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After almost 1 year and a salty wisconsin winter, the paint job is holding up well. I did touch up a few rock chips but over all I am very pleased. click on pic for a better look. I also rebuilt the Turbo engine, placed OME dakar springs and torsion bars, trek master shocks, new BFG all terrains. removed the top and Im good to go for summer

 

looks good

 

damn, that looks great!

i dont get it. i tried this on my car and it turned out like complete crap. i used the flat black paint and thinned it to water like consistency but, when it dried it looked like it had white chalk lines in it and you could see every roller mark and line in the paint. i sanded it down and tried again and it still did it. i dont know if its the flat paint but im not very happy with the results. i thought it would be easier then spraying but its not looking that way.

 

why did you thin it down so much, paint can only be thinned to a certain extent before it starts to lose its bonding, coverage, and adhesion properties. also what did you thin with? latex you can use water, but oil based only paint thinner

 

you have to do at least 8-10 coats. you're going to see the underlying color showing through for at least 5 of them.

but honestly, i've read all 50000 pages of budget paint thread on the moparts forum, and the secret is: Interlux Brightside paint. seriously. search for aussie driver's miata. brightside is a yacht paint that you can roll on straight out of the can with no thinning. it self levels just like the tremclad but you only need three coats and with wetsanding between coats your paint will look better than most factory jobs. it's actually incredible.

http://www.miataturbo.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5199

there's this guy's miata. looks amazing for a gallon of brightside (what, $40?)..



that's after two coats, unthinned, before final wetsanding!

edit: the trick is to roll it on in one direction, say left to right, then wait 10 minutes and go over it again with a fresh, clean roller in the opposite direction, say up and down, with almost no pressure at all on the roller. that gets rid of bubbles and roller lines.

 

Looks real good. I've not seen this info before. Looks like a better option than rustoleum. Thanks.

 

the paint I used was Rustoleum professional thinned with mineral spirits

 

Oh, I know....and it looks real fine. I was thinking how convenient it was with the Brightside it was ready to go right out of the can with only three coats. A bit less labor....which I'm all for.

BTW, are those stock 6" steel rims? Did you chrome them yourself? With chrome spray can? And what size tires do you have mounted on them?

 

Swerks, thanks for the update. I'm ready to order some Interlux paint! Just trying to get everything else fixed first.

 

stock chrome steel wheels (just cleaned up) tires are 31x10.5x15

 

If you want to test it out first, most marine stores sell the Brightside in half pint containers (for pinstriping). I bought it locally for about $11.99. Then I decided to sell my truck so I'll probably end up painting my mom's Civic

The gallons are more, about $30 or $40, and you might need two of them for a truck, but the paint comes out far better (imo).

 

I may try the boat paint on mine. I just bought a bed that isn't rusted out and am going to be repainting the whole thing. Can I get Brightside at marine stores?

Rob

 

That seems to be the big "misconception". This method is A LOT harder to do than spraying on automotive paint out of a good HVLP gun in a good booth. The rollon method takes several coats and TONS of sanding. You can either have it cheap OR easy apparently - you're gonna pay one way or the other!