/////////////// What are the general impressions on the 'cheapie' HVLP guns dutch auctioned on ebay? This would only be for occasional use...a car every 2 years at best. Second question: I tried to clean the overspray off of teh rating plate on my compressor, and managed to wipe all of the data off as well. The manual is very generic, no specs given. ASny ideas? AFAIR, it is either a 3 1/2 or 4 HP oilless buzz-box....crap, I now know, but still works, as of last night. Ron, Ron/Champ 6 ///// Ron... HVLP guns use SUBSTANTIALLY less materials- 30-50% less in most cases. You need about 8-9 cfm to adequately run the typical low-end HVLP gun. There are110 compressors out there that will handle that. Generally 5-6HP, with a 30 gal tank. You should come up with a suitable used compressor easily. Wiring the garage for 220 shouldn't be that hard either. You could use buried cable... and I wired my own... I did have an electrician friend check it before I fired it up, but it's a piece of cake. Or, put the compressor in the basement and just run a long hose- you would need to go up to about 11-12 CFM to get adequate flow that far away, but the increase in cost wouldn't be too great. For finish coats, I use a $99 gravity feed HVLP gun (Ill look to see who made it..i didnt really care at the time)... when it gets "worn" I just replace it, and then the original becomes a primer-gun. So I sorta recycle them.... Suggestions: Buy the cheap HVLP, and spend the $$ to upgrade your compressor. My Sears 6HP cost $329 on sale, and I have used it for 10 years.... 6 of them at the shop as my only compressor. And you see what I've done with it... ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Well, not so fast there. There are a few code requirements for this situation which falls under the heading of more than one building supplied from a common AC service: 1) You are only allowed one feeder to an outbuilding, so if there is an existing feeder it will have to be removed when the new one is installed. 2) You must have an Service Entrance rated disconnect in the feeder at the outbuilding - it can be either indoors or outdoors. 3) The grounding system must be intact all the way from each receptacle in the outbuilding all the way back to the service entrance in your house. So use feeder cable with a ground wire, and connect all grounds in the outbuilding to it! Also, if you're going to direct bury the feeder, use cable rated for that application. Frank Starr, P.E. Gotcha. I headn't checked the NG when I e-mailed you on those turbine systems. My buzz-box oiless compressor is only 8.2 CFM @ 40PSI, and the lowest rated gun is about 8CFM.....not enough margin for me, and better guns are rated between 9 and 11 CFM. I HATE the racket of this noisy POS anyway. I guess I'll buy a new one and sell the old one to offset the cost, and then the savings in BC/CC should cover the rest! BTW, per my paint dealer, teh BC/CC is *only a little more* than a catylized enamel...I am using your Jonquil formula for DuPont. Ray, do you agree on the cost issue? I know I like the dust free properties and touch up qualities of the BC/CC Ron Base/Clear- is all I use these days... I like the gloss, depth, and repair-ability, It is much more expensive than regular Enamel, a bit more than Urethane Catalized Enamel (Acrylic Urethane), If it is cost-saving you are "really" looking for, You "can" safely use the Dupont Chromabase, and an inexpensive Acrylic Urethane Clearcoat. I do this all the time with collision work- when the owner is...er... Frugal. I've never had a compatability issue. I have customer cars out there with 7 years of exposure to the elements, without failure. It is a risk, but IMHO a very small one. Of course... every paint store will tell you it CAN'T be done, and.... they WILL NOT stand behind the warrenty...IF you do have any problem. I am up-front with my customers and tell them beforehand... and leave the decision to them. It is written and signed for on the estimate sheet- before any work is done. Ray Nah, I'm gonna do it as right as I can....but yes I am cheap! Not just frugal, I'm cheap. Why do you think I am asking about HVLP? Used at that? It's not for the ease of application...nor the reduction in overspray to clean up..I don't want to buy a jillion dollars worth of paint! A HVLP system I can use again, but I've had poor success reusing my overspray. I was mostly asking, thinking of inside the trunk and under the hood....It's a moot point anyway now, since I've already started with ChromaBase. I spray Chromabase with my HVLP gun(s). One gun is an old CSI which is now part of Wagner, and my other HVLP gun is a Sata touch up gun, expensive, but we bought it to paint 1000 model railroad cars a bunch a years ago. Chroma Clear requires about 5% reducer added for HVLP guns. The good part of the Sata gun is you can really narrow down the spray pattern --------------- Just to clarify for those who haven't done it, when you begin sanding the paint will lose it's shine, except in the low spots. The low spots will remain shiny until you take off enough material to completely level the paint. Once the paint is uniformly dull, you should have an absolutely flat surface which then can be buffed to a glass-like finish (theoretically). One painter I know would leave the very bottom of the orange peel "craters" shiny after sanding. He would then buff to even out the finish. His theory was that this eliminated any chance of sanding through while still giving a finish 95% as good as a completely flattened job S2DSteve Not necessarily.... I have had good and BAD advice from the local paint store. When I painted my Red '61 Hawk(1988), I used their "recently introduced" Deltron single-stage urethane paint. The paint store advised me to watersand the finish the 600 grit and buff it to remove trash, orange peel, etc... I did as I was advised, and buffed for 3 #**&$#* days trying to get some gloss. I was finally able to make it look OK, but the paint was extremely thin when I finished... It lasted a couple years only until you could start seeing the primer through it. A paint store...never again! A reputable body shop...sure..... A friend of the NG? Visit here: http://home.triad.rr.com/baker6x6kya/Studebaker/StudeTech3.htm Ray --------------- 55pres JT: That's a common misconception for the confusing 1955 model year. Yes, all 1955 Presidents had 259 engines and, yes, all those 259s IN PRESIDENTS had a "P" engine number prefix. The "P" was for President, indicating that particular 259 went in a President. Later in the model year, when Commanders also got a 259, the Commander engine was still coded "V" even though it was now a 1955 259, just like a President. At that point, the only way you could tell if a given 1955 "V" code engine was a 224 or a 259 would be to compare the rest of the engine number with the sequence numbers published in the Parts Books, or remove a spark plug and rotate the engine by hand and carefully measure the stroke. Remember, "P" engine code in 1955 ONLY means PRESIDENT, not 289 or 259 per se, as began in the 1956 model year. Cheers. Bob Palma - 1955 was a weird year as far as engine ID's went. 2 displacements sharing the same symbol (letter), Then you had The P, as Bob P. indicated, for "President". There were also PL, PC, VL and VC to indicate engines from LA-built or Canadian-built cars! Clearly, when they introduced that "V" in 1951, it was to denote a V 8 engine as opposed to the inline 6s. But once there were multiple displacements, they had to be differentiated. I've wondered if whoever decided what designators to use had much knowledge of what was in the works. Witness that when V8s were offered in trucks in '54, they identified them by prefixing the engine ID number with "VT". Presumably, this stood for V8 Truck engine. The following year tho - since different displacement truck V8s were intro'd - they had to differentiate between them. To add to that upset, they started numbering ALL truck engines with a numerical digit followed by an "E". This, one could deduce, was because they designated the 55 trucks as E-series trucks. This approach spawned 1E thru 5E engines for 1955 ( The 185 cu. in. 6 - the 245cu. in. 6 - the 224 V8 and the 259 V8 and the Heavy Duty 259 V8! ) Then they go on to escalate the E-series truck designators thru the years (2E for 1956 - 3E for '57 & '58 -etc, etc..) while keeping the 1955 ENGINE designators intact until the last Stude trucks were built. This causes (it did me at one time) confusion as to what YEAR engine one has in their truck! For example, you can have an 8E Champ truck with a 3E engine in it. Downright goofy! I've always wondered WHY they just didn't use the Cu. In. figure as the prefix on ALL engines???? How hard would that have been??? Ah well, makes for a nice list of reference info to dig thru, eh??? -- StudeBob Kabchef