Hey guy’s so today we decided to go ahead and Plasti dip DJ’s Mercedes CLA 250 with a AMG kit out of the blue. DJ saw a image online showing this crazy pearl pain job on a white car and did some research and we found out that it is Plasti dipped! we couldn't believe it. We went ahead and did our research on how this paint job can be achieved, we gathered all the information on dipyourcar.com which basically gave us all the tools and knowledge to getting this done. First thing we had to do is make a DIY paint booth, we used a huge Pop Up canopy tent that was just sitting in our warehouse. Next we bough a huge roll of clear plastic that painters used and we used this to create our 3 walls around the car. we also need some type of ventilation to push out the overspray and smell so we simply set up fans blowing towards the exit door of our warehouse.
When it came to getting the supplies we went with a pneumatic paint sprayer since we have a compressor in our facility. If you do not have a compressor I highly recommend using a airless spray gun that you can purchase directly off dipyourcar.com or any other brand airless spray gun. Please make sure prior to purchasing any spray gun that it will work with using Plasti dip since these guns are made to use regular household paints.
If you want to go with the route of using a pneumatic paint sprayer you need to make sure you have a air dryer for your airlines. You must filer out any oils, and water in the lines so it does not mix with the paint when you are spraying the vehicle. This is very crucial if you want to get the same results we got or even better.
Once we had everything set up we needed to to clean the vehicle so we can remove any dust, and oils off the body of the car. After doing some research we found out that you can use household Windex to prep the car and that is just what we did. We used a ton of microfiber towels to make sure there was nothing on the surface of the car, and also make sure to wear latex gloves so you do not put oil on the car if you rub it with your fingers.
Next we started masking the car with good old masking tape, the beauty of using Plasti dip is that the paint is removable so you do not need to cover the head lights, taillights, and other trim pieces. we masked the glass, grill, and small trim pieces which did not take much time to get this done. Once we masked the car we were ready to start painting!
Before starting the painting process make sure to use a paint respirator! you definitely do not want to inhale all the paint particles floating around. we started painting the car with a matte white base, good think about doing this is that the car is already white so we did not need to apply tons of layers to get a very solid white base color. If you have a dark color vehicle and want to do the same paint job you will defiantly need to apply more coats, we did about 3-4 layers of white till we were satisfied.
Once the matte white was dry we then mixed the pearls to the clear Plasti dip paint. The pearls that are mixed to the clear paint is what creates the color shifting effect when the job is done. We sprayed on about 4 layers of clear, take note the more layers you add the better the effect and the more pearls you will put on the vehicle. DJ wanted a very subtle look and with doing 4 layers it came out just like that!
It was definitely a huge project and risk to do our selves but that is how you live and learn, I believe that anyone can do this if they really take their time to do their research and prep everything correctly. If you rush the job and take any shortcuts you will be disappointed in your final result.
Feel free to check out the final result below.
