Hot Rods anyone remember electrolux paint jobs

..................I remember seeing those. They were attention getters.

 

A friend in high school ( early 60s .. ) painted his car with a vacuum cleaner- came out looking like sand... But after a LOT of sanding and buffing- came out looking pretty good !!

 

I have several vacuum cleaner spray guns in my collection of vintage painting equipment(see thread on vintage airbrushes and striping tools) including an Electrolux and a Royal from the 1930's.
My first (and only) experience using one of these things was at the age of thirteen when my friend and neighbor decided he wanted to paint his first car: a 1950 Mercury he had purchased from his old brother.
The car was a slightly faded black but didn't look all that bad. Dick decided he wanted it bright red.This was not a wise decision on his part for a number of reasons.
The time was July 1957 and it was reasonably hot out in New England. We lived on a dirt street right off the main road but the driveway of his house had recently been paved with asphalt. His dad was a semi professional bowler and was attending a tournament somewhere that took him out of town for about a week. All of these factors would play out in this story.
The garage at his house was something that had been built in the 1930's and was not wide enough to accommodate the Mercury so it was decided to paint it in the driveway This was NOT a good idea as I will show.
We went to the local body shop supply store and got a gallon of bright red alklyd enamel paint;a gallon of thinner;some wax and grease remover;sandpaper and masking tape and proceeded to sand down the body and mask it off using old newspaper.
When this was done we got his mother's Electrolux vacuum cleaner and spray attachment and mixed up some paint as per the instructions we had received at the paint shop and eagerly set to spraying the car.
I'm not sure if the paint was incorrectly mixed or there wasn't enough pressure or our technique was wrong but the paint kept coming out of the sprayer in short bursts followed by periods of just air. We were trying to maintain a smooth movement along the side but the intermittent operation was causing that plan to go south in a hurry. Our solution was to stop moving until it started spraying again and then move on.
When we finally ran out of paint we had sitting in front of us something that resembled a giant sagging tomato. There were runs on top of runs and there was more paint on the freshly tarred driveway than there was on the car. Not good.
We tried washing off the paint with the remaining thinner but all that did was move it around on the surface a bit and get our hands covered with paint. We then got the idea to get some gasoline and use that to clean it off. Even worse idea.
We go buy 5 gallons of gasoline and proceed to wash the car down. The end result is that most of the red paint is removed and transferred to the driveway;the gasoline softens and ruins the driveway and Dick gets blood poisoning from either the lead in the gasoline or the lead in the paint and has to spend several days in the hospital. Probably a good thing as his dad comes home and sees the damage to the driveway and wants to murder him.
His older brother who sold him the car feels bad and gets a friend of his who works in a body shop to take the car and finish cleaning it. They also do a quick spray over with black enamel to make it at least one color again.Not much gloss but it looks presentable.
A month or so later I finally convince Dick that the Merc would really look good if I did some striping on it. I had been practicing for almost two years now but had never done a real car. He likes the idea and so it is decided.
I buy some Red Devil paint(bright red and white)and some fresh turpentine and we look for a place to stripe the car. The driveway has been off limits to us forever and the only place we can park it is on the street. There is a slight incline from the street to the sidewalk and the car sits on a bit of an angle. There is no shade trees around and it is now August and the surface temperature of a black car in August is approaching boiling..
The paint is still a little tacky and I know I'm not going to be able to wipe it off if I make a mistake but I set about it anyway;determined to finally stripe a real car.
Everything was going wrong; the paint was drying on the pallet; my fingers were burning from the heat;the stripe design was perfectly vertical but the car wasn't and somehow I managed to finish striping the car. The hood;the trunk;around the headlights and tail lights;on the dashboard;even painted some flames coming out of the front wheel wells.
When we got the car back on a level surface I realized how crooked the design was on the hood and trunk but it didn't matter to me(or Dick for that matter);I had FINALLY striped a CAR!!!!!

I really wish I had pictures of that first job but unfortunately neither Dick nor I had a camera and the car was stolen shortly afterward and never recovered. Before that happened though a friend of Dick's saw the striping and asked me if I could do some of that on his 1951 Pontiac convertible and that was the beginning of my career in striping.

Here are a couple of pictures of vacuum cleaner spray guns.

 

About '57 or '58 I painted my '40 coupe bright yellow in our garage with my mom's electrolux. Didn't look horribly bad, but everything in the garage, and particularly the electrolux was covered in yellow synthetic enamel overspray. Needless to say, I was not popular for awhile.
After that, I resorted to the bug sprayer method to primer my next few projects.

 

HRP, there's a few YouTube videos of using the shop air nozzle to spin various things in the air, rolls of masking tape, screwdrivers, etc. Pretty entertaining, you'll be out in the shop in minutes, seeing how fast you can get the screwdrivers to spin. My experience with them was that as I approached the speed I wanted, they crashed. Kinda like some of my cars....................................

 

Thought I was the only one. Painted at my first car 53 Merc. in my driveway with moms sweeper when I was 14 or 15. It was the original HVLP. I say painted at cause I made a big mess. Had a grades school buddy whose folks owned sewing macine sweeper shop. Old man hit the road in a 57 Safari and did demos one of the things he featured was the ability of both Electrolux and Kirby to atomize liquids.

 

Bernoulli's principle. Moving air is of lower pressure than still air. The surrounding air, being at higher pressure than the moving stream, holds the ball in place.
Same principle a carburetor works on. Moving air in the throat is at lower pressure than the air in the float bowl. Fuel is pushed from the high pressure area to the low pressure area.
Same thing for the spray guns.

 

I believe it was a Kirby vacuum my dad used to paint his delivery. HRP

 

Awesome thread. Safarinut, I was laughing so hard, my wife yelled from the kitchen "whats the matter with you??!!" Reminds me of some of my early engine swap stories...

 

My dad painted a 45 foot trailer with an electrolux vacuum cleaner sprayer and he lent it to several others in the trailer court. It did a fairly good job.

 

Reminds me of a Fibber McGee and Molly episode where Fibber paints a Christmas tree white. The vacuum cleaner sprayer works for a minute, then spits and sputters and then quits. Fibber knocks it against the porch, it starts working again, and he resumes spraying the tree. This repeats several times. When he finally finishes, he realizes he has painted the tree in the yard instead of the cut tree on the porch.

I never tried painting with the one that came with our Rainbow vac, but did use it to spray some bug spray a time or two. It worked, but not so great.

 

Those are the kind of memories that seem like they only happened last week.
Another one was when I sprayed flames on my friend's 27T roadster in three colors of alklyd enamel in his living room! He had a garage but no heat in it and wanted flames so he assembled the car enough to set up in his living room and we sprayed it there. This was in 1974 and his wife is STILL coming across yellow overspray when she cleans the room. I had almost forgotten about that one until he sent me pictures of it with me laying out the flames.

DON'T even get me started on engine swaps like using the foothold spike on the side of a telephone to try nad yank an Olds engine and Dual-Range Hydramatic as a unit.

 

That's a new one on me. I've built motors in kitchens, but never shot paint in a living room! And the flames turned out damn good!

 

I still have my Mom's and it still works great- I used it to spot paint by 53 Ford in HS- I moved up to a Sears compressor and spray gun to paint a 39 Ford- lately I hire out any paint work-

 

Now, as I explained in the 'Rakes' column: "THAT'S a 'Portagee Dip!"

 

My mother had a Filter Queen vacuum that came with all kinds of "neato" accessories, like the spinning ball that had holes in it so it whistled as it spun, and a hair dryer-a bag you put over your head -and of course a paint sprayer. I painted my CCM bike with it, and my big brother used it to spray the obligatory primer spots on his '47 Monarch coupe.

 

Ha! Dan C, That Black Flag fly sprayer...Great spray gun!
My '49 Hawthorn got some coats of Fiesta Orange on the frame, the heated and bent forward fork and the rear 'upswept' Schwinn chopped fender.
Rims and spokes were chromed, and the sprocket and crank. 'Medium' risers, and a chrome front fender, rotated backward, lowering the trailing edge to enhance the longer front wheelbase...
Sharpest bike at school, 1954.

Two years later, I had 'graduated' to a borrowed Binks I used with a small compressor; was painting my '32 Five window, Nitro cellulose red lacquer...Push the body/frame on setup wheels out of the garage onto the gravel drive, paint 2 coats, wait and sand...Two more coats, etc.
My Mom asked, "How many times you are gonna paint that damned thing???"
32 coats later...(including hood, deck, doors, shell, and some underpinnings) Color sanding, (soap and water, #600, then polish, etc.) it was done. (Whew!)
I had a pro stopping by every 2 days, giving me much needed pointers!
Visited Grandma's old house last year, garage is gone now, but the gravel in front of where it stood is still red, around a perimeter where the car sat while getting all those coats...(since 1956! Nitro lasts!)

 

The only reason I come to the HAMB is when reading posts like this I feel so young!
I remember those Sears spinning ball vacuum cleaners always on. And I faintly remember those old TV shows.

As for the vacuum sweeper car painting, back when we married, the Kirby crew came to the door convincing my young bride she needed a new multi-dollar vacuum. Of course finding it cost more than the Model A project I bought I repeatedly said NO!
Then I saw all those kool attachments like a grinder, knife sharpener............ and that spray gun! Funny thing is I ended up buying a small cheap Sears compressor and spray kit so never swept any of my cars with paint.
We'll be married 58 years this fall and I think the Kirby will be paid for by next spring! Maybe I'll go out in the garage and paint something with it.

A buddy lived in a small mobile home park with his new wife. He bought a new BSA and wanted it a different color. Cold winters in Illinois so we took it in his new single wide mobile home and rattle can sprayed it. Don't remember whether his wife complained the most or the mobile home park owner. Bike looked nice!

 

Boo, did ya repaint the grille shell yet?

Lee

 

Back around 1960 our neighbor had sold our family a 52 Buick that was to be my mothers car. It was somewhat rough and he was going to do some bodywork on it and repaint the car 55 Chevy grey and salmon combo. To my amazement he used his Kirby vacuum. The paint never had a deep shine but it looked ok. Later we painted it a Dodge Royol Lancer Blue when I inherited it. Never could get all the masking tape of the stainless.
Mom married him in 64 and she passed in 2011 and now I have the Kirby.

 

I primered my 50 Merc in 1963 with my Mother's Filter Queen.

 

Painted lot's of stuff with a "Filter Queen", outside no less. Can't say they were "High Dollar" jobs, but when youre a kid you gotta work with what you have.

 

my one uncle painted a 70s Ford country squire wagon in his garage with one when my other uncle wouldn't let him use his paint shop , and he used enamel . it was a brown car , it looked good at 20' but closer than that it looked like a cornless turd with the real bad orange peel , the paint didn't lay down right . ( I think he forgot the hardener too as the car was sticky for about 2 weeks )

 

Painted my first car, a 49 Chevy, with a Elecrolux vacuum with the glass jar spray set up. Used gray lacquer primer and had to thin it out a lot to get it to spray. Hooked hose to the outlet side of the vacuum. Had to hold your finger over the small hole in the metal spray adapter when you wanted the paint to come out. The Chevy never got past the primer job.....looked good enough, especially when I painted the rims red, tossed out the hub caps, and took it to Carlson's service station and had the front springs torched! It rode like a truck, but looked cool as hell. I was 16 at the time.

 

Interesting thread, even though it is a shameless knockoff of my thread
Most of what's here should be there, maybe we should combine both threads
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...home-in-the-driveway-or-garage-thread.943236/

 

Oh I don't know about that.

 

Hey, shouldn't you be giving us an update on that coupe build ? Or has something else grabbed your attention

 

I remember my late older brother painting the dash on his 47 Ford two door purple with mom's vacuum cleaner. I think he used lacquer. Don't know where he got the paint. Nobody had any money back then. He graduated high school in '59 so this must have been '57-'58. I remember him hand rubbing it out. As I remember it was kinda rough around the edges but shined some where it counted. He gave me that car when he graduated high school and got a job and bought a better one.

God I miss him.
Gary

 

I remember seeing those spinning beach ball displays in the department store appliance department years ago. They were kind of mesmerizing to watch. But I also remember seeing a particularly interesting variation of this setup.

The exhaust hose from the vacuum was routed up into the molded plastic body of a seal, with its head and snout pointed upwards. The effect was that you'd walk into a Sears or Monkey Wards store and there was a trained seal spinning and balancing a beach ball on its nose! The younger you were, the more impressive it was...

 

Heck I'd be impressed right now!
I can't get the vision out of my head of when they were in stores.
It also reminds me of the Shell station fuel pumps with the little colored balls bouncing in a window as the 19.9 fuel flowed past. Now to a little kid that was impressive!