The Doors

I spent the last couple months looking at the inside of the doors admiring all the work we've done which included the paint job.  When I finally turned the doors over I was shocked to see how little work had been done on the exterior.  I even spotted a crack in the bonding agent that will need to be fixed.

I grabbed the grinder and removed the crack until it was almost gone with exception to just a very thin amount on the back side of the panel.  I always try to leave a little something for the new fiberglass and resin to rest against.  It acts as a form.

Before I get too carried away with the grinding, sanding and painting I thought it best to protect all the work that's been done on the inside of the doors.  Masking tape and masking paper was just the ticket.

I spent several hours the last couple weeks getting the doors in the condition shown below.  All the fiberglass work is done, the skins were guide coated and the low spots were filled in where necessary.  The outside window openings were then masked off in preparation for paint.  Take note of how little of the green primer remains after all the body work.

Last weekend I applied 2 to 3 coats of two-part epoxy primer then I set the doors aside and allowed them to dry for 1 week.

This weekend I guide coated the doors again.  I find it best to use a contrasting primer for the guide coat, not a glossy paint, but a primer.  The reason is because the glossy paint gums up the sandpaper where the primer will not.

Now that the second guide coat is done you can see how much more of the green primer is left on the doors.  That means the doors are getting flatter.  There are still areas where fiberglass is showing so the doors will need another coat of primer.

And here they are with their third coat of primer.  I painted these this weekend so they will have to dry for about a week before I can guide coat them again.  They really look good and I suspect one more guide coat should do it.

Look who showed up!  Ty and his wife Bonnie flew into town a few days ago and Gerri and I got to spend an evening with them.  Not one too miss out on working in the garage, Ty grabbed a rag and polished the blue paint.  Yes it was mostly for the photo but it was still good to see Ty back in the garage.  

While the doors dry I'll start doing similar work to the hood.  The hood as you recall is in need of a lot of TLC.  Fortunately, we have the know how and I am prepared to spend many hours making it right.

Thanks for watching.

Portland Swap Meet - 2012

Dennis K and I attended the Portland Swap Meet last week.  It was huge as usual.  Here are 3 noteworthy tidbits worth sharing:

1.  I bought 4 signed 1963 Corvette related lithographs that I know little about.  They were previously framed so the edges are not perfect but they do have significant original signatures.  All four are signed by  Zora Duntov and Larry Shinado, two very well know names associated with the Corvette.  You can read about them here: http://corvettes.about.com/od/history/tp/All-The-Kings-Men.htm .  Some have a third signature (I think).  I suspect they have value but I really know nothing about them.  If any of you know anything about these I would welcome information.  Here are pictures of each:

2.  I win.  I spent more money than Dennis at the swap meet.  Unfortunately,  I am now a hoarder.  Between Gerri and I we now have 6 vehicles and a motorcycle.  But check out our new acquisition, a 1971 VW bug.  Yes it's Gerri's and no I don't fit behind the wheel.

3.  I spoke with Gary Hodges, one of the few people I consider very knowledgeable about early Corvette mechanical fuel injection units.   Gary shared some valuable information with me and I capture it in this video update.   Check it out here:

 http://youtu.be/N91aYSOmblc

I added a post a couple days ago about painting the door and hood jambs.  If you've not checked this web site recently you might have missed it.  Be sure to check it out.

Door skins are next!  I promise.

Painting the Hood and Door Jambs

Fresh catalyst was recently delivered, the car is fully masked, and we are ready to paint.  The black primer sealer was scuffed and wiped down with a post sanding solution about a week ago so all it needs is a quick wipe down with a tack cloth.  Let the painting begin!

The second coat of black primer sealer was applied per the HOK tech sheet.  I sprayed the door jambs, hood jamb, headlight bucket recesses, rear valance recess and the inside of the fuel filler recess.

After 1 hour of drying time, two coats of Lapis Blue were applied.  Lapis Blue has the pearl/metal flake.  It goes on in medium coats and is applied very thin.  This is not a heavy build paint.

Lapis Blue was followed by the Cobalt Blue Kandy.  The application instructions for Kandy are very specific.  "Apply 5 to 6 coats to achieve proper color.  Start with 3 medium wet coats first, with 75% spray overlap.  Finish with 2 to 3 full wet coats with 50% spray pattern overlap." If we don't do it this way we will most likely get streaking.  In this picture we just finished the first 3 coats.

Here are the last 3 coats.  With each coat it gets darker and richer.

3 medium coats of clear were then applied.  After the paint dried to the touch I removed the masking.  The paint is pretty spectacular if I do say so.  Double click the photo for a closer view.  It's very nice!

Later in the day I removed all the plastic and admired our work to date.   It's a beautiful thing.

The Portland Swap Meet was last week.  Stay tuned for an update on what we found and what we learned.

Door Edge Paint Repairs

After the doors were painted last year the rubber moldings were glued in place then the doors were hung so we could work on fitment.  The doors were aligned as best as possible then the body work started.  We fiberglassed some areas and used Bondo in others.  All of this work affected the door edges and now the edges need to be repainted.

  I used a Dremel with a flapper wheel to smooth out the big bumps. The edges were then sanded until smooth.

Some areas were worse than others.  This area had both Bondo and fiberglass.

As was done on the body, the doors were masked to prevent overspray.

A maroon scuff pad was used to remove any remaining gloss.

I used an Iwata C airbrush for all the painting.  Here I am applying the black primer sealer.

The primer sealer was followed by the Lapis Blue, Cobalt Blue Kandy and several coats of clear.

The masking was removed revealing a very nice repair.

There is a fine lip at the edge of the repair.  After this drys for a few days I'll wet sand the edges then buff it back to a bright gloss.

I am pleased.  If it had not turned out this nice I would have had to mask the rubber molding then reshoot the entire door.  This is good though.  It's very nice.

Cool Desert Nights is only a couple months away.  Hopefully we will have the exterior of the car assembled and painted by then.  It's an aggressive expectation but we'll give it a try.

Scuffing, Masking and Prepping for Paint

The first coat of primer sealer has been drying for a week now.  House of Kolor says once the primer has dried more than 24 hours it should be scuffed with a maroon pad then another coat of primer should be applied and that's what we will do.  In this picture the scuffing process is done in the foreground.  Extra care is needed on all edges and corners otherwise we'll scuff through to green primer.

Scuffing takes several hours, many of it laying on your back getting those hard to reach places.  While scuffing I am looking for any blemishes, runs, lint or debris.  By fixing these flaws between each coat it reduces the chance of a substandard paint job.  If we were using a filtered paint booth we wouldn't need to be this critical.

There's a spot on the nose that's been scuffed through to the green primer.  This was caused by one drop of sweat when I was spraying the primer.  I'll have to remember to wear a sweat band next time.

Because we're shooting Kandy, the entire car must be assembled before it gets painted.  That means the door jambs, hood jamb, headlight recesses, and the rear valance areas must be painted before we can assemble.  To do that we have to mask the car body.

I like to start the masking process with masking tape only.  I apply the tape right at the edge of the body and the jamb.

I then install masking paper over the width of the previously applied tape. 

Then we just keep adding masking paper as needed.

I don't want overspray anywhere on the body so I decided to mask/cover the whole car.  This is overkill but I don't care.

I used plastic sheeting to complete the job.

Everything that's exposed is scuffed, degreased, and ready for paint.  These areas will get a second coat of black primer sealer,  two coats of Lapis Blue base coat, 3 coats of Cobalt Blue Kandy then two clear coats.  All of this will happen in succession over a couple hours.  We'll do that in a week or so after I receive a fresh order of catalyst.
Catalyst has a very short shelf life once opened.  For this reason, I only purchase catalyst in small quantities and I only purchase it when I need it.  Because of it's chemical nature catalyst can only be shipped by ground transportation so it will take a few days to get here.

I do have enough catalyst to make some paint repairs to the doors though.  I'll explain why we have to make repairs in the next post.

As always, thanks for watching.

Paint - Black Primer Sealer

News Flash: Poll results are in.  We will paint our Corvette with the BLUE racing strip, panel B.  Thanks for voting!

It's time to prepare the body for primer sealer.  But before we do that we have to fix this last little stinking blemish.  One finger swipe of glazing compound did it.  With that, the body work is done, done, done (less the doors, hood, headlight buckets and rear valance).

Because the primer has been curing for several days the surface needs to be roughed up so the next coat of paint will stick.  House of Kolor recommends a maroon scuff pad and that's what we will use.  In addition we will use Dura-Block, a sanding block that has properties similar to that of heavy shoe leather.  The combination of the scuff pad and the sanding block will give us an even flatter/smoother surface.  This will take several hours.

If you look close you can see that the scuff pad can remove a lot of material.  You have to be very careful, especially along edges and corners.

When the scuffing was done I put the car on jack stands, removed the tires for access to the wheel wells, masked where needed, then wiped down the body with a post sanding cleaner.

We are using House of Kolor's black primer sealer called Ko-Seal II.  This primer sealer is used to prevent the topcoats (color and clear coat) from soaking into our green primer.   Without the primer sealer we would loose gloss over time.   The primer sealer also acts as a bonding agent between the primer and the topcoats.

The paint booth was put up and ventilation was established before I started painting.  I started painting in all the tough to reach places first.  We want at least two full coats when we're done.

Door jambs, hood jambs, headlight recesses, tail light recesses, wheel wells, the exhaust valance and the entire perimeter of the bottom of the car make up the tough-to-reach areas.  This was done using a SATA Mini-Jet spray gun, a small, high quality gun used for getting in tight spots. 

I used my full size SATA HLVP spray gun for the body.  OMG!  It worked great but boy did it tax the capabilities of my makeshift paint booth.  I am really glad I was wearing a respirator and paint suit.

When done I tore down the paint booth and put the wheels and tires back on.  Thankfully my garage survived.  No over spray anywhere... except for the camera.

It really looks nice.

Now I'll let it dry for at least a week.   While that's happening I'll spend some time cleaning the camera.

The green is gone!  Whoo hoo!

The Racing Stripe - Which One?

This is a sign blank I recently painted with 4 different colors for the racing stripe.  The large stripe in Panel A thru D are Black, Blue, White and Silver, respectively.  Panels C and D (the top 2 panels) are considered too bright and have already been excluded.

I'd like your opinion on the bottom 2 test panels, panels A and B.  Ignore the blemishes, nubs, runs or whatever.  I'd like you to look at the colors only.  I've provided two close up pictures of each, one with flash (daylight) and one without (evening).  Let me know which stripe you like by voting in the pole in the upper right corner of this blog.

This is the black strip in daylight.

This is the same black strip in the evening.

This is the blue stripe in daylight.

And the same blue stripe in the evening.

So what's your preference?  Do you like the black or the blue stripe?  I'll run the poll for 8 days so be sure to vote.  If you have a different recommendation let me know in the Comments section.  Thanks.