Painting a truck cap

From : steve k

Q: hi i just bought a used cap for my 99 ram quad last night. excellent cap but its red. my truck is white. can i buy a few regular spray cans that exactly match the white color of my truck i feel i could do a good job painting this with spray cans instead of having to do it with a spray gun compressor etc. that i dont have. or am i wrong thanks steve .

Replies:

From : gfrfan

steve k wrote hi i just bought a used cap for my 99 ram quad last night. excellent cap but its red. my truck is white. can i buy a few regular spray cans that exactly match the white color of my truck i feel i could do a good job painting this with spray cans instead of having to do it with a spray gun compressor etc. that i dont have. or am i wrong thanks steve i did the same thing a few years back with a fiberglass cap. it was silver and red and i painted it a medium blue. came out ok. not sure how white over red would do though. maybe primer grey first. .

From : greg o

hi i just bought a used cap for my 99 ram quad last night. excellent cap but its red. my truck is white. can i buy a few regular spray cans that exactly match the white color of my truck i feel i could do a good job painting this with spray cans instead of having to do it with a spray gun compressor etc. that i dont have. or am i wrong thanks steve depends on what you want! if you want a cap that looks like it was painted with spray cans go for it. if you want a professional finish spray cans wont cut it! myself if i had spent the bucks on a newer truck i would bring it to a shop unless i had the proper equipment to do a pro job myself. you could do the prep scuff it down yourself mask it and have a shop spray it. greg .

From : sovereign sockpuppet

there is a guy who steals cars takes them to his house or some where! and paints them with spray cans. parks the car on the corner in the same neighbor hood and no one seems to notice the canjob suggestion for painting with cans. since it is not the whole truck it wont take a ton of cans it might be cheaper if you had the equipmt to do a sprayer job if not dont try to do too much at once. go around and around the cab with lite coats of spray. this will give a better overall appearence. less chance of runs. more coats will give it a deeper more pro look. keep the reccomended distance take your time. consider spray-can clearcoat for that finished glossy shine besides its a truck its probally end up deep in the woods any way hauling stuff getting all scratched up anyway right thats why we buy trucks to haul suff right .

From : grumman581

steve k wrote ... can i buy a few regular spray cans that exactly match the white color of my truck i feel i could do a good job painting this with spray cans instead of having to do it with a spray gun compressor etc. that i dont have. or am i wrong i guess it depends upon how bad your truck already looks if youre spray can paint job will look acceptable... i painted a vw bug with a couple of cases of krylon chevy engine orange back around 1975 when i was in high school... krylon was better than most of the paints out there since gasoline did not wash it off good if you were to spill some fuel during refueling time... i had a permanent indentation on my fingers from pushing the button on the spray can for so long... the paint job had a rather flat look to it and since the idea of a clear coat for a gloss look either didnt exist at that time or i had never heard of it i was stuck with trying to find some way to make it look different than the flat color that it was... i ended up periodically oiling the exterior of the car... i would take a rag with a little clean motor oil on it and run it over the painted areas... similar result to using armor-all on the plastic and rubber parts on your car these days -- it would make the color somewhat darker and more shiny for awhile water would bead up on it... the time it takes to do it this way is considerably longer than if you had a compressor and spray gun... the spray cans just dont output that much paint per minute compared to the compressor and spray gun... the paint is also a lot thinner on the spray cans so it takes forever to build up an acceptable thick coat... if you hold the cans too far away youre not going to get as glossy of a paint job since the paint is starting to dry before it hits the object being painted... i have seen people do an acceptable job of painting with a foam roller and an appropriately thinned down paint... they had to do a lot of wet sanding to make it look good though... .

From : redneck tookover hell

. i have seen people do an acceptable job of painting with a foam roller and an appropriately thinned down paint... they had to do a lot of wet sanding to make it look good though... a 4 inch brush using oil base thinned appropriately does a better job politics the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich. .