I recently took a big gamble in my life and refinanced my home to take out a down payment to purchase an old auto body shop / cycle shop. I've been wrenching on bikes and cars for years and have painted a handful of bikes and cars with decent results. However it was always done in a makeshift paint booth where I would get the occasional lint and dust and mosquito in my clear coat. I now have what was once considered a very nice paint booth but it is outdated compared to the newest technology spray booths out there. There are obviously certain things like cleaning and proper air filters / water separators and basic things I know I need. I'm just looking for some advice to get professional results out of this older spray booth. I will try and attach some photos of the booth and the exhaust system and the old style hinged doors. I also know that a lot of people now spray their walls with certain chemical Solutions that help keep overspray lint in dust from blowing around the spray booth. Just wanting to get some thoughts on if these products are worth it and how I can obtain the best results without spending hours buffing out light trash from my clear coat. Any advice and help would be great
Cycle shop paint booth advise
- Thread starter Wiscokid
- Start date
Congrats to you!! I wish you the best.
How old is the booth? Mine is 16 years old and still works great. I built it new.
My doors are hinged. I thought most booth doors are hinged. I had a previous booth that had bi-fold doors but would not pass code.
A couple of tips that might just help.
Make sure all bulbs work. I use the T8s and have about 70 of them.
They also come in different brightness. So keep that in mind.
Take pics of any obvious leaks. Most of the time overspray will gather around leak areas. You can seal these bad areas later
Scrub and clean the booth walls
Razor blade overspray off the glass of the fixtures
Clean the booth stack. Take a scraper and a particle mask and clean away.
Change ALL filters. Intake and exhaust
Replace the seals on the doors
Paint the walls if you'd like. I never painted mine.
I clean my booth out every Monday and clean the glass of the fixtures about once very 4-6 months.
We still wetsand and buff everything even though the paint jobs come out very nice.
Hope that helps
How old is the booth? Mine is 16 years old and still works great. I built it new.
My doors are hinged. I thought most booth doors are hinged. I had a previous booth that had bi-fold doors but would not pass code.
A couple of tips that might just help.
Make sure all bulbs work. I use the T8s and have about 70 of them.
They also come in different brightness. So keep that in mind.
Take pics of any obvious leaks. Most of the time overspray will gather around leak areas. You can seal these bad areas later
Scrub and clean the booth walls
Razor blade overspray off the glass of the fixtures
Clean the booth stack. Take a scraper and a particle mask and clean away.
Change ALL filters. Intake and exhaust
Replace the seals on the doors
Paint the walls if you'd like. I never painted mine.
I clean my booth out every Monday and clean the glass of the fixtures about once very 4-6 months.
We still wetsand and buff everything even though the paint jobs come out very nice.
Hope that helps
Thank you for the reply. I'm hoping to post a couple of pictures of of the booth just because I'm having a hard time finding the right filters for my ventilation system. Mine does not have your typical filter but has two layers of Styrofoam with small passageways. Apparently they can be cleaned off and put back in but some of them are broken and I'm not sure if I'm still able to get the same style of filter. I'm curious if I should just put in a regular furnace filter in the place of some of the original broken filters. As far as my walls go they have been painted before and have quite a bit of overspray on them. They definitely need a good cleaning and I will probably paint them with a good washable paint. As far as my doors go I meant to say their unhinged doors and bi-fold style doors that have cloth where the panel should be to allow air to flow through. I did find extra rolls of this cloth left behind. I don't know if this is typical for an older paint booth. I know a lot of the doors on paint booths nowadays are sealed. I imagine this cloth works as a filter to allow the vent system to pull air through the room. Anyways I'm hoping to get some pictures posted from Photobucket on here, just having a hard time doing it on my tablet. But thank you again Taz
Just hoping to get professional results out of this old booth. The old timer that once owned it passed away a few years back. I was able to meet some of his family and previous employees that were still around. From the old pics ive seen they were once able to get very good results out of this booth, im hoping to be able to do the same, but I don't know much except the obvious things like a clean painting environment proper filtration system for booth and inline. I just want to ask a professional, if this was your booth what would you do to obtain the highest quality work?