Guide Coat 101

What the... ?

You gotta be kidding me!

OK, here's the deal.  A Guide Coat does two things.  It insures flat surfaces and it identifies low spots.  The process requires a contrasting paint lightly sprayed over primer followed by block sanding.  We want to leave as much primer on the car as possible but we also want to remove as much as necessary to get a flat surface.  To achieve this we only block sand until the guide coat is removed or until we expose fiberglass.  When either one of these occur we stop sanding and move onto the next area.

Lets get started.  After block sanding this fender for just a few minutes we have mostly flat surfaces (green) and a few low spots (guide coat).  A few more swipes with the sand paper should remove several of these low spots.

And that's exactly what happened.  The front part of this fender is very flat and smooth.  Any thin areas of primer will be corrected when we shoot the car with the next full coat of primer.

The rear part of the fender will need additional work though.  We have low spots and we have exposed fiberglass.  Since we can't sand this area any further we will probably apply a thin coat of Bondo to correct.

These low spots are super shallow and will be filled in with the next coat of primer.

Click on this picture and check out the results.  Do you think the next coat of primer will fix the low spots or do you think they need a little Bondo?  It might be a combination of both. 

The front is turning out very nice.  The raised center section may require a little Bondo.

Nothing major back here.  The next coat of primer should fix these imperfections.

There is a lot left to do including the door jambs, drip rails, hood jamb, window jambs, and everything below the center line.  When we are done we will shoot fresh primer on the whole car again followed by more Guide Coat.  We will continue this process until all the surfaces are flat and all the fiberglass has primer so expect several postings about guide coating.  One thing for sure is the results are already pretty awesome.

Thanks for watching.

Paint - Primer - Fresh for the New Year

While waiting for warmer weather I managed to find another half dozen areas to repair.  None of them were in dire need but I decided to fix them anyway.  This one is the right front blinker housing and it had a few hair line cracks on its face.  The cracks would have been covered by a gasket but I fixed it anyway.

The repair turned out fine.

There is a lot to see in the next few pictures.  Check out the body work that's been done over the last couple months.  How about that paint booth?  Masking the wheel wells and engine compartment took a few hours longer than I thought.  Masking requires a skill that I don't have (yet).  These are hi-def pictures so be sure to click each picture to see the detail.

The entire car was sanded one more time to remove oils and other contaminants.

It was then wiped down with a post sanding solution to insure good adhesion.

House of Kolor 2 part epoxy primer was used..

Two heavy coats equalled about a half gallon of paint.

The garage will be kept at 70 degrees for at least 24 hours.

The plastic has an electrostatic charge and it attracted the over spray like a magnet.  The primer looks great and the make shift paint booth worked perfect.

Gerri took this picture after I was all done and said I had to post it.  XL paint suits are not as roomy as they use to be.

With the new year I thought I'd add a picture to help us remember where we started.  This is our car in Hawaii in 2009 being loaded into a shipping container.  Dennis S., the previous owner, is at the wheel.  Aloha Dennis!

Next up will be Guide Coating 101.  Bet you can't wait!