Right outta the paint booth

[Port&PolishMan]

Originally Posted by 62lwbc10

Hey thanks, just finishing a two year, 1500 hour frame off nut and bolt restoration. Was quite the saga but it's finally coming together. Tons of time spent making sure everything is straight, thanks for noticing. The big back window conversion went beautifully, if anyone has any questions about that I'm happy to help. It was actually one of the easier parts of the job. I agree with you about quality coatings. I learned the hard way that you can't skimp on paint materials.

Certainly this wasn't just DA - and Go !

Lay it On - Us - How much - Prep


Steps and then Coatings ?

[62lwbc10]

Hey Port and Polish you would be correct, there was alot involved. Mind you, I did not do the work myself, I hired one of the best bodymen and painters on the East Coast to do the work, but i was lucky enough to be there with him, helping where I could and documenting the work via pictures. Every square inch of every part of the truck was first sandblasted, inside and out and then painted with Epoxy primer (I had the luxury of doing much of this part of the job, I had x fine black beauty coming out of every pore of my body for weeks afterwards). Each panel was then individually straightened and body worked to make them nice and straight. I can tell you sometimess weeks were spent on one part to get it right. Once the plastic work was done, the panels were hit with a sealer (cant remember what) and then with high build primer. THe high build primer was then block sanded flat, then multple cooats of low build primer were applied, block sanding flat between each coat. With each subsequent coat, the panels got flatter and flatter until they were esentially perfect and completely flat. Final coat of primer was white as this was important to make the Viper Red really pop [Note Viper Red has a bit of transparency to it and Ive had experiences with using darker primer colors and the results are not good. For Red, you need a light, preferably white primer to make the color really pop, otherwise, more orange overtones are present]. I wanted a very high end paint job, with deep clear that you could swim in and I wanted the clear to be very flat, with no orange peel whatsoever. I showed a number of pics to the painter to give him a sense of what I wanted and his response was "for this color and for that kind of finish, we need to use Glasurit". So we used Glasurit base and clear. I think the base was some crazy price, like 600 a gallon and the clear set up was also very expensive. Lets just say I have thousands in paint materials alone. Red is not cheap. [Note again, in a previous life, someone tried to convince me that spending alot of money on base was throwing money away. He was really experienced, old timer with alot of nice cars under his belt so I listened to him. We bought really cheap base, PPG Omni, and it was a complete disaster. Word to the wise, especially with reds, you get what you pay for]. Viper Red is code PRN.
5-6 coats of base and then 4-5 coats of clear. Sanded I think with 1000, 1500, 2000 all the way to 4000. THen buffed with a couple different pads (wool and foam) and a couple different polishes to get the final product. I had no idea just how much work was put in to just the sanding of the clear. Many many hours. THe original idea was to sand the clear and then clear AGAIN, but with this Glasurit clear there was no need to put more material on than is necessary, the clear coat is just amazing, any deeper or glossier would look goofy in my opinion. THere is such a thing as overdoing it. My buddy has a 57 chevy he did in Viper Red over Indian Ivory that is award winning and just amazing, so I got the idea from him. I have Indian Ivory accents in the interior to break up the red (like a Cameo) and my wheels will be powdercoated Indian Ivory as well. Cant wait to see it done!!

[Russell Ashley]

"we used Glasurit base and clear. I think the base was some crazy price, like 600 a gallon and the clear set up was also very expensive."

So you are saying that MAACO probably doesn't use that for their $199 dollar paint jobs, LOL. Your paint job is killer. I can't imagine how much time you put in just in prep work.

[my56chevytruck]

It's already been said but man oh man, that is beautiful. Did you paint it yourself? Great work and one sharp truck. going to be gorgeous!!

[62lwbc10]

Ha no Russel I don't think Maaco is using the good stuff.
Thanks for the feedback. Lotta blood sweat and tears (literally all three) in the truck

[Russell Ashley]

Years ago I was having a painter paint a car at his work, but as a side job. He wanted to do it on Saturday, just a few days away, and I was going to sand it first. I go it done, and his first question to me was, after being surprised that I finished it was, "did your fingers bleed?" The answer was yes. I didn't have any finger prints for a while after that.