten out. With a straight 6 and a slip and slide power glide we would cruise gas tank after gas tank. Ahh the good old days.

1960 BMW....Spray can true blue. The trim, hubcaps and we cant forget the wipers were all painted fire engine red. When I was stationed in Germany in the mid 80's this was my pimp ride. Best thing is I had to push start it so parking on a hill was a must..Oh yeah..I did take it on the autobahn. The Germans looked at me like I was crazy. The funny things we do when were young. Now we older hot rodders look at the imports with their big wings and big tail pipe probably the same way I was looked at in my early hot rod days...

As a kid (14 years old) I painted a friend's car with Centari in a one car garage with the same type of vacume cleaner attachment already mentioned, My Dad gave me a particle mask to use as a safety precaution. The car didn't look half bad considering, but I'm sure my lungs lost some major lifespan. Also did two completes in the driveway at home with a wagner powerpainter and Centari Enamel, a 71 Plymouth Sport Fury and a 73 Olds Omega. The worst one was a 67 Dodge dart I painted while working at a gas station a few years later. I was prepping the car when a customer pulled in at the pumps and was offering some suggestions while I was pumping gas, he said attach a chain and let it hang to the floor and you'll ground the car and get less dirt in the paint. So the guy goes away and I start looking for a chain to do as he says, couldn't find a chain but did find some jumper cables so I attached the cables to the chrome rear bumper on the car then couldn't figure how to attach the other end to the floor so I just took and clamped them to the electrical conduit along the wall. Well I ended up with more dirt in that job than any I had painted in the driveway or anywhere else, it was like someone was throwing the stuff at the car while I painted. Maybe the conduit charged the car somehow? What a mess.

Originally posted by firstchevelle:
I knew a race mechanic that would always have the best sounding and running car in the county, but he was by no means a body and paint man. His solution to paint was to get the body stright enough and mix amaco clear gas 1 to 1 with rustolum oil based paint. Have to say it did always come out looking slick, just always thought this was strange. my car had a white rust-o-leum paint job on it when i got it...had the body work not been so bad it might have looked ok. he applied it with a paint roller then sanded it smooth!

I remember a when a friend of mine and I scored a 70 Catalina for $50. Had a 400 engine and it ran great. After doing a little four wheeling and mailbox thumping we decided to cut the roof off with a sawzall and buy a case of red spray paint to make a four door convertable. Looked great until we crushed the oil pan on a rock and it didn't run very well anymore. Good memories! Erik

Back in the early 80's my neighbor painted his 69 nova(which was in mint shape minus the paint) with gloss black rustoleum and one of those small 3 inch wide rollers. I remember it taking him all day to paint it with that small roller. The paint was so thick when he rolled it on that it had a finish like non skid paint they use on aircraft carrier decks.

My frist Complete paint job.. in 1962 was my 57 Plymouth Savoy .. It was a puke green, so I got a gallon of mis match Enamel. and a Gal of reducer for $16.00 at Klines Auto Supply..
Use the above mentioned Vacum ( Kerby cleaner ) attacment. Painted it out side. had to reduce it so thin to spray.. I neded a 70% ovelap to cover... It was a dark blue ( Ford Color) was dull. had bugs .. and dirt,, But it was not GREEN....
PS the neighbor hung out some wash and I got over spray on her sheets ( blue dots on white sheets) I had to cut there grass most of the summer as pay back %$!%#%@#$

well in the day of no cash for a compressor and needed to paint my car so i hooked a hose to the exhust and idled up the car and hooked to the gun and started spraying and it turned out perfect,chip foose would have been proud,but when i lifted the hood when i was all done i had paint all over everything ,,,( N O T )

I went and checked out a late 70's CJ-5 with a friend of my wifes, and actually didn't look too bad from 50 ft as we drove up. Oh man this dork rolled cheapo bedliner on the whole exterior, over rust, bondo, dirt etc. Kinda offended him when i asked what was up with the "Rubicon" decal on the hood.
I sprayed a utility trailer in the shop of a trucking company i worked for. About half way thru the oil-less compressor gave it up, so we stretched some hoses outside and hooked it up to the air tanks on my 18 wheeler. It actually did a pretty good job.

This story reminds me of the time I was looking at my folks 68 or so Dodge Polara around the same time, which had a 383 in it. I went to rev the motor up from under the hood. What I thought was the throttle linkage was the Column mounted shifter rod. Needless to say the car went into reverse, traveled across the steet, up the neighbor's driveway where I finaly got the car stopped a few feet from the neighbor's garage door. That is good!

If you have real dull paint you can wash the car with mineral spirits or just coat it with armor all and it will shine great for a while. That is what I did when the insurance adjuster came out when my car was smacked. Got $1,200 for a car that I paid $1,200 for 6 years and 70K miles prior to the wreck.

I guy I worked with painted his 87 Ford pick-up John Deere Green with a paint brush and rustoleum. No lie , it was only a 4 yr. old truck. He was a screw loose son of a gun, obviously. graemlins/clonk.gif

I sprayed my work truck with water based house paint. I'm not really proud of that fact, but it looks better than it did.LOL

When I was 19ish I had a beat up 71 impala 4 door hardtop, nice cruizer with power everything but I gave it no respect. One day I took the airbrush out and started fooling around on the car and ended up with a nicely done nude girl painted on the roof of the car. To truly appreciate it you needed to be standing on the hood of the car :rolleyes: and it wasn't very noticeable when viewed from the side. Truckers would pull their horn as I passed them down the road so I'm sure they had a good look. But I forgot about Grandma, she lived upstars of my family in our two story house. I still remember my Mom's face after she came back downstairs when Grandma yelled to her. The nude was painted spread and ready. The next day I repainted the whole car- in about twenty minutes. Live and learn :D

When I was in the Army many years ago, a friend of mines painted his car with house paint trying to hide it from the German Polizei..but thats another story! graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Mann, when I was 16 it was all about greay, primer (any type - if ya read my last post) loud exhaust, and Centerline wheels on my 355 Monza- Couldn't keep paint on the car with all the greasey finger prints, vendor stickers, and part swaping and continous parts breakage. I did finally spray in Centauri white. There was a huge beast of a bug of some sort combat crawling across the hood as I finished - it made it half way across - before the paint started seting up and there it sat frozen in time - covered in white acrylic enamel. Months later I finally wet sanded and buffed out the bug, but the legs and carcass was nasty. Ended up burning thru and had to respray the hood....Finally got a garage - and bug light....

Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s Mom’s, tank style vacuum with the sprayer attachment was always a first tool of choice, until I hooked it up to the suction side.

I also used the pressurized type fly sprayers, had to move fast and keep the pressure up.

The paint used was usually a mix of colored primer and lacquer paint, sometime straight lacquer. :D

Bob.LOL

Ricki on Trailer Park Boys was painting a big ole Chrysler with a roller on the Christmas special show! It looked like flat black paint he was using.My dads friend bought our 67 Meteor a long time ago and used a vacuum cleaner to paint it! It looked like crap,but then it always was!!
Gerry...