Paint Gallery

Figured I'd make a post for the sole purpose of showing off the paint I've done. If you're interested in the process and a relatively in-depth "how-to" check out the post before this one.

Headlight Buckets: Clear-coated, waiting for buffing

Door Skins: Clear-coated, waiting for buffing

Hood :Clearcoated, waiting for buffing

Hood: pre clear-coat

Front Body: Needs a smidgen of touch up here and there, then ready for wipe-down and clear-coat

Don't really know how but I got two little slivers of over-spray on this portion of the stripe, I'll fix that today.

Paint: Go Easy on Me Pros

I love white cars and I love the contrast of black with the white so since the beginning I knew what color I was going to paint her: stark white with pitch black stripes. With the easy part decided the harder parts began. I needed tools to paint with, supplies, and a place to paint.

First I bought a pair of HVLP guns from Eastwood. Everything I came across online all agreed that HVLP was the best for automotive paint, and the Devilbliss guns I got were very well reviewed and a great deal; $110 for two nickel finished guns, three different sized fluid tips (1.3, 1.5, and 1.8), two stainless steel cups, a cleaning kit, and a regulator. All I had to buy from that point is an inline filter, but that's something you can get anywhere you can buy paint or even most hardware stores have them.

All the painting supplies I'm using come from Sherwin-Williams Automotive finishes. This stuff isn't cheap but it seems to be pretty high quality. Primer is FP410 which is a Urethane primer, that's what you want for fiberglass as it bonds best. I'm using FH411 as my hardener because it summer in NC and hotter than Satan's balls most days. But you should pick the most appropriate hardener for your temperature. I don't know the code for my paints but the colors are "Crystal White" and "Classic Black". Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes only carries one clear coat, and that's what I bought.

With the guns squared away and my supplies gathered, I needed somewhere to paint. Since I unfortunately don't know anyone with a professional paint booth I figured I would do the next best thing: I'd build my own. $30 and 1.5 hours later I had myself one ghetto-fabulous paint-booth. I will say I think it needs more lighting, so it you have some spotlights lying around this may be a good application.

Taped up the paint data sheets for quick reference. I've since moved them so in between coats and while mixing I can check them without breaking the seal of the booth and dragging in dust. If you didn't get data sheets with your painting supplies go find them ASAP, you NEED them.

Pile of supplies. They don't live in the booth, just storage for the moment

Overhanging strut with eye-hooks and wire for hanging smaller parts that don't have their own stands

So with a booth constructed it was time to teach myself to paint with an HVLP gun. First I taped a big sheet of butcher paper up in the booth. I practiced smooth tilting strokes, adjusted the paint and air flow on the gun and was ready to start. It would take me too long to explain the technique you're supposed to use when using the gun so again just checkout YouTube and pick a video. Good rule of thumb for this kind of thing is watch several videos and take their common denominator. Just one video may lead you astray.

Since I'd never painted with an HVLP before I figured I'd start with a small piece that'd be easy to sand off and start over if I messed it up: the headlight buckets.

PAINTING REQUIRES PATIENCE! You cannot rush this or it will look like shit. Be prepared for this process to take a LONG time. If you want a good result you'll save yourself time in the end by going slowly and carefully. If you find yourself frustrated or rushing STOP, take a break and come back later. I've already had to do that myself that I just was just creating more work for myself than making progress.

The process I've used:

1. Sand the surface with 100 grit (or a Scotch-Brite pad if you prefer that) to get it ready for the primer
2. Use surface cleaner on the part when it's inside the booth safe from dust and debris.***LET THE CLEANER DRY, in my situation 10 minutes was usually enough but if you try to paint when it's still on the surface you're gonna have a bad time.
3. READ THE DATA SHEET, for the HP410 it was 5-7 PSI at the gun, at a distance of 5"-7"
4. Spray on the first coat of primer, I got full coverage of the whole piece when possible but sometimes certain areas are hard to get with smooth strokes, don't rush they'll get covered fully in subsequent coats
5. Wait 5-10 minutes
6. Second coat of primer, again shooting for full coverage
7. Wait 5-10 minutes if you need another coat of primer, if you got full coverage with the previous 2 it likely isn't necessary
8. Wait 2 hours
9. Remove part from booth and examine for flaws. Any dents scratches, uneven areas or other imperfections should be pretty obvious at this point.
10. Fix/Fill/Sand imperfections, if you feel they're serious enough (large area needs sanding) go back to step 2 and continue back down
11. Sand the entire surface with 600 grit sandpaper. You're trying to smooth down orange peel. You should be able to feel the difference between an area you've hit and one that is un-sanded. It doesn't have to be perfectly flat at this point but don't be lazy. If you want to go crazy it'll likely help the finish be that much flatter but a little bit of orange peel can be eliminated with buffing at the very end. **NOTE as I did the hood I sanded the primer super smooth, this may have been detrimental as the paint then seemed to have trouble bonding at the normal speed, my tape kept pulling paint off the surface.
12. If the part needs stripes tape as much of the piece as you can, cover it with paper except for the area where the stripes are going to be and the immediate area. You're not trying to make a negative of the stripes here, just preventing unnecessary over-spray on the rest of the surface.
13. Clean the surface where you're painting (whatever isn't taped) and let it dry in the booth.
14. Spray on the stripe color, two coats with 10-20 minutes between coats, doing 2-3 coats. You want coverage of color not thickness, so if you get coverage in 2 coats STOP.
15. Let it dry for however long the data-sheet says, mine said 30 minutes tape free but I waited over an hour to be certain the tape wasn't going to mess up the finish. I'd recommend letting the paint dry overnight if that's an option, I found that even the hour sometimes had tape leaving marks on the surface.
16. Tape over where you want the stripes to stay. Use tape to measure distance between stripes, this will give you a much more consistent distance between than trying to actually measure the space. **Don't leave the tape on for extended periods of time (>2 hours). Even less if it gets hot in your booth. The adhesive comes off the tape and will muss up the surface and you CANNOT get it off easily.
17. PRESS DOWN THE TAPE. Rub the shit out of it. You want to buy the edge lock stuff or vinyl tape, it's a little more expensive but you'll feel stupid if you don't pay the extra dollar or whatever and your stripes have jagged edges.
    
18. Sand the stripe color around the tape with 600 grit, careful not to mess up the tape. If you skip this sanding step you'll get a clear line of different paint heights on the surface when you paint over with the second color.
19. Surface cleaner, let it dry in the booth
20. Spray on the 2-3 (sometimes more) coats of the primary color, 10-20 minute in between coats same rule as when painting with the stripe color, going for coverage not thickness.
21. Wait the 30 minutes (or if you're careful like me the 45 minutes) and remove the tape. You should have nice crisp stripes.
22. Surface clean where the stripes are, you don't want tape adhesive in your clear coat.
23. Clear coat, 2-5 minutes between your 2-3 coats. Coverage coverage coverage, here however if you go a little overboard with 3 coats it's not really detrimental, just more buffing to do later. 
24. Wait the 'Dust Free' time, and then some before taking it out of the booth (better safe than sorry)

1. if there are imperfections (there will be, sorry it's just gonna happen) wait 24 hours, then use 1500 grit sandpaper to hit the surface, then buff with rubbing compound.
2. I don't know about when you should use wax after buffing, when I find out I will update this.

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Body Work

Because I'm a glutton for punishment I'm doing everything on this car myself I decided I was going to do all the body work and painting on the car myself.

The only things so far I haven't done myself on the Sonnet:

• Mounting and balancing the tires on the rims (had a buddies Dad who owns a tire shop do it basically for free though)
• Rebuild the brake master and clutch slave cylinders and that was simply because the repair kits for them are completely discontinued.

I had never done any automotive bodywork or painting before this so hopefully that's a vote for what can be accomplished when you do your research, are incredibly careful, and work really really REALLY freakin' hard.

First things first was removing the old paint from the parts, the car was bought with this weird off blue/gray with a horrible faded crimson/brown stripe setup. Yeah that had to go. If you think blue/grey and crimson/brown are a good combo you're probably color blind.

The front body somehow escaped the fate of the nasty racing stripes, I suspect it came off a different car.

 Original paint on the hood, doors, and headlight buckets. The orange ring in the headlights are the original factory paint, where whoever painted it afterwards didn't remove the headlight lens to paint it.

So began the arduous lengthy sweaty dirty job of removing the old paint from the body. We found that best method was to use a putty knife, paint scraper, screwdriver, or something similar to scrape off the top coat of paint. This topcoat was extremely resistant to sanding but would scrape off in huge chunks, then all the layers below (and there were many of them) could be sanded in less than half the time needed to just get through the topcoat. This car has been at minimum 3 different colors, in chronological order: from the factory it was orange, then green (this coat seemed actually professionally or otherwise well done), then the nasty blue/grey.

The door shells were by far the worst for ware, the edges had big chunks missing, cracks, the passenger door had a huge hole by the handle that dingus filled with Bondo. Structural repairs are apparently overrated... seriously though, fiberglass repairs are unbelievably simple. Just Google "Repairing Fiberglass" pick literally any of the 200,000 videos and your chosen redneck will show you how to do it. This step did have to discover a few more very questionable repairs from Dingus. He obviously had fiberglass because on the back body he covered the holes for the back bumper... from the outside. He fiber-glassed OVER some silicone. If I ever find this m**********r I'm gonna just sock him right in his nose.

This type of damage is a little trickier to fix but very doable.

 Don't just fill this with Bondo. Actually fix the hole...

That chunk that's missing in the door from the back

Once all the pieces were fiber-glassed, Bondo'd, Sanded  I power-washed them. Now is a good time to do this since you'd probably not want to drive around in a car that has 40 years of dirt, grime, mold, and whatever else stuck on the fiberglass, even if it's just so your headliner adheres better. The now clean pieces were loaded on a truck and we drove em to Scott's shop so I could have space to build a paint booth and paint in it.

Door Sills and Rocker Panels

During the work on the rest of the car the door sills/rocker panels got some abuse from tools laying on them or being stepped on, stuff banging into them. Problem is these panels are visible with the body on so they can't be allowed to remain looking like crap.

Right here looks like there was some kind of body repair that the Bondo chipped off...

Well once I took the wire wheel to it it was worse/better than I hoped. At first it was worse because it was an obscene amount of Bondo coming off, but once it was all off it was a slight relief that whoever has repaired the rocker had at least welded on a patch instead of filling the hole with Bondo.

So this seam got wire brushed all around and got a new glob of the best Bondo money can buy, smoothed out and sanded and go primed with the rest of the rockers and door sills.

<ADD PICTURES OF PRIMED ROCKER/SILLS>

Rebuilding the Doors

The doors on this car were rough. Their fiberglass skins had to come off so they could be repaired and painted and I figured that'd be a good time to rebuild and restore the under workings of the doors. 

Here are some before pictures of how rough the doors were before I did anything. First I removed all the internal components, window regulator, window channels, windows, locks, latch, everything. Once everything was out and stored away to be cleaned separately I set to work on the door frame. Removing all the old paint and silicone took several days, even with a grinder and a big wire wheel.

I'll add some pictures of what the doors look like afterwards later, I didn't really take any during the process but the process isn't overly complicated. Just take pictures of everything before it comes out so you know where it goes when it's time to reassemble. Or you can do what I did which is do the doors one at a time, then you have the one that's still together to use as a guide.

The locks and latch all got polished and rustproofed, Lowe's sells basically machinist's oil in a spray can that you blast on and rub in to protect the metal. All the internal components that are painted got wire brushed to metal then they were primed and painted. New window channels went in, and the windows were cleaned thoroughly while they were out of the doors. Window regulators got polished extensively and re-lubricated with some oil.

Then it was just a matter of putting the puzzle back together with the newly cleaned, painted and lubed parts. A simple if nerve wracking process (slotting the glass back in was super scary).

Speakers, Carpet, and Seatbelts

Like any 20 year old my car has to have a bangin' stereo right? Well sorta, dingus cut some half ass holes that either were going to have speakers in them or had speakers and he didn't want to sell em with the car. So I measured them and bought some speakers to fit in the holes, I went for cheap with good materials no paper. I ran all the wires for them, soldered the DIN1 connector through the appropriate hole in the dash. Slotted in the speakers and screwed em in.

Still have some hanging wires at this point but they didn't stay that way for long. You can see I did make a surround for the speaker out of scrap galvanized steel so it actually fit in the hole right.

After all this work the stereo fired right to life and pumped for a while. I left it for the week to go to school and when I came back the next weekend and turned on the car *POOF* big puff of electrical smoke from the radio and it wouldn't turn on. The radio I got was in some way defective because the 10 amp fuse in the back of it should have blown before the radio went. Glad I bought a warranty with it.

With the speakers in I could start working on the carpet. I cut based on the old carpets, trace old onto new with chalk, cut about an inch outside that chalk and test fit, adjust, repeat until it fits.

It's not a fast process but if you're careful you get a good fit and it looks good, something you can save a lot of time and money doing yourself. To stick it on I just used carpet contact cement. I bought a gallon but only used about 3 quarts, and that's really applying it heavy (which is recommended). Just be careful that the cement only gets where you want carpet cause it's a bitch to get off (which is kinda the point isn't it?).

Seats in to see how they look. Looking good. It kind of looks like car! If you squint

Rebuilt Brake Master Cylinder

My brake master cylinder was leaking fluid back into the pedal box and was really really spongy on the few drives it went on. So since after spending close to 2 hours calling dozens of automotive stores I finally contacted the manufacturer who makes the rebuild kit for the cylinder, and they had of course discontinued it. So what was going to be a $20 part became a $225 rebuild to White Post Restorations in Virginia (http://www.whitepost.com/). I will say though that while it's expensive you get what you pay for it. The cylinder came right out of the box powder-coated, with the fitting re-tapped, all new seals and dust cover. It literally bolted on, we bled it and my brakes were rock hard. Plus any cylinder they rebuild comes with a lifetime warranty and you have any problem they'll rebuild it again for free.