11 minute read
GREY IS THE NEW BLACK
Words & Photos by Joshua Cameron
The chances are, if you’ve been around 4x4s, have off-road feeds on social media, or ever asked how to remove pin striping from the paint of your pride and joy, you will have already heard of the phenomenon sweeping the painting world that is Upol’s Raptor paint.
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For those of us unaware of this acclaimed standard of paint. Upol Raptor liner is a polyurethane protective paint that was originally developed as a spray in bed liner, but has now evolved to seemingly limitless applications.
Upol themselves declare Raptor as heavily scratch resistant, fully UV resistant with no fading and chalking, salt resistant, impervious to oil and most fuels, waterproof and extremely easy to apply, even for the most fledgling D.I.Y enthusiast among us.
Needless to say the above has created an almost cult like following in certain circles, with big name YouTube channels promoting it religiously, and world class shows like BBC’s Top Gear and Amazon's The Grand Tour, both featuring vehicles sprayed in Raptor.
So what was a simple Devon boy to do? “Geddon, I’ll av's me some o' that” I said.
Whilst my Mitsubishi L200 started its life with me as a shiny glossy black work truck, over the years its slowly morphed into as much of an off-road machine, as it is on road.
Lifted, on 35’s with custom OPC4x4’s diff gearing, centre and rear diff lock, my truck generally takes me places both for work (in the woods) and for pleasure that my paint protests against - often by way of torturous screeching and groans.
I found juggling keeping the truck professionally tidy, and using it for what I built it for, an ever widening gulf to bridge.
I first used Raptor on my rock sliders that were continually getting banged, scratched and had began showing signs of rust.
At the time I wasn’t confident enough to spray it through my compressor, and wanted the value of the 4L kits rather than the touch up spray cans. So after research I decided to use a mini roller and see what happened. After stripping back all the left over paint, and linishing all the rust from the sliders, I coated the bare metal in zinc primer (a poor man's galvanising) to add future protection against any microscopic rust I may have missed, or any future water ingress due to damage.
Once that had cured, and I’d lightly keyed it in, the time to try the infamous Raptor was finally here.
A friend who had previously rollered Raptor gave me the great tip of using a smooth sponge roller to put the first coat down, enabling me to get an even coverage for the base layer, and then use the textured rollers for subsequent layering to get the tough durable stippling effect.
Before I knew it I was well stuck in to the process, allowing plenty of flash off times between coats.
I was amazed, come the end of painting the sliders, how little raptor I’d used for my 3 coats, far less than if I had sprayed it. So like an over excited child with a new toy, I soon went on to do the rest of the bar work on the truck with the left over paint.
Decanting it to three parts raptor paint and one part hardener, I made sure I never made up too much Raptor that it would bake off and go to waste before I was ready to use it.
After a tentative wait for a few days to let the paint fully harden sure enough, whilst not being impervious to the toughest damage and hard impacts befitting rock sliders, the Raptor really did outshine the powder coating and spray paint that was previously applied, taking most everything I threw at it completely in its stride.
Thus the seed was planted, with lockdowns looming one after the other, the truck looking more and more sorry for itself cosmetically, the decision was made to bite the bullet and give it a respray.
The cost of a conventional respray along with the guarantee that the lifestyle the truck has to endure won’t change, the appeal of Raptor grew stronger.
With the social media grapevine alive with stories of how easy Raptor is to spray, even with little experience, I decided to give it a go myself… after all, what could go wrong, right?
After deciding to use Upol’s tintable version of Raptor, the long winded and perilous decision as to what colour to paint our beloved truck began. Finally the arguments and indecisions were resolved when, like a true man, I marched my wife down the paint store put my foot down and demanded she choose the colour she liked best. (Happy wife, and a happy get out of jail free card for me if the colour didn’t turn out right!)
With the colour decided, and a friend's gigantic ex-commercial greenhouse secured as base of operations, the day soon came to start the all important prep work. I had decided I wanted to make the job as thorough as I could for a first timer.
The first things to do were whip off the rear tub from the chassis, strip down all the door cards/seals, roof gutter trim, light clusters, door windows and a myriad other things I’m trying desperately to forget doing.
Like any paint job, the key is all in the preparation, so I allowed plenty of time to do this and didn’t rush.
When all the trim and fixtures were finally off I sanded down the bodywork with 120 grit on a D.A sander, filling any dents as needed, and making sure any filler and bare metal were covered over in etch primer.
Once everything had been keyed in (including any fresh primer), I went over the whole body, all the nooks and crannies, with a compressed air line to get all the dust and debris from sanding, and previous off-roading adventures, blasted out.
I paid special attention to wheel wells, bonnet creases, and any other areas some dust could just flick up into the paint when spraying (though this is not as vitally important with raptor as standard paint).
The next stage was to mask off any windows (or holes where windows should have been), wipe the truck down with degreaser and finally a Tac Cloth to get any of the lingering debris out of the way, and prep the paint for respray.
As mentioned, Raptor is mixed 3 to 1 Raptor paint to hardener. Conveniently, Upol make each 1 litre bottle in their kits 'Devonian' proof, with a mark to show you exactly where to add the hardener up to if you intend to use a whole bottle. When using the tintable version you then add 10% of your desired 2k tint to the bottle, shake it thoroughly for a good few minutes and then you’re ready to paint!
For my truck I decided I wanted a slightly smoother texture than the Artex like finish with the typical Schultz gun, so I invested in Raptor’s own Varigun with the adjustable nozzle for a variety of finishes. After doing some research online I decided the texture I wanted, worked out at two and a half turns (from closed) on the Vari-nozzle, and 90psi of air pressure through the gun.
I found some old bits of metal lying around, and fancying myself as Banksy, I double checked the texture was coming out right with some graffiti before beginning spraying in earnest.
Like any paint job, I sprayed side to side in long sweeping motions, making sure to get an even thin layer down, overlapping each pass to the one above it, keeping the striping down to a minimum.
I repeated this for 3 full coats all over, and then for my very last coat I stood further back and did what’s called a mist coat to get rid of any striping or other inconsistencies in the finish.
I then waited for the final coat to start tacking off, and pulled off any masking tape before the Raptor dried, and left it to cure. Upol recommend 60 minutes of flash off time between coats, 2-3 days cure time before light use or contact with water, and 7 days before it’s fully cured for heavy use.
I made sure to wait a good 3 to 4 days before putting trim and the tub back on the truck. In hindsight I should have waited the full 7 days because I chipped a bit off of the rear tub when putting it back on, however the beauty of Raptor was with a little I’ve since tested the respray amongst some of our typical Devon lanes where my paint has changed from screeches of despair to battle like cries of “Is that all you’ve got?!” to the passing foliage. Whilst no one claims Raptor is indestructible, I’ve yet to find anything to give it lasting damage and view it as a very practical and worthy mod to do.
Just get out there and give it a go
If you’re nervous start small and ask yourself, what’s the worst that could go wrong... right?!
During the project I discovered some valuable things of note from various sources and personal experience ...
- It's often best to mix your tint with its own hardener to the manufacturer's specified ratio BEFORE adding it in to the hardened Raptor mix. This isn’t essential, but it was reported that it allowed better mixing, adhesion and thus finish so of course I decided to do it.
- Another fact worthy of note is that the tintable Raptor is a creamy white in the bottle and therefore lightens the shade of your finished paint. I knew this before hand so chose a shade darker colour than we wanted, yet we still ended up having a lighter shade than we had originally anticipated once all was said and done.
- On the note of shades, its becoming a recognised fact that darker colours show scuffs in Raptor paint quicker and more dramatically than lighter colours. This is not because the Raptor is deficient, this is because the pigment in the tint is more noticeable when rubbed off from the Raptor, so any traces of tree branch or anything else you rub up against shows harsher against a darker surface.
- I also highly recommend you allow the full 60 minutes flash off time between each coat of paint, or else it will take weeks to fully harden as the layers all try to bake off through each other. This leaves a hard feeling outer shell but almost rubber like raptor underneath which can be damaged easily once the thin outer skin is penetrated.
- I would recommend you order a bit more Raptor than you think you need if spraying. As alluded to previously when rollering Raptor it stretches a surprisingly long way, however like spraying all paints, you get a fair bit of overspray with raptor which uses up more paint. To give you a rough idea I used 12 litres of tintable Raptor and 4 litres of black Raptor to do my truck, chassis and accessories. I used a 50 litre D.I.Y compressor (an anniversary gift from my wife) and found this, along with a water trap was perfectly capable of spraying the truck.
- If you take your rig off-roading after a Raptor respray and it seems scratched, check first it's not minute bits of bark, leaf or anything else actually on top of the Raptor. If it is scratched use a heat gun gently on the scratch and more often than not it will self heal (I don’t know why)
- I cannot stress enough the importance of flushing your gun through with thinners between each bottle of raptor.
I was starting to get lumps in one of my coats and although I’d squirted thinners through the gun I realised raptor was starting to go hard behind one of the jets and was coming out in small flakes and lumps. The more you spray the more you will find the paint going off inside the gun.
- If you do get any overspray in some unintended places, be quick to wipe it off with some cellulose thinners as it can be a real pain to get off once dried.
more at » www.raptorcoatings.com/uk/en-uk/