[rohrt]

WOW great progress.

[sdx455]

Do tell about that trap, I had an idea like that never seen it before ,why 2 separate outlets. another idea i had was like a 1/2 line jacketed by a 3/4" line you would run your air though the 1/2" the 3/4" you run a water line to it and cool the 1/2'' like a mini condenser or heat exchanger

[sdx455]

Really nice work ,for a basement build

[fbrown]

is it the lighting or did the paint darken a little when clear was applied?

Several things.

1) Clear changes the color of the base. PPG sheet says you must spray a test panel to check color match since color will change after clear is applied.

2) Lighting affects the color. In the picture with base only it was still day light. It was night by the time I had it cleared. The color changes from sun light to fluorescent light. In fact it looks like crap under fluorescent light. I almost abandoned using Alpine Blue because it has a green tint under fluorescent light. But I had to remember the car will be out in the sun and not lit up by fluorescent lights once it's finished.

3) The color changes depending on the angle it is viewed from. It's lighter when viewed straight on and darker when view from an angle.

The color changing from an angle convinced me that I must paint the car all put together rather than paint the pieces individually and re-assemble. Maybe a professional painter could pull off painting the pieces separately but I don't think I can. The last drop coat will be very critical to getting a good finish.

[fbrown]

Do tell about that trap, I had an idea like that never seen it before ,why 2 separate outlets. another idea i had was like a 1/2 line jacketed by a 3/4" line you would run your air though the 1/2" the 3/4" you run a water line to it and cool the 1/2'' like a mini condenser or heat exchanger

why 2 separate outlets

The outlet to the large filter is used only for paint only. Nothing else.

The outlet to the small filter is used for air tools and anything else that needs air. I also had the small filter first and decided that I wanted a better filter for painting. I then dedicated the small filter for air tool use.

If you jacket the lines and run water thought it, you will need a source of cold water. By the time the air makes it to the filters I think the air is cooled to near ambient temperature anyway. While pumping cold water over the pipe would allow you to use less pipe, your trap would become much more complicated. My trap happens to be underneath a air conditioning vent so I could enclose the trap and duct cold air over the trap. While this would make trap more efficient, I don't think its really necessary. In fact it might make the air too cold, I could see 50 degree air coming out the gun if I cooled the copper pipe. My research on the matter suggests that 50 feet of 3/4 copper line is all you really need. It could be just 50 feet straight across the room with a slight slope and a drain at the end. A lot of shops just place the compressor 100-200 feet away from the paint area and run cast iron pipe down the wall and report that they don't have any problems with moisture getting into the air lines. My choice to zig-zag the line was to use less space. I didn't have 50 feet of wall space.

Before I built the copper trap, I had 6 feet of rubber hose running to the small filter. After a few hours of use (air tools) , I would have water vapor coming out of the air line. Now with the copper trap, the first two legs of the copper trap condenses and collects most of the water. I have not drained any water out of either of the water/oil/pressure regulators since I built the copper trap.

The key to dry air is to place the compressor as far as possible from your filter/pressure regulator combo. This gives the water vapor at chance to condense to fluid where it can be trapped by the first stage of the filter. Otherwise water vapor makes it past the water and oil filter and is captured by the desiccant filter. Unfortunately the desiccant filter doesn't have a lot of capacity.