So I finally got the car painted last weekend!
I have a friend that has 50+ years in the auto refinishing industry. He has owned his own body shop and teaches at a couple local junior colleges. He has been telling me for 18+months that he will paint my track car, he just has to schedule the time at the facility on a weekend (retired people). Well yesterday it finally happened.
I have never done any “real” paint and body work on a car so in all it was a cool learning experience and a 20 hour day.
I knew we only had a day to do the job, so last year I had a professional shop tackle a few larger problems the car had. I used Simon Auto Body in OC.
The shop repaired and smoothed out the aluminum hood, it was a bit of a mess. They also fixed the one rust spot on the car, filled in a couple emblem holes and filled in some trim holes on the fiberglass fenders. They just left their work in primer as I was going to take care of the paint. So in prep for the actual paint work I stripped the car of all the parts and trim I could. I pulled all the lights, door handles, side mirrors, body moulding and sunroof delete from the car. I did all of that stuff last week.
Here is where we started:
[attachimg=1][attachimg=2]
So we get there and meet my friend at the facility. We talked and he expected to be home by dinner. We had agreed that since the larger issues with the body were taken care of, we would clean the car, scuff it up and shoot the paint. We’d all be home by dinner time... We started disassembling the car a bit to make it easier to prep. My buddy said, “Well since we are here why don’t we just take care of all the small dents...” there were small dents on the doors, quarters, and roof.
We began pounding out what dents we could get to from the inside to use the smallest amount of body filler possible. Then filing down the high spots, sanding and prepping for the thin coat of filler, and primer. We go the primer sanded, all parts and car being prepped to go into the booth for sealer and paint. At this point every part getting paint was scuffed up with a scuff pad, or DA with 400 grit sand paper.
[attachimg=3][attachimg=4][attachimg=5][attachimg=6][attachimg=7][attachimg=8][attachimg=9]
Then the sealer went on every thing to get paint. We put a couple drops of red in it as a joke and sent people pictures. The sealer takes about 15-20 mins to flash. The car actually looked OK in matte pink! We got back in the paint booth one final time to look for any imperfections and address them before the color got laid down. We didn’t find anything at all. The sealer went down great. Time for color!
[attachimg=9]
