The Project Pad

So figured I'd toss up a quick update on the car...

All final sanding has been completed on the car (including touch ups on the doors the other week):



The piles of sand are officially cleaned up from the "booth"



So the time came to do the final "cutting" on the car prior to getting a little color. I decided it was time to add back the antenna that I had originally removed from the fender. I wanted to go for a different look, so decided to do something similar to the CQs and mount it to the roof!









Will give the car a slight "alphalfa sprout" so to speak, but I think it'll look good in the end.

With that done though... it's game time



Going with BASF DP26 2K primer as the base. The shop shooting the color specializes in BASF products, so that's the way I went. It's actually a fairly easy and uncomplicated system from what I can tell, so hopefully it'll spray nicely and sand easily. Car is getting sanded down, cleaned and pushed into the freshly cleaned/relined spray booth this weekend. So hopefully by next week I'll have pictures of a primered car

Awesome. Did you pick the color yet?

jury is still out on that one... weighing a couple options right now, and not sure which way to go.

Let us help you make a decision

I'm open to options I'm not laying out my cards though as to what I"m looking at quite yet though :-P

Ive been partial to Graphite Metallic, but that would be the same color as it was before, no? Would you prefer to stay with a factory color or does it really not matter?

Since I've stripped the car to bare metal, aside from the trunk and engine bay (and under the hood/trunk lid), I've essentially made it an blank canvas. I'm not against the original color (I really like it as well), but at the same time am no longer limited to JUST the original color.

I have time to think it through, but the decision isn't 100% made yet. Still have a few options to kick around, plus going to look at the paint chip book at the shop to pick the final color.

looks good man... I vote going with an original color. If you don't pick carefully. Most non stock colors I've seen sprayed on any type85 doesn't look right (imo). I've only see one painted in the R8 Teakwood brown metallic that looks super sharp. I think it would probably look really good going back with the original Volcanic black... mmm, all fresh.

I'm personally a big fan of newer OE colors. The dark gray metallic that is used by Ford (once known as Liquid Gray, and other names on newer cars), and also the gray metallic that came on the RS4.

OE+ is always nice...but I also have a fondness for the copper metallic used occasionally as well!

Eric

So many good colors... I would really have a hard time choosing if I were doing a color change on my car.

There is only one color that suites this car (or any old audi) ZERMATT.

8)

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

Way to go Justin! Now that it's in primer you can really see how great it's going to turn out.

Awesome!!

freakin cool man. It looks great!

Oh snap!

Congrats! Blood, sweat and tears right there

Looks REAL nice with some paint on her!! Nice work, This car is going to be awesome, keep it up!

Looks really good!

sweeeeeeeeeeet

more??

A teaser update, but still an update.

I've been spending quite a few hours blocking the car and repainting it. I'm currently on my 3rd coat on the roof and fenders, and 2nd coat on the rocker panels and door jambs. Roof had a lot more "waves" in it that were not seen by the naked eye (or by my hand) but showed up when I started blocking the car out.

Coated everything with some guide coat (and after spending the $4/can on it, I will now buy the $0.98 cans of black primer from walmart instead - there's little to no difference from what I can tell!) and let it settle:




and as you can see on the roof - despite the hours of filling/sanding, there were still a few high/low spots that were shown during the blocking





So I've done this about 4 times at this point. On Veteran's day I spent about 12 straight hours sanding the entire car down (blocking flat surfaces plus all nooks and crannies) and laid on one more coat. This finished off my first gallon of primer (doh! was hoping that would last the entire car... oh well). I've sanded off at least $150 worth of primer at this point into dust on the floor, but all for the sake of the 'ol bird looking good! At a stand-still right now until after the Thanksgiving, and then will hit it hard after I pick up another gallon of paint.

Up until now I've been blocking the car w/ 180 grit. Now that I've got it 98% flat, I am going to go to 220 grit, and if I don't find anymore issues, will do a final sand of 320 grit. Once I get this settled, it will be onto the fenders, doors, trunk and hood!

So I'm getting there slowly but surely. Maybe by xmas I will have it all ready, but we'll see what kind of time I have. Lots of things on my plate now, so not sure how successful I will be or not.

Goal is still going to be having the car ready for our first PCC Track event in March 2013. Will keep pushing, and hopefully have a functioning car by then!

Looking good!


At the shop we use regular flat black spraypaint as guidecoat just as you did.


Its better to be sanding off primer than clear and basecoat ;P

HONEY GOLD! Na wouldn't look right after all that sanding, I think you got me beat in the extended sanding department however... :-)

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