Do it yourself Paint job

[rfoubi]

Ok, so i had been reading about the infamous $50 roller paint job on the internet and decided that since my van was a rusty beater, i had nothing to lose by trying it. The first thing i did was spend days and days reading about it to make sure i knew what i was doing, and then off to the store to buy the paint. I went with the Interlux Brightside sapphire blue, which goes for about $35 a litre. By the time i bought brushes, rollers, tape, trays, thinner, sandpaper, etc i probably spent around $300 on the whole setup.

So heres a couple before shots

Prepping the van was definately the most time consuming. If you had a van with only minor or non-existant rust, painting would be so so much easier.

Anyway, heres the cancer

And after hitting it with the wire wheel

before

after

After hours and hours of wire brush, sanding Por-15, and body filler, shes ready for paint. It took a while to figure out the rolling technique, but eventually i got it down from 7 hours to 2 hours for the last coat. The self levelling properties of this paint are amazing. With the right technique it just goes on so well.

first coat, going on thin but starting to look blue!

second coat

third coat

fourth

fifth

Put everything back together just in time to go on a 12000km road trip, heres the finished product. The only thing i wasnt really satisfied with was the bedliner i put on the bottom, i only put one layer on and its still a little see through, but thats easy to touch up later.

Overall, it was a great success! Basically i was never planning on doing a super involved restoration, or anything, since this is my daily driver, and it gets driven hard, shuttling mountain bikes on logging roads, camping etc etc and it is by no means perfect. Im sure in a few years the rust will come back, and if you look closely you can see a few places where the paint ran. I definately cut corners (just masked the windows, etc instead of pulling them) But overall considering i had zero paint/body experience before this project, i am very happy with the results. Im proud of how it turned out, much better than the rusty, dinged up beater that it looked like before.

Ive had it on the road for around 13000km now after a 12000km trip through the backroads of the US and mexico, and the paint is holding up great. There are a few chips here and there where rocks have hit the body, mostly unnoticeable but the beauty of this paint is that its super easy to touch up in the future.

[Mundopacheco]

Wow, what a difference! Great job.....lots of work, huh? Curious about the windows on your van....slider and rear. Those are different. Where did you get those?
Thanks...........

[Jamos]

Great work!

Looks really nice for sure.
Did you do a clear-coat on top of the blue? or does it have a gloss finish?

I wish I could get a window unit with the mini sliders on the bottom for one of the rear side windows on my vanagon.

Thanks for documenting the process.
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'86 Wolfy Westy Weekender
2020 Audi Q5

[JF9191]

wow thats amazing! i'm curious about the door wells and places like that though, great job though!
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1986 Vanagon Westfalia Manual
1982 Vanagon L Diesel Manual

What do Einstein, Buddha, and Plato have in common? They believe this is all an illusion!

[Alaric.H]

Did you roll&tip that's how we do boats when we can not spray in the boat yard

[OldSkoolVWLover]

looks good... I am a bigger fan of spraying than rollering but I love using Rustoleum or other similar types of oil based paint not originally intended for automotive use. 2 of our cars are currently sporting rust stoping oil based paints (the vert is now a burgandy from it's satin black of years and the rabbit is an almond).

The paint holds up well, of course I am not dealing with the conditions your van does..... the best part you will enjoy is being able to touch up or redo on the cheap. Now that you have the base, you will be able to make small fixes easily and the paint levels and matches the old paint pretty well.

Right after I painted the vert the burgandy I happened upon a box in the freeway that thankfully only damaged paint, right before the show I was prepping the car for. So I pulled the bumper, cleaned and painted just the spots and close surrounding areas that were hurt by the collision.... you can't tell it was sprayed separate from the car, or the rest of the bumper that didn't get that same coat.
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EarlyWatercooled.org
00 MK3.5 Golf Vert__00 Turbo Beetle__81 Rabbit

We dream of the day we have a Westy!

[koolmoe]

I think that's fantastic as well. I'll have no problem doing that as my van rusts far enough along to make it worthwhile. I agree, yours was at that point! All the better.
Blacken the grills, front bumper, and maybe the rv mirror shells, your bus would look real sharp!

I'm curious about the windows too...

And is that a GoWesty bumper, homemade?

Nicely done!
KM
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--
Current: 1990 Westy GL (Savannah. Good to be back!)
from '95 til 2008: 1995 Pathfinder (frame rusted out, charitable parts donation)
from '91-'95: 1982 Westy Diesel (Smokey. Traded in for far too little!)
from '87-'91: 1980 VW Rabbit (my econoPorsche - passed on)

[streamr]

Wow! What a transition. It looks great. I remember when I was a kid, my dad worked at a can manufacturing company and he would bring home paint cans they made and would brush paint (no rollers then) his cars out in the sun. They always looked great, as yours does.

[McVanagon]

Reminds me of this.
http://www.rickwrench.com/index79master.htm?http://www.rickwrench.com/50dollarpaint.html

Nice work.
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'69 Mike
'85 GL
'87 Wolfsburg Hardtop

[quarters]

i've also done a roll on paint job on my old civic wagon. we wet sanded it after 5 coats and then used a buffer. came out nice and shiny. it was white too, alot easier to work with white.


nice work, 100% improvement.

[delta-vanagon]

I had a 77 Dodge Tradesman van that I used for a work van. It was an old AT&T telephone truck. I used a Wagner sprayer and a gallon of Rustoleum Ford Blue Tractor paint on the outside and Rustoleum white on the insideI. taped off the windows headlights and the dash and sprayed everything. It looked great with no sanding and practically no prep. Of course, it was a straight work truck and my goal was cover the sticker spots on the outside and brighten the inside up so that we could find tools. My next door neighbor roller painted his beater pickup at the same time flat black. That also looked fine, until you looked between cab and the bed.
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86 GL Bostig & 89 Wolfsburg

[rfoubi]

[rfoubi]

[quarters]

mine is the 90' silver/rusty colored one with the carat wheels. now i know who's garage to rent when i need to paint mine. mwhahaha. i live in the horizon view condo's... so no garage space. people are always buggin me when i go work on it in the parking lot.

[vanagonforever]

I went this route myself. While I am fairly happy with the result the time required to make the roll on paint job look good is pretty much insane. I still haven't finished the final pass on mine. One of these days I'll get around to doing the final sanding pass and buff it all out but until then these are my results after six passes.

A few not so great pictures of where I am right now

Here is what it used to look like

I've still got a ton of work to do to actually make my bus look decent but I'm getting there slowly but surely.
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1986 2WD 2.1L WBX Vanagon Weekender
1983.5 1.9L WBX Vanagon Westfalia

[Williamtaylor33]

Thats a good looking 50/50 paint job!
By that i mean it looks great 50 feet away going 50mph.

A huge difference in looks for not many pesos. neat.
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89 Bostig powered syncro westy

[McVanagon]

[SockMonkey]

that is pretty sweet, this kind of makes me wish I had a car worth doing this too..
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'85 Vanagon GL

[MarkWard]

You did all that work and did not fix the dent in the R/F? Does that dent have special meaning? Much improved over the before shots. I don't think you have enough room in the garage to use a spray gun.

[vanagonforever]

I'm not sure if you're talking to me or the first poster as I left a dent in mine as well. My reasons for leaving it is that I was antsy to get rid of that creepy teal color and figured I can fix the dent later. Its actually quite easy to make spot repairs on a $50 paint job with a rattle can and some wet sanding. I just used Rustoleum Professional in Almond. They also sell a rattle can of the same color so it makes later repairs super easy. You can also reroll but you'd have to do the entire panel to avoid seams. I also couldn't use a sprayer because I did all of my work in the street or in my office parking deck. I really wish I had a garage
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1986 2WD 2.1L WBX Vanagon Weekender
1983.5 1.9L WBX Vanagon Westfalia