Sam's 20vt CQ - Red and PNWy

[85oceanic]

Looking fantastic Sam, keep it up!

[SEStone]

Started sanding tonight. Lots of work ahead, but this is maybe going to be easier than I was inspecting--high build sands very easily with very light, long strokes. The roof and sunroof panel are done.

Sam

[AudiSport4000]

Fly me down and I'll help sand kthxbai

[chaloux]

Haha.

Awesome stuff Sam... Seems like waaaaaaay too much work to me, lol. Plastidip it is!

[SEStone]

Right, so still sanding primer.

The high build primer sprays on thick and rough. Before sanding, I'll spray a 'guide coat' of cheap black primer over it. The point of this is to paint all the low spots a darker contrasting color, then sanding everything smooth until the low spots are gone. This is done with 320-400grit sand paper, and should be done with a large block and long strokes--you're leveling and smoothing the surface to apply your base coat and clear coat to.

It starts like this:


And hours of tedious, careful, messy work later ends up something like this:




I've sanded through to the underlying paint in spots. I'm told it's ok, as that paint is in good condition (not cracked or failing and has been sanded/prepped), as long as everything is smooth and there's no bare metal. You can see the sides have some primer and some red showing--some of these are high/low spots, some are areas I probably just didn't sand as evenly as others. My bodylines look smooth in reflection, so I'm going to roll with this--frankly I'm running too low on time, patience, and energy to go back and reprime/sand these parts another 2-3 times to make them 'flawless'. It'll turn out good enough, at good enough least to match the rest of the work on the car.

I did sand through all the primer on some spots of the car--mostly sharp edges that the sand paper works over very easily. I've tried repriming and sanding these but I keep burning through the same spots. I need to rethink my approach on these areas.


Overall, I'm about 1/2-2/3s done with sanding. I dunno if it will happen for BBQ at this point. If it does, either the paintwork or everything else (trim reassembly and some mechanical maintenance) will be some grade of rush job, and I don't know if it's worth sacrificing anything for when I can take the GTI or maybe Val's UrQ (which needs some work before I'd put 1k miles on it though...).

Sam

[Mcstiff]

(I don't have room to talk, I have a 1% chance of making it down)

[ringbearer]

From what I gather it is best to have a solid coat of primer and not sand through it anywhere before color, if you feather out all the burnt through areas it will help.

[audifreakjim]

Sam, not sure if this will happen with red, but you can see on my car where the different colors of primer where used under the paint. Are you going to spray it or have someone spray it? A pro can lay down a base primer, then color without sanding. This is ideal because you get the paint onto the primer while it is still open and it's much more resilient to chipping.

[scubagli]

I would etch prime the bare spots, then add a coat or two of 2k to those areas before priming the whole car, I would then knock down the the 2k with some 600 wet/dry paper before paint.

[jretal]

Are you using any guide coat before sanding, Sam? If not, you might be taking off more in spots than you should. The guide coat (black spraypaint is fine) is really a necessity when doing this. Also, how long are the blocks you're using?

For red, you NEED to have a constant coat of paint, and not jumping from primer to paint below primer. Generally this is accomplished by a sealer coat before color (thinned down build primer can be done), and after sanding the build primer.

For my car, I started at 180 grit and guide coat/block/respray/guide/block/etc at nausea. For the bigger dips I used a light filler. then re-did primer. I worked from 180 grit to 220 to 320 and then sent to the body shop. They said if there were little spots that were bare metal, that was OK b/c the sealer could cover it before color. I was REALLY anal with mine, so I did easily 5 coats of build primer and sanded it down. All depends on how "perfect" you want it.

[SEStone]

Are you using any guide coat before sanding, Sam? If not, you might be taking off more in spots than you should. The guide coat (black spraypaint is fine) is really a necessity when doing this. Also, how long are the blocks you're using?

For red, you NEED to have a constant coat of paint, and not jumping from primer to paint below primer. Generally this is accomplished by a sealer coat before color (thinned down build primer can be done), and after sanding the build primer.

For my car, I started at 180 grit and guide coat/block/respray/guide/block/etc at nausea. For the bigger dips I used a light filler. then re-did primer. I worked from 180 grit to 220 to 320 and then sent to the body shop. They said if there were little spots that were bare metal, that was OK b/c the sealer could cover it before color. I was REALLY anal with mine, so I did easily 5 coats of build primer and sanded it down. All depends on how "perfect" you want it.

Yeah, I'm using black Rustoleum automotive primer for a guide coat. I think my biggest problem is we didn't put the same number of primer coats down on all the panels, as it was 3am and we were low on primer. The hood, front fenders, and roof got for sure 2-3 coats initially, everything else got something like 1-2 complete coats of varying thickness it seems. We did the driver's side first before we started getting low on primer, so I'm hoping it holds up better.

I appreciate the feedback on red; I'll add some kind of seal coat to my list before spraying red. Since I can't really do any actual spraying in my own garage it's pretty difficult to do the 4-5 step primer process, and I think I would kill myself if I attempted that at this point...starting to be over this whole sanding thing. I think I want to be that anal, but don't have the resources right now, so we'll see how it all turns out.

Sam

[jretal]

yeah, it takes a TON of patience to do this type of work. BTW, for each "coat" of paint, I probably put down 2-3 coats... if that makes sense. I went through a gallon and a half of primer on my car. Supposedly 1 gallon easily does a car (when you know what you're doing).

If you're using like an 18" block, you will find less imperfections than using a 24" or 30" (obvioiusly). 9 times out of 10, only you will see the defects and everyone else will oogle over the fresh paint. I know this from experience w/ my car. I see a ton of imperfections, but I know where to look. No one else seems to notice.

[SEStone]

yeah, it takes a TON of patience to do this type of work. BTW, for each "coat" of paint, I probably put down 2-3 coats... if that makes sense. I went through a gallon and a half of primer on my car. Supposedly 1 gallon easily does a car (when you know what you're doing).

If you're using like an 18" block, you will find less imperfections than using a 24" or 30" (obvioiusly). 9 times out of 10, only you will see the defects and everyone else will oogle over the fresh paint. I know this from experience w/ my car. I see a ton of imperfections, but I know where to look. No one else seems to notice.

I'm using a 12" or 14" block where possible, but the Coupe has a lot more curved edges than the 4000 because of the fenders and beltline stuff. I would say I'm only able to use the long block on maybe 35% of the car, everything else is a compound curve or is too narrow to use my long block.

Sam

[jretal]

Agree, def more curve, but also used a long block for about the same amount on my car IIRC for the block sanding. I know I ended up using a smaller block to "finalize" everything so I didn't sand through anywhere! I wanted a good finish, but def wasn't making a concours vehicle. Still turned out pretty damn well.

Good luck, man. I don't envy you right now... esp working in that heat. I did all the sanding during winter, so I didn't sweat out as much :-P

[SEStone]

Agree, def more curve, but also used a long block for about the same amount on my car IIRC for the block sanding. I know I ended up using a smaller block to "finalize" everything so I didn't sand through anywhere! I wanted a good finish, but def wasn't making a concours vehicle. Still turned out pretty damn well.

Good luck, man. I don't envy you right now... esp working in that heat. I did all the sanding during winter, so I didn't sweat out as much :-P

Luckily heat broke sometime around last week. Evening lows are in the mid 70s, highs are in the upper 80s, and it's a pleasant dry heat now. Luckily haven't done too much sweating lately. A month ago was ridiculous.

Sam

[pilihp2]

Had my window open last night and almost froze this morning with a low of 43 overnight

[SEStone]

Is this thing still on?

I'm still plodding along on this. I think the light is at the end of the tunnel, not much left before I think I'll turn it over to a bodyshop to be fixed and sprayed. I looked in to renting their booth, and counting materials it was looking to be $800-900, whereas they would paint a stripped and prepped car starting at $1000 depending on materials. I'm trying to budget $1500-$2000 before I hand it over to them to make sure good paints are used and make sure I'm covered in case they need to spend time fixing my prep work.

Last November I moved out of my apartment into a rental house in North Phoenix. It has a nice two car garage, though surprisingly it isn't nearly as big as my apartment garage was. Still, it's a great space and I've got everything I need there. I had to jump the car, but with all the bumpers reinstalled it made the drive in full ugly condition without issue .


I put a bunch of work into the driver's side doors and quarter panels. I've met some people the past six months who inspired me to do this as 'right' as I can and not cut corners, so I put some extra time and materials into priming, sanding, repriming, and sanding these panels to get them perfectly flat after noticing some waviness. Looking at other Coupes, I'm not sure if my car had some dings in it, or if the factory bodywork was just poor. It seems rare to see a coupe that is arrow straight from front to back, so I decided I'm going to try and do that with mine. I'm still a rookie but I'll do the best I can. I've got a couple spots left to touch up, but that side of the car is largely complete.


996 Turbo garage buddy for most of January


It doesn't come across in this, but there were all kinds of waves and dents in the quarter panel.


So I laid down more high build and sanded again.


New high build is white, old stuff is darker grey. There were four areas of vertical dents/ripples in the top portion of the quarter which you can see by the white high build being left after sanding. I'm working on the lower section now.



Someone opened this door into a curb three or four times, putting dents and ripples into the lower part of the door in several locations. This is after priming and spraying a guide coat, note the unusual black shapes of guide coat that need to be sanded out.


Wing and decklid done. There were a couple of dents/waves in the fiberglass and previous spray job I that ended up sanding out.


Today's project was the rear pan. Mask, guide coat, sand sand sand sand.




The rear was a mess. After all that metal repair, I did some bondo work and then primed over it. While the results of that were arguably on par with the repair present when I got the car, it initially sanded out pretty ugly. Lots of high and low spots, and the contour was not correct since there was too much filler. Lots of sanding with a couple blocks of varying flexibility got it pretty good. I have some shaping to do before it's 100%, but definitely workable.

Once the rear is done, I have some touchup to do on the sides and then hit all the trim. Then it's time for some color, and I might just be able to finally drive this thing again!

Sam

[All_Euro]

Impressive perseverance and attention to detail - keep it up

[loxxrider]

I'm impressed too. Bodywork is so challenging, but it's definitely rewarding to get right.

[chaloux]

Yeah. Holy crap. So much patience, what an effort

[deaner]

I envy people who enjoy body work! Looks good man! Keep it up.

[SEStone]

Still chipping...er, sanding away at this. With Hank and Jim's prodding, I've put 25-30hours into this the past couple of weeks. The rear panel is finally *done*, ready for paint. I am going back around the sides of the car, working on priming and sanding until the car is one base layer. It's a little anal retentive, but I want to make sure there is a smooth surface and everything is the same color or tone when I go to lay paint over it.

I've had good luck for most of the project with Matrix, 3M, or SEM primers. I ended up with a can of UPOL high build, which I applied to about half the driver's side quarter panel and door. That stuff is garbage. It sprayed on awful, ended up very porous, and sanded like shit. I'm in the process of sanding all of it off to recoat with SEM products. That stuff sprays on, lays down, and sands awesome. If I had done all of this so far with rattle can SEM primer instead of trying to use the high build from a gun, I would've saved six months off the project sanding all of that stuff down as well.

Shooting for Battle Born. I had to look for some inspiration last night to remind me what this car looks like with shiny red paint on some of it:

[audifreakjim]

Keep at it Sam! You must make it

[deaner]

Keep at it man! I envy your patience ha! I'm excited to see this one done.

[jretal]

git'r'done, buddy!

Also, for the fear of same "tone" when coating - that's what the sealer coat is for, that should be able to cover all the inconsistencies beneath it and give you a solid uniform color to shoot your base color over. For red, you can probably use a tinted sealer, but when they did my car, they just used a grey of sorts and then shot the red.