How to paint your car.

Painting your own car may bring you some joy and satisfaction but it isn't an easy or inexpensive proceedure. At 1-Day we are experts at painting your car and we can fit just about anybody's budget. We've analyzed and perfected every step of the painting process so we can do it better and faster. And when you can do something better and faster, you can do it less expensively. No paint can cover up a ding in the fender or a gouge in the side. We recommend that you let us do the body work before we paint your car. Our body work experts can also make major repairs. Our work is guaranteed and reasonable, and we will be happy to help you with your insurance claims.

You've painted things. You know that paint won't fill in chips or smooth out bumps. You've got to do that before you paint. That's why at 1-Day, the first thing we do is sand those chips and bumps. If your car needs bodywork 1-Day can do it at an additional charge.

Next we hand-sand all the edges of your car's surface. This includes the areas around glass and moldings and door handles, areas that are hard to reach with power sanders. Not all car painters do this. We do. Then we machine-sand every square inch of your car to a dull and uniform finish. When we've finished, your car feels like silk. Finally, and not for the last time, we blow the dust off your car.

We use two kinds of pneumatic sanders to sand your car. Jitterbug sanders are used by 1-Day's craftmen.

A dual-action orbital sander or a jitterbug. Each kind is small easy to handle, has a semi flexible pad, and vibrates 13,000 times a minute. The high-quality, fine sandpaper we use contains silicones which provide a dry lubrication for the abrasives. This helps reduce surface friction. Surface friction can give your car a static charge that will attract dust like a magnet.

Your chrome, glass and all metal surfaces on the car are cleaned before we mask it. We do this to remove most of the dirt that falls in and around the chrome, glass and metal. This helps to ensure a cleaner finish on your paint job.

This is a very simple step but a very critical step to a good paint job. Not all companies wipe down the metal panels on your car. 1-Day does.

Masking is the process that protects areas of your car - like glass chrome and rubber - from being painted. Masking is an exact science and it takes an expert to do it right. You must cover all the rubber and all the glass and all the chrome, but none of the metal. It takes months of practice to do it right.

At 1-Day our expert maskers have an average of ten years experience. But even experienced experts need good tools to work with. Just consider the masking paper itself. Many car painters use old newspapers to mask your car because it is cheap. But newspaper can release papr fibers that can land on your paint job. We give our people specially designed masking paper that is designed only for one purpose - to mask cars. It comes on a 36" wide continuous roll and it is sealed with wax on one side to prevent bits of paper dust from dislodging and landing on the freshly painted finish. Once a piece of masking paper is used, it is thrown away. We never use the paper twice.

The tape we use for masking is specially manufactured to be soft and flexible so our maskers can follow the contours of your car easily; but it's uniform and strong enough to hold an edge when we blow the car clean with our air guns.

It is impossible, of course, to keep every single particle of dust away from your car; but after we mask it, we do everything we can to ensure that the sanded surface is as free from dust as possible. This is vital, because dust is the car painter's greatest enemy.

First we go over the entire surface of your car with an air gun, blowing the dust away. Then we go over the entire surface of your car again by hand, this time with a tack cloth, picking up any dust that the air gun might have missed. Only when we are confident that we have done everything we can to ensure that the surface of your car is as dust-free as possible, do we start to paint it.

Since 1967, 1-Day has continuously applied Bond Seal Primer to every car we've painted for free. Before we put any paint on your car, we spray it with our gray Bond Seal Primer. This Primer (1) provides an adhesive surface for the final coats of paint and actually helps prevent the flaking and peeling you see on some cars, (2) chemically bonds itself to the sanded surface, and (3) serves as a base providing uniformity while enhancing the color clarity of your new paint.

Bond sealer primer is so important to providing a good paint job that most car painting companies charge extra knowing that you'll want to order it for a good finish.

To do this step right you must have three things: (1) a good paint, (2) a good painting environment, and (3) a good painter. At 1-Day we have all three.

1. Good Paint.
1-Day is always conducting research and development to find the best paint possible. We currently use urethane paint from DuPont because we beleive it gives you the best shine and durability for the money. Our PLUS 3 paint job uses the best urethane paint in the production painting industry. It hardens to such a remarkable degree of durability that we can actually guarantee it for five years.

2. Good Painting Environment.
The air pressure inside our spray booth is always kept higher than the pressure outside. This prevents dust and other particles from getting on your paint job. In addition, our dust-free temperature controlled air runs through very fine filters at the front of the booth, the air flows constantly over your car in one direction only, and then is drawn out through filters at the back. This flow keeps the booth at an optimum spraying temperature, and prevents any over spray from landing on your car.

3. Good Painter .
On the average, our painters have been painting cars for over ten years. They know what they're doing and take pride in how they do it. They try to paint your car as if it were their own. Every paint formula is mixed to exact specifications. Being off by a gram or two could change the color. We use very exact digital scales to help us get as close as possible to your car's original color.

How paint dries is just as important as how it is applied. At 1-Day we bake your car in a custom-built pressurized oven. The oven is physically part of the spray booth itself. This ensures that no dust will fall on your car while it is moved. It is very similar to moving between two cars on a train. At no time are you exposed to the outside elements. In the oven, a pressurized flow of air gently moves over the surface of the paint, and the paint begins to flow. Solvents then start to evaporate properly otherwise your gloss will go flat. After twenty minutes the heat turns off and the air flow begins to cool down your paint. This causes it to be "tack free" which, means that no outside dust will stick to your paint job.

Some companies charge extra to oven dry your car and some of these ovens are open air ovens. That means that your wet paint job has to be moved outside of the protective environment of the paint booth in order to be dried. All of the sanding dust that is present in the shop could land on your paint job giving it a rough finish. This won't happen at 1-Day.

When your car comes out of the oven, we let it cool down for an additional ten minutes, and then we inspect it. We remove the masking tape and paper, clean the windows, polish the chrome, dress the tires, and generally try to eliminate any problem we might find. After all, we want you to be as proud of your 1-Day paint job as we are.