Like many of you, I paint my own cars and those for my friends. I do a job for money about once every 2 or 3 years. I heard and read that under the new regulations to be put in place Jan. 2012, application, sale, and possesion of convential paint products will be unlawful. The big shops have and are going to waterbourne.

I can not invest in a special booth, dryers, training, and all that seems to go with waterbourne products. It does not appear there will be any other paint options.

Are my auto painting days in the garage over? What to others do that live in places like California? Do they offer waterbourne paints that can be applied in the conventional manner and dry tack free in similar times?

I talked to one local body shop that admitted they do not know everything yet, but he said he will likely close his 5 man operation based on what he does know.

I am sure there is some hyp in all of this. Does anyone have any better information and alternatives for the furture of this one man show?

Thanks in advance.

 

I'm not worrying about it, they'll be "places" to get it or have it done, this is the USA.
The "midnight paint shop" will be a new term.
All those pallets of car paint end runs and odds and ends at the commercial auction have to go somewhere.
Is Mexico/Central America going to these regs?

The clearcoat is still 2K so why are they making such a big stink out of base coat? The clear is way more toxic and has the iso's that hurt you the worse.
I wonder if women are going to have to use water based nail polish? You ever get a whiff of that or the remover when theyre doing their nails?
Back in the day the custom painters went to the store and bought a milion little bottles of nail polish to do cars, sometimes they would go to the manufacturer and get it in bulk cans too, it was very expensive.

Other than the single stage not being durable or shiny and not holding pigments and metallics in suspension as well it's the same as other paint in application. It's real thin so runs may be a problem and may take some getting used to spraying.
It takes 3 times as long to dry and in small areas you can use a hair dryer, for a whole car the commercial body shop dryers or just wait.
I wonder if humidity in the shop and booth is going to be a problem? You may have to have dehumidifiers if it's just evaporating into the air or everything will get damp and promote black mold that is more dangerous to your health than the old paint??
The laws of unintended consequences.

I heard you use an HVLP gun and other than a stainless needle and 1.0 to 1.3 stainless tip and plastic cup same as a conventional gun. Anything water can damage or rust is what you have to stay away from in the guns, clean them well because nothing cuts dried up water based acrylics and latex in my experience.

 

the activators have the majority of the isocynates. in dupont's case, their basecoats (chromabase, chroma premier) are activated, using the same activator as some of their clears. so, the basecoats aren't any safer.

 

You're pretty close Allan...

...every brand has different qualities to them...the people in the Southwest will love it, while the people in the Southeast will hate it! Removing humidity is the most important variable next would be cleanliness. Not as forgiving as solvent! Is more expensive, but I can attest, you use much less!

 

From what I understand, the Chromax-Pro (Dupont's H2o), gets activated when spraying a 3 stage color?

 

i don't know off hand. i haven't been to work since sep. '08 (fell ill and haven't fully recovered yet), and the shop i worked at switched to the cromax basecoat in late '08/early '09. so, i haven't had the pleasure (please note the sarcasm ) to spray the stuff yet, or know much about it. i just hear about the problems they've had with it.

 

One of my initial concerns is that I believe it requires fans to blow air across the car since I guess it drys by evaporation of the water. I saw PPG reps. use it once on overhaulin or muscle car. In anything but a paint booth, you blow all of the dirt in the paint. If you did not use blowers, I would guess that the paint would take many times the number of hours to dry tack free and still get full of dirt.

I just can not believe they would disallow extremely low users such as myself from using conventional paints. I understand regulating shops that paint a couple of cars a day, but 1 or 2 a year, that seems ridiculous. Is there anyway to voice an opinion on this, or as with most legislation, we have no real say?

 

Here is a message I sent and a response I got from a PPG rep.

<Rich>
I am in PA and only recently heard about the waterbourne regulations. I restore and paint about 1 car per year in my home garage. I have always used RM products. Since I can not buy a waterbourne paint booth, dryers, etc. or install filters and afterburners for other “low VOC” paints, is my time as a restoration enthusiat over? Are there waterbourne paints in existence or being developed that can be applied with conventional equipment for a person like myself?

64 mike { 01.18.10 at 1:24 am } Hey Rich, your question is a valid one. You do NOT need all the fancy water borne booths and afterburners and NO your days of being a restoration enthusiast are not over. Water borne paint requires a dedicated paint gun used only for water. If you own more then one gun then just clean it up and ONLY use it for water borne base coat. You can buy a hand held blower for cheep and you can use that to dry the basecoat. If you need to you can let the base coat air dry if you don’t want to buy a hand held blower. This will take some time but it will dry with enough heat and air movement.
PPG’s Envirobase is applied with the same paint gun as I had with solvent borne base coat. I never changed the way I sprayed the water borne base coat. So to answer your question, PPG’s Envirobase HP can be applied exactly the same way as you are using solvent base now. I can spray, If legal in my area, water borne paint in my garage with the same gun I was using before.
So you are still in business and you do not need to buy all this extra equipment to get your job done.
Thanks,
~Mike.