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.