This will ultimately be a series of videos. It's brought to you by request from one of my viewers. A guy named Neil from the UK who's been very patient with me. Thank You Neil. But it deals specifically with painting RC car bodies. This is kind of cool to me because this is completely outside of my wheelhouse. It's not something I've ever done before. So I'm learning through this process just as much as I hope that you guys will learn by watching the videos. Neil was gracious enough to send me three of these bodies to play with and create some how-to videos for you guys showing you the process that I'm going to use when painting one of these bodies.
So the first thing I want to talk about is adhesion. Why do we need to have a discussion about paint adhesion? For me in this case there's a few reasons. For one, I've already told you guys this is the first time that I've ever attempted to paint one of these RC bodies. Painting plastics can be problematic to begin with depending on what type of plastic you're dealing with. For example in the automotive world plastic parts are almost always marked. It's usually on the back side of the part. But they're almost always marked telling you exactly what type of plastic that part is made out of. ABS and TPO are two very common plastics you see in automotive parts. Both accept paint very easily. Polyethylene is another type of plastic that you see pretty frequently in the automotive world.
And it does not accept paint very easily at all. So having experience with products, different types of plastics, will tell you the approach you need to take when it comes to preparing the surface for the best paint adhesion. In the case of this RC body, this is not marked anywhere telling me specifically what type of plastic this is made out of. I'm going to assume it's some type of a Lexan or a polycarbonate. But I have no experience in the past to draw on telling me the best approach to take when it comes to preparing the surface for the best paint adhesion. Another thing that makes this a little bit different if you're not familiar with RC car bodies is you don't paint the outside of the body. You can I guess if you wanted to, but traditionally you paint the inside of the body. And then the outer plastic shell acts as the clear coat in the end. So, to start the process off the first thing I want to do is make sure that it's very clean. You can see I'm just going to use some tap water, some dish soap and a sponge to clean out the inside of this body shell.
Now regardless of what you're working on it's always good practice to start any project out with a clean surface. You don't want any contaminants that might cause paint issues down the road. The main reason that I'm taking the extra time to make sure the inside of this body shell is super clean is because when manufacturers create products like these that are molded, they generally use a mold release agent. And I want to make sure all of that mold release agent is out because that will cause delamination issues and adhesion issues down the road when we start the painting process. So all I'm going to do is scrub the inside of this body shell out with the sponge and the soap, make sure I get it sparkling clean… as clean as I possibly can. And then I will rinse it out with tap water and make sure it's completely dry before I begin the next part of the process.
So now we have a clean surface to begin this project on. When it comes to adhesion, in the custom paint world we basically have two ways that we get good paint adhesion. The first being mechanical adhesion and the second being chemical adhesion. Mechanical adhesion occurs when you're sanding the surface. Whether you're using sandpaper or a Scotch-Brite pad, you're putting very minor scratches into that surface.
And that gives the paint something to bite into. So if you imagine the space between my fingers being those microscopic sand scratches that we placed into a panel, of course this would be magnified many, many, many times, my other hand represents the paint being sprayed onto that panel. The paint will flow into those scratches and that creates a mechanical bond. That's mechanical adhesion. Chemical adhesion is when the paint adheres to itself through a chemical process. So once you've put down your primer, or your sealer coat, your base coat, whatever the case may be, then you can apply additional coats of paint and the paint will adhere to itself. You no longer need to sand or scuff the surface in between those paint layers.
Ideally we won't a good mechanical adhesion from the ground up. This is going to be the exception to that rule. Reason being, a couple reasons… for one, these bodies have some little nooks and crannies. It would be very difficult to get this scuffed really well. And it would be time-consuming. The other reason is, I mentioned before that we're actually using the clear plastic as the clear coat in the end. We're painting the inside of the body. I'm afraid if I get too carried away and start scuffing the surface of this RC body underneath, you'll actually be able to see the sand scratches through the clear body in the end.
I don't want that. I know that paint doesn't like to stick to very smooth, slick surfaces, which is what we have here. So I'm going to try using some adhesion promoters, which I wasn't even sure if Createx offered until I started researching it. In the more than a decade that I've been using the Createx products exclusively for all of my custom paint work, I've never once needed to use an adhesion promoter. This time I think an adhesion promoter will be beneficial. The cool thing about these RC car bodies is it gives you all this extra plastic down here that will be trimmed away when I send these back to Neil. And he's actually using the body on his car. So that gives us some room to play with, experiment with some different things. So, what I did from here was masked off the inside of the car body and left this outer lip so that I could try a few things. So here you see I've masked off the inside of the RC body, other than the very bottom lip that we're going to be experimenting with.
And now I'm going over that with some wax and grease remover just to make sure that it is super clean before I begin the painting process. The first product that I want to try is called 7040 Adhesion Promoter. This Createx product differs from some of the others, most of the other Createx products, in the sense that it requires an activator. There are two activators available. There's 4015 and 4016. 4015 is for hard substrates, aluminum panels, steel panel, wood panel. 4016 is for flexible substrates, which is what we're working on. So I chose to use the 4016. You mix the activator into the adhesion promoter 2% by volume. So I pulled out about an ounce of the adhesion promoter and added one milliliter of the activator. I mixed that up and then allowed that to sit for five to ten minutes before I added the reducer. Createx recommends that you use the 4012 High-Performance Reducer because it helps the activator to dry more thoroughly and faster. I've gotten away from using the 4012 when mixing with my other paints because I've had some issues.
I think it's a little bit too aggressive. And I think part of the problem may be the fact that some of my stock is pretty old. A lot of this stuff is not the newer formulations. I've had it for a long time. So I've gotten away from the 4012 but I did use the 4012 with this particular adhesion promoter. I mixed it about one-to-one because I'm using an airbrush to spray it. Once the reducer was mixed in, again I stirred it up for about a minute or two and then I allowed that to sit for about ten minutes before I actually sprayed it.
Allowing your mixture to sit allows for all of the materials to acclimate to each other. They actually emulsify. And it sprays better if you allow it to sit for five to ten minutes before you actually spray. Once I allowed it to sit I was ready to spray. I put one medium coat on one side of the RC car body. When I say medium I mean not dry. You don't want to dry spray it. But you don't want to get too wet with it either. Remember you can use your air to dry it if you need to, but one just kind of medium coat and then I allowed that to dry for about fifteen minutes before I came in with the second coat. The second coat was a little bit heavier. But again you don't want to get it saturated. You don't want too much product on whatever it is that your spraying. After I allowed that to sit for about thirty minutes I came in with just some Wicked Yellow and sprayed a few coats over the adhesion promoter.
Again, I sprayed this just like I would anything else, light coats using the air from the airbrush to dry it in between each coat. This was mixed about one-to-one with the 4011 Reducer. The next product I decided to try was the 5092 Adhesion Promoter. This comes from the Tim Gore Bloodline Illustration Colors. It's an adhesion promoter. I believe it's more specifically made for latex applications, but the technical data sheet also says that it works good as an adhesion promoter on flexible plastics. So I thought I'd give it a shot. The application process for this adhesion promoter is very similar to the 7040 with a couple of exceptions. One being I did not reduce the 5092. I poured this straight into the airbrush cup right out of the bottle and sprayed it that way. You want two medium coats. Again, you don't want to spray it dry, but you don't want to get it too wet. If you do get it a little bit wet you can use the air from the airbrush to dry it.
But I came in and put down one coat. And then I gave that about 10 to 15 minutes to dry before I came in for the second coat. Again, a medium application. You don't want it to dry and you don't want it to wet. Once I gave the second coat about 10 to 15 minutes to dry I came in with just some Wicked Red and did the same thing as I did with the gold spraying a few coats over the adhesion promoter. And then we'll let that dry and we'll see how well it sticks. The last product I decided to try on this RC car body is actually a brand new product just recently released by Createx. It's the new UVLS Clears. These I'm pretty excited about because this is more than just a clear coat, which doesn't really apply to this particular video, but I'll be covering some other things you can do with these new clears in future videos. You can also use this clear as an adhesive primer or an adhesive promoter. That's the purpose that I'm using it for on the RC car body.
When it comes to reduction I chose to use the 4011 Reducer. Createx recommends a 5 to 10% reduction for a spray gun. I'm using an airbrush. So I probably got closer to a one-to-one ratio. After I stirred that thoroughly, again I let it sit for about 10 minutes and acclimate before I actually sprayed the product. When it comes to spraying this product, again you don't want to a dry spray and you don't want to get too wet. You just want a medium coat. It should look glossy without getting milky. If you look at this bottle you can tell the contents are not crystal clear like compared to the reducer. If you get too heavy and it begins to look milky don't panic. It will dry crystal clear. But you want to try and avoid getting it so heavy that it does milk up on you. I came in and applied the first medium wet coat.
And then I gave that about 10 to 15 minutes to dry before coming back in and applying a second coat. Createx recommends three coats if you're using this as an adhesive primer. Again, after the second coat I allowed 10 to 15 minutes for the product to dry. And then I came back in and put the final and third coat down. If you're using the UVLS Clear as an adhesive primer, as I was in this case, Createx recommends for the maximum adhesion qualities to allow that to cure for at least 48 hours before applying any other paint. So that's what I did. In the meantime, I was curious to see if just spraying color onto the RC car body without using any type of adhesion promoter at all would have any effect on durability or the adhesion of the paint. So, I mixed up some Wicked Blue with 4011 Reducer, just a one-to-one ratio, and I sprayed that onto the one end of the RC car body that didn't have any paint on it.
So that just gives me another test, sort of a control if you will. Once the 48 hours had elapsed and the UVLS Clear was cured, I mixed up some Wicked White. Again with 4011 Reducer, about a one-to-one ratio, and I sprayed a few coats, enough coats to get coverage over the UVLS Clear. And that will give us the opportunity to test the adhesive qualities on that scenario. So now we get to the fun stuff.
All of the adhesion promoters that I wanted to try have been sprayed. And I've sprayed color over the adhesion promoters. All of the paint has dried for at least 24 hours before I put masking tape over the paint that was sprayed. I made sure and burnished the masking tape down very well because I wanted to see if it would peel any paint away. I've left the masking tape on for nearly 24 hours now. And I fully expect for some of the paint to be removed because we've painted over a very slick, smooth surface with no mechanical tooth.
So I'm not going to be surprised if the tape removes some paint when I remove the tape. So let's do that now. The first red was the Bloodline Adhesion Promoter. And there's a few little flakes on the very bottom edge that may have come from the actual masking tape it looks like on the inside of the body right in this area. Other than that, the paint adhered really well. We'll try the control. Which was the blue. And again, no paint was removed. That's kind of surprising. The white was the new UVLS Clear used as an adhesion promoter.
Again, no paint on the masking tape. I am extremely impressed at this point. And the yellow was the 7040. I don't see any paint on the masking tape at all. So, the fact that I might have wanted to use an adhesion promoter may not be necessary. The other test I wanted to do… I have a wooden dowel rod with kind of a blunt sharpened edge on it. And I just want to see how easy it is to remove some of this paint by scratching at it. You can see the blue can be scratched right off, which is not surprising considering the fact there was no mechanical tooth scuffed into this body. The white scratches off relatively easy. It's probably a little bit more difficult than the blue was. Yellow is even more difficult. Again, that was the 7040 Adhesion Promoter. And the red comes off relatively easy but not quite as easy as the blue.
So, without the adhesion promoter it was actually relatively easy to scratch the paint off. Here I'm just using my fingernail. I have to work at it a little bit harder where I had the UVLS clear with a fingernail. And I'm not getting any paint scratching off with my fingernail for the 7040. And the Bloodline, red is relatively easy to scratch off. So, these results are pretty typical for what I was expecting based on the fact that I didn't put any kind of a mechanical tooth into this RC car body. I think the 7040 Adhesion Promoter probably works the absolute best. I'm not terribly disappointed that you can scratch the paint away. Because in the event that you get a little bit of paint bleed when you're masking off a custom paint job, it would be really easy to come in and clean up that paint bleed just by scratching it away.
Overall I'm pretty impressed with how all of this worked. I think the 7040 is probably the best bet for maximum adhesion and durability. I'll leave links in the description below to all of the products that I used. I am an Amazon affiliate. So if you decide to order some of these products and you use the Amazon links, I appreciate it. You're supporting the channel in that way. I hope you got something out of this. If you did remember to like, subscribe and share. I'm Trevor with Wicked Art Studio. And I'll see you guys next time.
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