Is everything in your garage covered in a fine layer of dust now? The amount of work you've done on this is incredible

You bet...I litterally blew the garage out today, there is still dust everywhere. I'll have to get that cleaned up before paint.

I'm pretty happy with the weekend's progress. There was still a long way to go Friday night and although there isn't any colour on the car yet, I did manage to get all the bodywork done and got it primed tonight. The primer is rediculously thick, so I've got to got find a gun first thing tomorrow AM. It was a bit of a boot to the head when I spent all that time on prep only to have my gun not be able to spray the primer. It took more than an hour to get it sprayed as I could only produce a 3" wide fan at full air pressure etc.

Tomorrow I'll put the second coat on and see if I can get it smoothed out.

Here's were we sit right now.

Damn good work, Craig. I was thinking about you last night when I was contemplating my own workload, hoping everything was going well and you were seeing enough progress to keep you motivated.

You going to need reassembly help soon? This coming weekend's not good for me, but maybe we could come down the following and bring a dust collector at the same time.

Methinks Craig and Deirdre may be in Vancouver for a week or two, starting with this coming weekend...

Sweet - it's pretty exciting to see it in primer!

Thanks Matt, I would love some help with putting it back together. I'm going to be in Vancouver for two weeks starting Friday. I blocked out the primer with 220 grit, then two more coats of primer, then blocked with 320, wet 400, wet 600. After getting the sun roof removed and a few more bits of details to get the door jambs done and I'm ready to shoot colour tomorrow. So tired - too many 12 hour days sanding. One more day to go for paint.

Well, today we got colour and clear on the car. I've got a few dust issues and I've got to buff that out and hit it with another coat of clear tomorrow, but basically I'm done painting the car. Wow, what a hard pull to make it to this point, thanks to Greg for getting me over the hump today.

I'll quit typing now and let you see the pictures.

That looks a lot nicer (the color!) than I expected - can't wait to see it in the light, or better still, in person. Nice work!

Not a bad garage paint job!!! That new gun must pay for itself in reducing the pissed off neighbors - I'm assuming the fog/smell is minimal.

NOW you can go to Vancouver and relax. I can only imagine how much you're looking forward to that.

Looks great Craig, the pics don't do it justice, can't wait to see it completed in natural light.

Lets not get too excited...there is still another coat of clear to go on today and when I checked it in the light some of the pearl on the bottom didn't lay down as nicely as I was hoping. No big deal, but not winning any awards either.

The new gun is very good - now if I was painting a little more often it would be even better. Complete car paints are very hard to do correctly.

Watching the colour go on last night was awesome. I just stood outside and watched through the window. It was rad seeing the clear change how everything looked, and just seeing something so pretty come together.

OK, so I had more runs to fix than I thought. I had tried a desicant snake to deal with line water (not good to have hot air in the warm ceiling then dropping down to the hose on the much colder floor = condensation). It was a hunk of 1" line filled with silica gel - very stiff and difficult to work with, but I thought it was a good idea at the time. I had two problems yesterday as a result: 1. lack of air caused by the snake reducing volume, 2. stiff line making gun movement difficult. Those issues combined with bad lighting on the drivers side made for more runs than I've ever put in a coat of paint. I didn't see them until today.

So there was alread too much junk in the hood for me to be happy, so I decided to wet sand it and shoot the entire car again. A simple go over with 1000 grit to remove the dust nibs (about 2 hours of sanding) and shoot it again. So after dealing with all the runs, I loaded up the gun (spilt the paint ) then went around the car one more time. Just for the record (my memory isn't very good), the correct method for painting the car is to start with a door jamb area, then do the roof, over to the other side of the car, do the other side of the roof, then do the other side door jamb, then start on the front fender on that side, then over the hood (going length-wise on the hood), then over the other side and paint the fender, do that side of the car, do the trunk and rear panels (c-pilar's get done with the roof), then load the gun, then start walking the other side of the car - easy. The only flaw was a sag around where the mirror's are - simple to sand out - must be when I feathered off.

I dropped the pressure down to 20 psi, then shot the clear. Went on like glass - I now have the feel for this gun. There is still some dust in the finish, but nothing that a little polishing can't pick up.

Anyway, for those that were wondering what is up in my garage rafters, I took these shots.


Roof:


Driver's side:


Gotta get packed for the Olympics - but you couldn't wipe the smile off my face with a big stick