weight of paint

Does anybody have an idea of what a coat of paint weighs on a funny car body. Do I need to sand off the old paint before I put a new coat on? Is there any easy way to take off the old paint? Has anybody been down this road? Dave Germain

 

Hey Dave,

We just did major reconstructive surgery on a fc body, which entailed a ot of sanding of old paint. Perhaps that's a ad example beause we did A LOT of carbon and kevlar work...

When we painted our blue & white Daytona we sanded it right down, it was orange before. I don't know about weight, but I know it was worth it to get a real nice finish on the new paint - you don't have all the old cracks (which you can't see most of) coming through your brand new paint. It might look great when you're done painting, but if you didnt go down far enough to get rid of those cracks, after the first couple runs they'll be everywhere!

Just don't do what we did - sanded it in our shop...EVERYTHING was orange...some stuf still is! Happy sanding!

 

thanks Nathan but that wasn't the answer I was hoping for-lol

 

Dave we have a co here called pro strip
they use walnut shells or something like that
they can remove paint simalar to sand blasting but not hurt the base under the paint
it is really cool
saw boats, a corvete and other stuff there when we has one of ours done years ago

 

Dave, strip it to the gel coat, we had show car paint in the past it was very heavy( base clear) on a fc body there is so much area to cover it gets heavy fast, we were on a mission in winter 2002 to finally prove we were correct, we bought a nice scale and stripped the camaro it was 225 when we started stripping when we were done it was 170, then when we started spraying it (our selves) with primer just to dust it we used a gallon and it wasnt even enough to sand it smooth! so we filled in the light spots and sanded. we put no sealer on it and sprayed it with single urethane white. when we were done it weighed 185.(2 lousy colors 15 pounds) when we watched at the body shop on the first firebird body we had we were horrified at the amounts of primer sealer base and clear they used, and of coarse they said al the b.s it isnt that much lots of over spray yeah then we come back to pick it up and its like a sherman tank!

 

Lol, sorry Dave. A guy up here in edmonton doesn't even paint his car, well, except white. Then he gets it wrapped with a big sticker and it looks awesome, I can imagine that would probably be considerably lighter, not sure though as I don't know a whole lot about it.

 

Give me Head.. Till im .....old and have white hair.

Jim heads Fuel FC looked kinda neat before he painted it. Whats wrong with the charcoal color of carbon fibre anyway? Then he went and ruined it with that god awfull gratefull head scheme. Why doesnt it occur to anybody to weigh the body before its painted and then again afterward?

 

Carbon fiber

If my body was carbon fiber I wouldn't worry so much about the weight of a coat of paint. Unfortunately it is fiberglass so it makes the weight thing a little more important. If it was carbon fiber I would consider leaving it naked. Carbon fiber looks good enough to me.

 

NHRA requires paint on cars. They might give you a race or two, but after that you won't pass tech unless it's painted.

 

Paint vs carbon vs fiberglass

Heavy paint looks something like this, check it out. http://www.tntmotorsports.net The old fiberglass Avenger with titanium tree weighed 246lb’s race ready. I’ll post the weight of the new carbon Stratus when it’s complete. The same painter did both cars.

 

The man should know

Dave find a good paint shop in your area and go talk to THE MAN who applys the paint tell him what type of paint your planning on using how many coats. And I bet he will be able give you a close amount of OZ he would use to paint the car. Thats just a thought

 

There are alot of different tricks to keeping the weight down. But at the very least you are going to add at least 10 pounds. I would definetly sand all the old paint off if you are changing the color scheme. If you are having any parts of the car white what I did was used white sealer for the white base coat and just sprayed a quick coat of pearl on top. also there are a lot of new base coats out there that require minimum coats to cover such as sikkiens and R/m diamont. All matters how crazy you get with the paint scheme as to how much weight you add.

 

thanks, I think first I need to get the old paint off the car. It has multiple coats I believe.

 

Been Down That Road

Hi Dave,
We did exactly what you are doing a few years ago. The body we did had a bunch of repairs with bondo and so many coats of paint there were no door lines trunk, etc. It took us 4 months of sanding and scrapping. We kept everything we took off and it filled two 5 gallon pails with big chunks of paint and dust. Depending on the type of finish you want or scheme,you will need a base coat, a color coat and clear. The easiest way to determine the weight is to weigh the amount of product being sprayed on. Who ever is doing your paint should be able to supply you with that information. Good luck cause it is a hell of a lot of work.
Fraser R. Dalziel
Crew Chief
Road Hammer Racing

 

paints

you should check out the water base paints. there was a article in drag racer magazine on the worshams paint jobs. pretty interesting stuff. lighter and easier to use.

 

I have been told 75 Lbs to 100 Lbs depends on how much candy or pearl is in the paint.

 

Weight of paint?

I have been told on a funny car 75 to 100 Lbs, depends on how much candy or pearl is in the paint.

 

It's not a trivial concern

A local Pro mod team here had a carbon fiber bodied car painted (show quality paint and airbrush) except the car picked up 110 lbs on the way out of the shop after telling the body guy it was a race car. Dust coat it with one shot of thinned paint and if you see through it in direct sunlight, then that's the way it goes.

 

Dave, the Follow A Dream car was just painted. It was weighed on a good set of stock car style scales after all the sanding and prep work was done. The car did have a light coat of primer on it before weighing it the first time.
It was then re-weighed after it was done.
The weight of the color coats, clear coat and vinyl lettering was 10 pounds.
My guess is a complete paint job, including primer would be around 15-18 pounds.

 

I stripped the Blue Chip car a few years back. I tried a few different paint removers and setted for a NAPA product #6802 water rinseable paint remover.
When I got down to the original primer coat I took care not to let it sit too long on the gel coat. It will soften the gel coat if left on too long. Believe it or not, it will make less of a mess than sanding.