Duplicolor Spray Paint Evaluation

[chasracer]

Hello All:

This past weekend I tried out some of the new Duplicolor Spray paint. If you have not seen this stuff, it is rather interesting and you can even watch a short video about the application at their website.

I had a couple of fiberglass components that I have been working on and wanted to try this stuff out, so I purchased a quart of primer and color. This material comes only in quarts, is premixed and you can strain it into you gun and then shoot. The material is lacquer based and I have used normal lacquers in the past and find them to provide the garage user a method of applying a nice paint job. Yes, lacquer requires more upkeep, but it looks like paint instead of the plastic covering we have today.

After prepping my first piece for painting, I opened the "gray" primer can to find that yes, you could call it gray but it looked more like an off-white. I stirred the paint thoughly, then poured some in a plastic mixing cup, but the color stayed about the same. The gun I used for this was a new Devilbiss HVLP touch-up one that I had picked up recently. Balance and weight of the gun are good, making it rather easy to get into tight areas such as door jambs and edge areas. Setup was 125 pounds to a gun mounted regulator set to just a touch over 10 pounds with the trigger pulled. I then adjusted the gun's volume control until a full, steady stream of air was passing through the cap.

So it was time to lay down a little bit of primer. The piece that I was shooting still had some sanding scratches in it, but normally I apply a few coats of primer to help fill those areas and smooth it out. In this case I found two issues, one the primer is really, really thin stuff and it took a number of coats just to get the part colored. Then as it dryed out, I realized that this primer wasn't really doing anything as a filler. Sanding scratches looked like, well sanding scratches. I let it flash out, then applied several more coats and to tell the truth it didn't really do a thing for the scratches. Now having said that, I do understand that this is not a filling primer, but most primers will normally build up a little bit at least and this one simply did not. Another issue that I had was the very light gray color of the material. Unless I took the part and moved it around in the light I was having a hard time really seeing the "smoothness" of the part.

I decided at this point to try a little experiment. I took about an ounce of the color (Dark Blue) and mixed it with the remaining primer in the mixing cup which produced something like a Petty Blue color. I shot this on the part giving it about 3 coats. I could now make out some minor areas that need additional work plus the sanding scratches really stood out now.

So, what did we learn here? One, unless your part or car as it were is in really darned near perfect shape, this primer is out. I am not even sure that it would cover and build out chipped areas that you have feathered out. Second, the final sanding for this material appears to need a much higher grade of paper. For these parts I was at 220 grade which I have used in the past easily. I would move up to at least 320, maybe even 400 before shooting this primer. Third, if you want a dark base under your paint, this one isn't it. The color is very light although from the can you would think that it would be a bit darker. If you decide to use this primer, I would suggest tinting it a little with your final color.

Paint application itself was easy and the paint flowed well although I think I had my gun setup a touch on the dry side or it might have been the air conditions. Again, this is premixed stuff so you don't really have the control that you would have mixing your own.

As I was not real happy with this primer, I went back to what I know works. I mixed up a small batch of Mason Grey primer with a 70+ degree thinner and shot the second part. Results were exactly what I expected, and save for a few really deep scratches that I knew were there, the part turned out really nice. I fix those scratches and squirt a bit more primer on it, this part is ready for paint.

My next post on this will be priming the rest of the car with Mason and then shooting the Duplicolor for the color coats and clear. Should be interesting.

[audtatious]

Are you sure you really want to do the whole car in duplicolor after the primer experience? I'd consider at this point to look into a name-brand paint instead of one known as touch up....

Good writeup

[chasracer]

Yes, from the looks of the paint that I have in blue I believe it will be okay. It appears to be quite a bit thicker than the primer and again maybe the primer was meant to be this thin, I am not sure but it didn't produce the results that I wanted. The only issue that really concerns me is that I will have to stay inside of their weather window to get decent results from it. With mix your own it is much easier as I keep different levels of lacquer thinner on hand to deal with weather conditions.

One thing along this line that I may try is mixing the color for the final passes with maybe 10-15 % high temperature thinner to make it flow out well. I have one part that I will be able to experiment with so at least I should know what I will be getting into before attacking a larger panel area.

I do understand your point of view, in fact I am wondering about the cost. Initially it looked pretty good in comparison to normal lacquer at about $80 per gallon for Duplicolor. But if it goes on as thin as the primer did that could increase the cost quite a bit. Compared to something like House of Kolor, it's still a bargain however the colors are very limited.

Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it. I want to put posts up that have some value to the community and hopefully will help someone out.

[chasracer]

Well, this week did not work out as planned. I had hoped that I would have the chance to lay down some color on a couple of pieces by now, but a water pipe in the house springing a pinhole leak and a problem with one of my other vehicles has hampered my efforts.

Assuming the weather cooperates this weekend, I will get these parts painted and report back my findings. I am surprised that there was only one post, but I guess I am not dealing with my normal group of hot rodders.

[audtatious]

Good luck with it. Take lots of pix

If this works out would it end up being cheaper than using regular automotive paint? Easier maybe?

[chasracer]

Thanks!

This stuff was running about $20 a quart locally at the Advance Store, but I noticed last week that they have upped the price to $23 and they are carrying additional supplies such as 5 gallons of a different primer and a couple of different thinners. All of these items have the Duplicolor name on them so my thought is that this stuff might just be catching on a bit - at least around here.

I have only actually sprayed their primer at this point and it was about as easy as you could ask for, setup the gun, strain the material into your gun, and start shooting. Surface prep is everything when it comes to painting no matter what type of paint you are shooting. And a lot of people who have never painted a large surface have no idea of the amount of work that it takes to get a nice smooth finish. It's easily 80%+ of the job. The nice thing about lacquers is that making a mistake is not a heart attack issue. Let it dry out, sand out the mistake and reshoot the area. Fixed. You're going to colorsand and buff it out anyway, so no worry there. Try that with a catalyzed clear coat over a basecoat paint. No fun.

A lot of people question the durability of lacquer and while I am not talking about this brand at the moment as I do not have anything to base it on, my experience with lacquer in the past has shown that it can be quite durable especially for the car-guy crowd. We take care of our stuff, we wash it often, keep the pigeon poop off of it and keep it waxed. That's really all that lacquer needs and if it does dull out a bit over time, normally you can buff it right back up to a beautiful shine with an afternoon of work. GM used lacquer on a lot of it's products right into the late 70s, early 80s. Sure, factory paint is a bit better than anything you can shoot, but that is true for basecoat/clearcoat catalyzed paints too. For someone who wants a nice paint job, has the tools to do it themselves and doesn't mind the extra work involved, it's a hard paint to beat. Very forgiving. In fact, mix up a batch of lacquer primer lets say and you only use half of it. Well, just pour it back in the primer can - no problem. Try that with anything else, no don't actually try it, you'll just waste your material.

Right now, my G's paint is beat up pretty bad on the front end from road debris blasting and chips. My car color is red and I like the color. Now I know that finding a factory match lacquer is possible, but also expensive so I will probably go with an available red that is very close to the current factory color, heck the factory color fades anyway and I doubt if anyone could tell the difference. Shooting the jams is no big issue, just some extra work so it will look like a factory job. It's all in the little details that counts. What I really look forward to is the fact that I can always touchup the paint in the future if I need too.

I am going to use this Duplicolor stuff (assuming that those two parts come out the way they should!) on another vehicle and with the amount of paint that I need, it looks like it will work out to 3 quarts of color, 2 quarts of clear plus the primer. So for about $100 for the color/clear and a $15 can of primer, I will have a new paint job. And if this works out okay, I have a small older pickup that will get painted with this stuff too. It's the perfect candidate.

Again, I had hoped to lay down a bit of color this past weekend but ended up having to R&R a transmission in my son's racecar instead. It's not exactly rules you know, more of a guideline as it where.....somethings just have to be done first!

I also found a few blems in one of the pieces and worked those out with a little bit of catalyzed spot putty, more sanding and another dose of Mason primer. Part looks really spot-on now and ready for a color/clear coat. We'll be shooting the Duplicolor Performance Red on this part and later on, the other part will be shot with their Deep Blue.

I also finally found the dang-gum battery charger for my digital camera that has been MIA for about 3 months now. How the heck it ended up at the deep end of a kitchen drawer is beyond me. I read the FAQ on posting pics, I assume I am okay if I store the pics on my own server and provide them? I did not see anything about size, is that controlled by the configuration of the board?

Okay, I came back to this and posted a couple of pictures of my son's racecar that we painted in a white lacquer just over two years ago. Save for the normal scratches and chips that you get with drag racing a car, the finish looks just as good as it did when we finished it. If you go to our website, you can find the full story on the buildup of this car too, along with some bodyworking tips.

First image below is just after finishing the painting, allowing it to dry for a day and unmasking. As you can see we had it on dollys that really help out in a tight garage area. The second shot is after a quick rubout, look at the shine on the rear quarter panel, you can see a reflection of my toolbox sitting across from it. This paint color was Competition White without a clearcoat, went on fairly well although I had some issues getting around the underside of the hoodscoop that left a dry, rough area that took some extra compounding work. This was also my first experience with a HVLP gun and I know now that I was off a bit on the settings time. If anyone is looking to start doing some paint work, I would certainly avoid the old siphon guns as the HVLP guns really put the material on rather than in the air. Makes shooting in a home garage doable. And don't avoid the low-cost stuff, I got mine from Eastwood in a two-gun package for about $150 and they are perfect for this work. They would be junk in a production shop within months though.

Not seeing much response to this stuff, so I am not sure if it is worth continuing to pass along my experiences here. Maybe this group of people are just bolt-on, buff and polish types. That's cool, enjoy your cars anyway you can.

Modified by chasracer at 11:07 AM 6/29/2009





Modified by chasracer at 11:22 AM 6/29/2009

Modified by chasracer at 7:27 AM 7/2/2009

Modified by chasracer at 7:37 AM 7/2/2009
Modified by chasracer at 11:41 AM 1/8/2010