Paint booth in a bag

 I've been puzzling over a way to set up a temporary paint booth. Have done it before using PVC pipe as a framework covered with plastic film. But the cost of these materials today has gotten ridiculous. Then I found these cheap party tents that were available in a size that would be just right for my shop space. Everything packs into a bag for compact storage. 

 

This opens up to a 10' x 20' popup style tent and comes with six removable side panels to make a fully enclosed space. It takes two people to erect this, with one person at each end to pull open the structure. 

  

Two of the six side panels have full-height zippers that can work as entry doors. The other four have screened windows that have zippered covers. I arranged the zipper panels to give access from each side, and the window panels at the long ends. These will be set up with filters and fans later for airflow.

 

  

  

Undercoating

 This week was the application of the U-POL Raptor 'bedliner' as undercoating. This was sprayed using the supplied shutz gun that came with the 4-qt kit Raptor kit. 

As an experiment, I mixed a quart of 'weightless' glass microsphere powder with the first quart of Raptor to be applied to the tunnel and floors to serve as a thermal barrier. The microspheres, also sometimes called microballoons, are hollow bubbles of glass. Adding this to the Raptor makes a kind of foam out of it, in effect. I don't know if anyone has tried this before with the Raptor bedliner, so the effectiveness is uncertain. Had to add about 20% thinner to make it sprayable after the microspheres had thickened up the mix. 

The remaining 3 quarts of Raptor were applied as normal in 2 coats, except that I did find that it needed thinning a bit to achieve the texture that I wanted, The objective was to try to mimic the texture of the factory original tar-based undercoating. I think it came out a bit rougher, but still close. Some areas will be painted over in body color - the wheelhouses, firewall, etc., where the factory originally painted over the undercoating.

Undersides get primer

Got the bottom sandblasted. Since most of the surface had already been stripped, this was just to get into the otherwise inaccessible corners and crevices.

 

2 coats of epoxy primer were applied to seal it all up.
Next steps will be seam sealer, then UPOL Raptor bedliner over all the areas originally covered with factory undercoating.