This truck has 200,000 miles on it. It leaks oil pretty bad too. Obviously I wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on a fancy paintjob for an old truck that I just use as a backup to my newer Ram. I looked around on the idiotnet while contemplating ways to paint it myself as inexpensively as possible and found the answer on YouTube. I found a number of videos that showed guys painting vehicles themselves with a foam roller and Rustoleum oil based enamel paint. This is the same paint they put in spray cans, and you’ll use the spray cans too for hard to get places. The thing with foam rollers is that it puts paint on very smooth. If you take your time and do it right it looks like it’s been sprayed. You could spray the vehicle just as well, but you really need a garage to do that where the wind will be kept out. It also takes longer because you can’t thin the paint when it’s in a spray can, thus it takes longer to dry between coats. I only have a carport, so a foam roller seemed like the way to go. Since at least half the paint was gone from the truck, I put on a quart of white primer first. Then nearly three quarts of white gloss paint (4-coats). I also had some rust holes in one side that I had to fiberglass and putty over, so this took me a while longer than it would have if it had just been a straight-up paintjob.
I just took the tape and newspaper off today. It still needs to be polished, but I think it looks pretty darn good. I took it over to my sister’s house today, and she didn’t even recognize it. I’m not going to clear coat it because it sits out in the sun every day, so the clear coat would flake off or get chalky in just a few years.
You can see my Ram (with the ladders on it) shuddering in the background, wondering if it’s next!
Here’s the video I watched to learn how to do this:
