diy - pimping your ride - car respray - part 1
73I got myself a cheapy to fix up. Step by step, beater to beamer.
New projects are always awesome to start. The best way of learning is practically of coarse or for me that is. So that's exactly what I'm going to share with you over the next few weeks. Practical ways of how I take my beater to a beamer.
We'll start with sanding down the original clear coat or if your car is even older or it might have been resprayed once or twice before, the aim stays the same. Breaking into that old base coat to where you have a good clean surface to work from. Filling and fixing up dings and scratches. Follow me on an exiting journey from beater to beamer.
So today I'm simply going to focus on the preparation for an endeavor like this. It's a messy under taking so if you can, do most of your sanding outside as you will need a dust free wind free area that you can use to spray your primer and new base coat in. Your garage will do for this other wise you'll have to wait for the right day. Bear in mind this could take up to a month or more depending on how often you put hours in and what tools you have at your disposal. And believe me it's not and easy task. But don't panic perseverance conquers all.
At you local hardware or paint shop you should get sorted with what you need. You don't have to get the top of the line stuff, by no means but the better the product the better the end result. Giving you more cash for new projects in months to come.
What you will need:
- 10 x A4 220grit water sanding paper
- 2 liter 2k primer
- 2 liter 2k hardener
- 5 liter thinners
- Applicator combo set
- Body filler / better options
- Compressor / can be rented
- Spray gun with water trap
Top tip - I used an orbital sander to do the initial hard work, this way you'll be saving your hands for the real detail. I chose a 150 grit disc for the hard grunt work. After this I will be using the water paper to make it even smoother. If you see that there is a spot or two that just don't want to go down chances are 99% that its a dent. Don't go digging in there just yet we'll get to filling and working them down in a bit. For starters just break into the paint nice and evenly.
With your new kit your ready to tackle the first base of respraying your car. So let's get to flatting that base coat. This is a great workout and meditation tool as it will take sometime,I find it a great way to unwind.
The grunt work
And then after pain staking hour of sanding your beater down to a smooth finish it will look something like this. I had the luxury of a orbital power sander and after about 10 hours of graft she looks like this, far from done but it saved me a lot of time and hard work.
Now that I've broken into the base coat of the car with the power tools its time to get serious with the manual labor. Water paper and a bucket of water is the next weapon of choice. By now you would have spotted all the nasty bumps and dings from all over the years spread out over your car, It's funny the tell tale thing you pick up on when doing this. It seams my car was owned by a bad boy before as there is a slight indentation on the hood that looks like some one took a baseball bat to it, along with two key markings scratched along either side. So let this be a lesson don't tick the wrong people off. Lol.
Smoothing everything down now till you can hardly feel a bump. All the hair line scratches should be filled with the 2k primer.
Top tip - Penny wise pound foolish, rather spend that extra cash and take a bit of time talking to spray painters at the paint shops to guide you around the bits you don't understand all that well. A little really goes a long way.
So as you can see from the pics on the right hand side this is how you want it to look like, well depending on how bad your paint job was to start with.
Here's to getting started
Final sanding before the detail finishing starts.
On the right I have a close up pic of what it should look like and what you will be experiencing going through the layers. The dull colour is ideally what you want, the pink colour is what still needs to be taken off. Once you have everything nice and dull everywhere you are now ready to start the detailed work of removing rust and filling the dents.
Top tip - On the last photo here you can see previous damage that has cracked and seems to be the reason the paint has flaked up, keep and eye out for problem areas like this one as I'll be handling the healing of these scares in part 2. Watch this space.
Dream passionately.
Peace be the journey.
