High volume, low pressure may be the beginnings of a good paint job, but ending with a finish that you’re proud of takes more than just the right tools for the job. So, here’s Dan Maffett with the skills to match on MotorWeek’s “Your Drive.”

DAN MAFFETT: It’s undeniable: The best paint jobs in the world are done with HVLP paint guns. Now these are high volume, low pressure air guns. Now, people think you can’t do this at home, but you definitely can. The aftermarket world has a plethora of tools and guns just for the prosumer and consumer market.

Now, if you’re going to take this on at your own home, there’s some things you have to know about. It’s not as simple as opening up a can and spraying it. A professional paint line is going to have to have the base coat, an activator, and a mixing ratio that you’re going to need to know. A paint system like this is a four-to-one, so four parts paint, one part activator; and they have to be mixed perfectly, in the right humidity, or they won’t work, they won’t dry, they’ll peel, or they’ll just orange peel up on you.

Now, a paint gun like this, you can find at most automotive retailers, and you have a line in for air, a hopper up top for your material, and a nozzle for the spray. You can adjust the nozzle, the air speed, and how much material you’re kicking out, and get a certain pattern to match your vehicle and the paint you’re spraying. One of the most important things when it comes to HVLP guns is maintenance. After you use them, you want to clean them thoroughly and use something like this, a gun cleaner, to pull out any chemicals that are left inside the gun. It’s good practice to learn how to take them completely apart and rebuild them every time you use them. We’re going to get a gun together and we’re going to spray this panel to show you the different fan patterns you can get out of an HVLP.

So, we’ve got the gun loaded up with some water and we’ve got an airline. We’re going to show you a couple spray patterns here. Now with a gun like this, you have options of how much material you’re spraying, your air pressure, and how you’re atomizing that pressure, the fan width. So, with this fully adjusted down, you’re going to see a very tight grouping that is going to lead to runs and too much material, too much fast.
So, that is just entirely too much panel getting too much paint. So, we adjust this all the way back, find a good pattern, so now we got a nice, wide pattern that’s touching the panel, we’re not getting any runs, it’s laying it down really nice and easy. And that’s the pattern you want. So, you would just adjust your settings until you find that nice pattern, and you can coat a whole panel with no runs, no excess material loss.

One of the most important techniques going from a rattle can to one of these HVLP’s is never turning your air off. You have a two-stage trigger, air and then paint. So, you want to make sure you stay on air even when you’re off the panel. You just release enough that the paint stops coming out. And what that does is it doesn’t allow any kind of material to gum up on the tip of the gun. It keeps it nice and clean, so you can get a nice, good panel. With these tips and techniques, you can definitely do this at home in your own garage or a shop. Just keep it ventilated, keep it clean.

Now, if you have any questions or comments, hit us up right here, at MotorWeek.