How to paint a car yourself without paint booth - Mercedes 500 SL R129 incredible transformation

In this video you see me doing a full DIY color change paint job on my car, a 1990 Mercedes 500SL R129. I did this at home in my improvised paint booth.

The old paint of this car was in very bad condition. Parking damage, stone chips, scratches everywhere. The car is 32 years old and has 310000kms and it really showed. I really like this car and it deserved a restoration.

So time to go to work.
I started by sanding old paint with P320. Then I sprayed high build primer on all visible panels. Afterwards sanded the primer down with P600. For the base coat I sprayed one light coat and 2 heavy coats. Same for the clear, one light coat and 2 heavy coats.

My improvised "paint booth" has 2 extraction fans (one on top and one through the grill on the floor). I always wet the floor to keep the dust down as much as possible. This paint booth works well for small stuff, but when you have to paint large flat surfaces like the hood and trunk dust becomes an issue. I will wetsand and buff the paint in a later stadium.
This project took me six weeks to complete (outside working hours).

Please note that I am not a professional. I have no training in car paiting whatsoever. I just do what has worked for me in the past based on the info I gathered over the years (online, books, tutorial videos etc). I am sure a lot of things could be done different/better :).

Tools used:
Primer gun: Zionair HVLP, 1.8 tip, pressure 23 psi
Base and clear gun: SATA Jet 3000 HVLP, 1.2 tip, pressure 27 psi (base) and 29 psi (clear)
Compressor: 2 cylinder with 300L capacity, no idea of the cfm but more than enough.

Chapters:
0:00 - demonstation of condition of old paint
2:42 - start disassembly
7:20 - sanding old paint
10:24 - spraying primer on loose parts
22:04 - masking the car
23:44 - spraying primer on the car
28:28 - sanding the primer
31:44 - spraying base coat and clear coat on car
41:40 - spraying base coat and clear coat on loose parts
53:00 - final assembly
55:39 - presentation of the result and drive

I know this automotive content is different from the other projects I have posted, but I thought it could be interesting to share this too. The next project will be again an electric build.

Thanks for watching and consider subscribing if you liked what you saw.

See you in the next one!