DuPont Centari, Single stage....Anything I need to know?

[flynbrian]

Looks good...If I ran a squirrel cage blower with a divorced motor & belt drive It should keep the motor out of harms way completely...Especially if I mount the blower outside of the garage so it sucks air out. A friend is a maint. Man for a apartment complex....I am sure he can get me a good blower for free...from a furnace.
What if I run the Propane torpedo for a many hours beforehand and just shut it off a few minutes before I spray & turn on the exhaust fan....There shouldn't be enough condensation (It burns real clean) and nothing -even bare metal has rusted in my garage before....It is concrete block and seems really dry except in the early spring when there is huge temperature fluxuations and water sweats up through the floor.....But as long as I keep the doors shut it happens only mildly. My little propane jobby will run 20 hours on a 20# cylinder and make the garage so hot you cant stand to be in it....It is also getting ready to be a really dry time of year around here...the humidity is low this time of year...So do you still think I will really have that much issue? Because the heat thing is my biggest issue to overcome....

[tweety]

OK, I like your fan idea. I think you should be good to go with it. I'm really hesitant about anything to do with propane heat for anything to do with painting though. If you can be sure you won't get condensation, it's up to you whether to use it, but I can't recomend using it in good faith. There are simply too many variables, and I've never had any luck with it. Something I thought of last night as far as technique goes that I hadn't mentioned. You may already know this but when you are painting up higher - eg. - going over the hood, roof, and trunk. It's best to run the air hose over your shoulder and along your arm. It gives you a little better control over your gun and helps keep the hose out of the paint. It also helps considerably with fatigue, simply because you're not fighting the weight of the hose with your wrist. You may have already known this, but I thought I'd mention it - just in case.

[flynbrian]

I can see your point with condensation if I only ran the heater a little while (less than 2 hours) And the ambient air being moderately humid...But here in the winter it gets so dry that even my skin just gets hard and cracks like hell. So even if the chemical byproduct of combustion is some moisture it still wouldn't be as bad as painting on a July evening here with just the ambient hot humid weather....IMO
I was planning on running the propane for like 6-8 hours before painting to get the concrete and the car up to a pretty toasty temperature (enough heat to keep moisture a vapor) then shutting it off for only enough time to spray and flash...Then firing it back up and running it till its out of propane or till my pocketbook is too light from paying for tanks...I feel like as long as I keep the temp. high and the air circulating that the little bit of humidity from the propane would get soaked up by the wood rafters and roof planks of my garage, Since it all shrinks in the winter from being dry...Or I could get a dehumidifier to run in the garage if its really that big a deal...

[Dan Starnes]

I have centari 99A on one of my cars that I painted in 1984. It continues to show well. The car has been kept indoors and covered. Still looks very very nice.

[flynbrian]

Nice, I bought a new upright 60 gallon air compressor and built a barn next to my garage to house it and my motorcycles. I have yet to wire and plumb it but it will make spraying the paint much nicer when this God Awful cold weather is finally gone!
I think its colder outside than it is in my freezer for sure...

I have my Centari stored in my closet in the house. So it cant freeze. I will scramble to get my turbo install finished before I actually paint the car. I dont want to risk scratching it.

I am convinced that Centari will hold up for as long as I own my car.