So it was a long weekend, but I had a very VERY rewarding ending. All I can say is I’m very appreciative of my friends that were able to help out and very appreciative of my wife, who actually spent the majority of the weekend with me sanding, taping, cleaning and prepping the car! I’m lucky to have her, that’s for sure!
We started off Saturday around 10am by pushing the car out of the garage so I could not fill the garage w/ the metal dust that came from us sanding the car, plus allowed me to blow a lot of the dust out of the interior of the car as well as clean out the garage.
After spending about 3ish hours (with 3 of us sanding away) scuffing up every square inch of the car plus a quick wipe down of everything w/ a little acetone just to do an initial cleaning of the heavy stuff/dust, it was ready to slide back in the garage.
With a little help from a buddy, we were able to strip down the plastic on the ceiling of the garage bay (LOTS of trapped dust up there from the bodywork), blow out the garage, vacuum everything, wipe down the walls, and get the bay “ready”… or as ready as a redneck spray booth could be
And INTO the garage it went for the last time without paint!
From this point started the fun/torture of properly taping off every square inch of the bloody car. This probably took 3ish hours by the time we were all said and done. It was absolutely painful, but we started to get good at it! I was able to sucker my buddy to help out when they came over to visit Saturday night (bribe with beer, have them help w/ car as we drink beer). Then, even the wife snuck in and started to help!
But this was as far as we got on Saturday:
This marked about 10 hours worth of work on the car with various people popping in as the day went on lending a hand. Needless to say, I was dead tired. I had a little later of a start on Sunday, but we got it handled.
Had the Mrs out helping tape up the motor and get the lower stuff handled as well!
And after a couple more hours of torture… it’s ready to get cleaned!!!
From this point, we cleaned the car off 3 times with Final Klean (Dupont surface prep that’s excessively expensive, but does the trick). Once the car was clean, and I got the heater in the garage functioning properly again (needed the garage at around 68-70* and it was only 63 or so outside), it was time for the real fun:
And after about an hour or so, we have paint! I managed not to do a single run on the entire car! With that said though, it def needs to be sanded as it’s not a smooth finish. Either my technique sucked, or I didn’t have enough pressure going through the gun. Maybe a little mix of the two? Either way, I got some nice smooth areas, and some areas w/ a little “texture” to them. Nothing a little block sanding won’t fix (required anyway), but a little more of a reassurance as to why I’m letting the pros shoot the color! I also have a sneaking suspicion that I didn’t have the pressure on the gun high enough, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to tell you exactly what… any tips someone wants to toss in are appreciated
Anyway, enough jibber-jabber, onto the pix:
It was an amazing moment to see the car one color again. It hasn’t looked this uniform for well over a year and a half at this point. It’s taken me over a year since I dropped the car off at the body shop the first time (Jul 15, 2011) to get it straight and primed, but I think I’ve done pretty damn well. By the naked eye, all transitions, etc look awesome. There are a few pinholes I noticed on the rear flares, but where the flares meet the door jams, or the dent that was the pass side quarter panel are looking pretty good all things considering!
So from this point, it’s time to guide coat and start my initial block sanding. This will let me know exactly HOW well I’ve done! Then I will probably lay down another layer of primer and block sand at a finer grit. (180 then 220) If it looks good, I might sneak one more coat and do a final sand of around 320 grit, and then the body is ready and I can start working on the fenders/doors/trunk/hood. So maybe by January timeframe, the car might be ready for the body shop (budget allowing). We’ll see how life treats me, and go from there!
So hope you enjoyed the show. This was a huge milestone for me! Words can’t even describe how excited I am (and it’s not the fumes from the paint either, I swear!) It’s great not having to worry about corrosion/surface/flash rust on the bare metal anymore, and I’m one step closer to being done. This Dec marks 2 years the car has been apart, so I’m ready to have this behind me and use the car again. I miss my 4000
I'm not laying out my cards though as to what I"m looking at quite yet though :-P
