when painting a rad support?

[Steven R]

So I am trying to get my rad support painted with satin black paint. I have tried 2 time now and after I think I am done, I come back later and find that I have still not been able to get black paint into all the areas.

For the setup I have been hanging up side down, this makes me think that I can get more paint into the areas with my gravity gun better under the top lip. But after spraying 2 wet coats and letting dry I found I still missed a lot of the nook and crannies areas. So I scuffed it up good as per the TDS the next day and re-shot the whole thing this time hanging it right side up. Thinking with every spray to making sure to get paint at every angle to get into the nooks and crannies. But still after letting it dry and have a good look still found some places where the primer is not fully covered. I will add that I had the rad support split in half and sandblasted and primed at a local shop. the reason I split it was I needed to use the good front part from one and the better rear part. I felt while apart would be a great time to have blasted and epoxy primed.

I guess my question is would hanging a piece like a rad support from the end and not the top or bottom be a better setup for success? I am finding that the gravity feed cup is getting in the way, preventing me from getting the perfect angles to get the spray into the right areas. mostly when trying to spray up under into a cavity. I am still learning and I think that this is a great piece to learn and practice setups and techniques.

Or would it be worth having it lay down and shoot one side and then come back later and turn it over and then shoot the back side. Which to me just means more cleaning and mixing of the paint.

thought and advice or maybe some notable videos worth watching...

[MARTINSR]

Here is THE TRICK for doing stuff like that. First off, the general rule is to always have the item hanging or on a rack or what ever, in the "attitude" that it is on the truck. That way when it's bolted in, you are seeing it just as the paint gun saw it and thus it will look the best as you see it on the truck.

That being said, to rotate the item as you put coats on is the ultimate to be sure you get every spec of it painted properly.

I just painted the four control arms for my daily driver last night, they were hanging from metal hooks made from coat hangers. Now I couldn't very well put these in the "attitude" they are on the car, but using the second suggestion I just gave you I got them completely covered. I painted one at a time of course as it was hanging, I then had an extra hanger there to grab the bottom of the control arm and rotated it bottom end up and put the next coat. This way I can see every bit of it and getting a good coat of paint on every spec, understand? If I hadn't done that, the end you see hanging down would have had thin spots. But with putting it to the top where I could see it and paint it perfectly, it gets fully coated with no bare spots.

Brian

[sprint_9]

Its a tough item to spray. What I did is hang it, spray one coat. In between that coat I air brushed or just plain brushed the parts I couldnt get good coverage on for rust protection. After that I came in and put down 1 good coat. Most of the spots I had trouble getting a good coat are spots that really wont be seen.

Here is how I hung mine.

[Steven R]

Thanks for the input guys. I ended up re scuffing the rad support and spraying it a 3rd time. During my 2 attempt at the end I tried one of those spray guns with the cup on the side so that you can turn the gravity cup and get better spray angles, but the gun was a waste of time and money as it just was not up to the task, spraying good and then every time you released the trigger it would take and spit large drops all over. It was a cheap gun and does not have air horns like the gun martin was showing a few weeks ago. So I re-sanded and hung it in the same way that it would sitting the truck as noted above. I got much better results this 3rd attempt. Its 98 percent perfect for coverage and the painting look good enough to say " Yup I did that" and be willing to tell others that.