Put Down The Can: A Plea for Proper Paint Jobs

I'm concerned.

The soap box isn't something I like to crawl up on very often. I'm not a confrontational person. I let people cut in front of me to get on the bus, I agree to give rides to people who have their own transportation; I even apologize when people block the grocery store aisles with their carts. But there's a concerning trend in the young car enthusiast community that I just can't keep quiet about anymore.

My message here is simple: Stop spray painting your cars.

Seriously.

It will never look good, not in Krylon.

You may think your Civic's paint is absolutely shot. And it very well may be. Maybe it's turned pink from the sun, clearcoat burnt off by the sun in key places. Your friends make fun of your car. Your mother makes fun of your car. You need to do something.

But a new paint job, even a bargain-basement MAACO job (the one where you have to do all the taping-off beforehand) is going to cost at least $800. Your 1992 Acura isn't worth $500, let alone $800.

So do you keep your pink car, the one your friends and mother make fun of? I say suck it up. I know Honda paint sucks. Honda paint has always been bad. They made such exciting, well-sorted powertrains, such solid interiors, that something had to give. Your D16 may last 300,000 miles without so much as an air filter change, but the paint might only last half that.

This CRX has had a colorful existence to say the least.

So what, I say. There's a simple answer: if you can't afford a decent-quality repaint, you shouldn't try to rattle can the car yourself.

But, say you don't take my advice. It's an easy thing to disregard, anyway. The pressure of a crappy finish can drive people like me to a breaking point. "Everything else about this car is excellent," you say, "except it looks like it's spent its life being sandblasted on the salt plains of Utah." It's not your fault the previous owner chose a lame color, you might also say. "I want my car to stand out more," you might say, as you show me a picture of a matte red Lamborghini Gallardo. "You know, something like that."

Or maybe you want your Miata to disappear?

Needless to say, the Gallardo wasn't painted with 68 cans of KILZ Primer-and-paint-in-one. But you've already bought the paint. And you start painting.

Or maybe you're more particular. Maybe you want to tape off sections of your car that you don't want to have overspray, like the windshield, headlights, or the sunroof. Or maybe you don't, like many of the rattle can jobs I've seen.

You've chosen a great color (in your eyes): a simple matte black that cost you $0.96 a can. Where do you start? The hood? Okay. You begin with one of the bottom corners, but you quickly realize how big that piece of sheet metal is. One can is empty in about ten minutes. Next can, but you bought ten, so you're still feeling confident. And you continue up your hood, covering up that awful chalkboard pink with chalkboard black.

I'll spare you the rest of the process. But say you complete your rattle can paint job, like most people do. Your car has gone from red-ish to a totally sick matte black. Only you start to notice something as the many layers of paint dry.

If you stand back about ten feet, the car looks fine, but as you move closer you start to notice. Go back and take note of the size of spray nozzle on your KILZ, or your Krylon. Then take special notice of the breadth of the stream of paint as it comes out of the can. After that, you'll start to realize why there are so many streaks across every panel of your newly resprayed car.

I've never seen a rattle can job that looks natural, uniform, or better than if the owner had just left the paint as it was. You can always tell. And time mixed with the elements (the things that did your factory paint in to begin with) are only going to be less kind to your thin, spotty spray job.

To borrow phrasing from a local dealership group: For goodness sake, if you're gonna repaint your car, let's do it the right way, by taking it to a professional.