Wasted $300 on a fancy paint gun that just sputtered and dripped the whole time
Bought a brand new Graco airless sprayer online after watching a bunch of hype videos, and it turned a 2-hour door job into a 6-hour mess of cleaning clogged tips and wiping runs off every panel, has anyone else had bad luck with those budget turbine units?
That Graco you got probably isn't the "budget" unit people think it is. Most of those consumer-level airless sprayers actually use a simple turbine pump, not the pro-grade hydraulic pumps the YouTube guys are running. The real kicker is you gotta thin the paint A LOT more than the manual says - I learned that the hard way on a fence job. If you're spraying anything thicker than a light varnish, those $300 units just can't push the material through without sputtering and leaving drips. Try cutting your paint with Floetrol or even just a bit of water and see if it smooths out.
Man I gotta push back on that. Most of those budget Graco units actually do fine with unthinned paint if you keep the tip clean and don't run the pressure too low. I ran a whole deck with a $250 Magnum and it handled semi-solid stain straight out of the can no problem. People blame the machine when it's usually just a bad tip or not cleaning the filter.