So - a WHOLE week off work!! All to play on the car! Oh happy days... *grin* The plan this week was to get the car to the point of painting. I've all the bits apart from the modified 12A front cover and the engine mounting bracket. So after bonus day, my life became the shopping channel - air tools, mounting bracket, primer, paint accessories, paint, breaker bar, etc etc... And on Saturday, all I had to do was go to all the collection points and neighbours and collect the bits!!
Saturday was spent cleaning the engine and stripping it properly, and then priming it for painting. There's a couple of places to touch up, but as a whole, it looks fantastic. The first pic below is before the end plates are painted. the second and third is the finished article... I am very, very pleased with the outcome (esp as I've never used a spray gun & compressor before - the plates were sprayed using the touchup gun), and the way it's looking. Just hope I can fathom how it all goes back together.... *grin*
The next job was to get to grips with the sprayer. Now as I've stated above, I've never used a sprayer of any kind, and the colour being whacked on the car is a dark blue metallic. Apparently this is tough to get right, so the plan is to practice on parts easy to hide and difficult to spot problems on - so the bonnet got the first treatment. The idea here is to spray the underside first, then the top, with primer just to get to grips with it before going on with the rest of the car.
The underside seemed to be pretty good nick, so a run round with 400 & 600 grit paper to rough it up was enough to prepare it for the primer. The top, however showed itself up by having pinholes all over the surface. This has prompted the surface to be taken right back to the bare metal. So as you can see in the fourth pic below, the bonnet is all shiny and bare. The top half of it has the primer on it. This was the first panel I've spraygunned, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. I'm sure with time, it'll be better, but I'm fine with it...
The first pic below is the completely primered bonnet. It now needs to be sanded prior to being fitted back onto the bonnet, and then all painted as a whole. The underside will be coloured and lacquered before fitting, as will the engine bay, the door shuts and sunroof bits. The second pic below is the engine bay prior to priming. It's been filled and sanded and emptied of everything! And then the third and fourth pics below is the car all primered. This destroyed my finger tips, going over the entire shell of the car by hand using 400, then 600 grit paper so the primer can get a good tack. There were a few bits I got wrong, but as a whole, I'm pretty pleased. I did my best to keep dust down in the garage, and there are only a couple of places where it collected a couple of bits. A good look over the body looks like there is only a couple of spots that will need slight filling, sanding and repriming before painting goes ahead. the doors were taken off for completeness. Whether this is going to prove to be a good idea or not, only time will tell, but it can always be made OK if there are probelms. Can't it...??
On Friday, Steve came down to play with the car. While he was priming the doors and front wings, I was sanding down the door shuts and filling the nose components. When the priming of the body parts was done, and the door shuts were ready, we decided to put some colour into the engine bay and door shuts. Again, this is the first time either of us had done painting, and again, we are thrilled with the results - you can't see in the pics, but the colour looks awesome!!!
The above is 5 ten hour days of sanding and preparing and tidying and tweaking and from the description above, it doesn't look like a lot has been done. It is as much as I'd hoped (apart from getting the front engine cover - the bits simply weren't available), and while I was hoping to get a lot of the car in primer, and the engine painted, it's been more work than I thought, and I hope the final result is worth the effort that has been put into it...
