Parts Jeep Trail Build

I ventured out to the Industrial Finishes store in Gresham and showed them the two paints that Micah used. The Nason fleet color wasn’t a problem and they mixed me up a few ounces to try. The Spies Hecker color was an issue for them because I had no idea what year Toyota the color was from even though I gave them a photo of their label with the color number on it. Whatever.

I got some spray out cards to try the two colors on; they look like this.

Well it’s unanimous, the color on the left is seen as the better match and I must agree; it’s closer than the other. I think the color on the right is more attractive in my view, but the goal here is to match the factory color and the one on the left does that. Which one is it? 

It’s the Nason!

This is the color that Micah suggested last year, but I had to see for myself. Thank you, my friend for posting this in my build thread, it will get my project to where I want it. It was fortunate that my jeep had well preserved original paint to compare to, otherwise it would be like throwing darts at a board.

I picked up a quart of the Nason Ful- thane  today and a ½ pint of the activator and it was a good thing that I was bracing myself for it. It’s about $125 per quart and the activator was $67. Yes, a gallon of paint will be over $500! In comparison, the PPG Delfleet Essential was going to be slightly over $1000 for 6 qts along with the components to be sprayable, so slightly less. The thing is- I don’t really know how much paint it will take to paint the jeep complete with all panels being covered on all sides. The Nason is a 8:1:2 mix which I’ve not sprayed before, that’s why I only brought home a quart today. 

I think that’s a fair question, cost is always front of mind for everyone these days.

So what you are describing is just what I’m attempting to do with my jeep project- a middle of the road paint job using single stage materials, nothing fancy. On my last project (the vintage camper van), I kind of cheaped out and went with OMNI acrylic enamel because that’s what I was accustomed to: the enamels of olde. I assumed that today’s enamels would be the same; but no, they’re not even close. So this go-around I’m choosing to use a polyurethane material and discovering that they have vastly improved from the early versions of the late 80s.

Now to cost: yes, a gallon of paint for my jeep is going to cost $508. The activator to match the gallon (a pint @8:1) will cost $117 and a quart of reducer has generally been around $25-30. The fact that this is red may skew the price upward over other colors; red has been historically an expensive color. I don’t know why that is, it just is. Maybe the pigments for red are derived from rare plants deep in the Amazon or taken from the third vertebrate of an endangered species, I don’t know- it’s always been this way. Adding these three components gets to a grand total of $655. Undercoats and sealers would be in addition to this, and they’re expensive too- depending on what’s used.

You can look up Nason Ful-thane and see that it's no high end paint, just a mid quality, get-the-job-done product that should last a while. Certainly more monies could be spent.

Another thing that is bugging me is that I know how much paint is needed to spray a small to mid-sized car, but not how much to buy for painting all the parts on a jeep. All panels need to be sprayed both sides and the tub inside, outside and underneath. I don’t know if a gallon would do it. I certainly don’t want to run low and need to go back for an extra quart or two and then that mix is slightly off. I would be curious if others could recall how much paint they used.