Spraying Snowshoe White Tutone
I often say to myself, "Just what will come of this driveway restoration?" At times I end up making much headway and the end result seems to be very much in view. At other times I shake my head thinking I will never get this car back on the road!
The body of the car is the last piece of the paint puzzle to be completed. All of the other panels and pieces that unbolt from the car have been painted and cleared, but the body has not yet been completed. Much of this is due to the fact that space is at a premium. Since moving out to Ohio a couple of years ago I lost my available space in the pole barn with which to work on projects for the car without having to move everything around each time I have a few hours to do something. There was quite a bit of body work that needed to be finished - panels I thought were straight ended up having a few dings here and there. The rocker panels are not in the greatest of conditions but the condition did not warrant purchasing and welding in new ones. Since we will have trim over the rockers anyway I did not spend a large amount of time in that area.
Since the body work was done for both the white and red parts of the car, it was time to shoot the white first. Taping and masking the body is real chore, more than I thought it would be, but of course the one area that I did not tape that well (tail panel) you may be able to tell that the paint ended up a running a little bit and that had to be sanded pretty good before the coat of red. Shooting outside was not much of a problem. Very few bugs, very little wind, and with soaking the driveway ahead of time there was virtually no dust. The paint went on very smooth and I am happy with the results.
Here is a video of how it turned out:
After the white fully cured, the body was prepped for the red color in the tutone. Again, taping took an enormous amount of time - roughly 2 and a half hours. I guess I may be slow in this area and I am not sure how long it should take but I would think that since I am doing a tutone that may add to tape time.
You can tell the car is now back in the garage, on jackstands (so I can reach the rockers and lower quarters more easily with the paint gun), and the rear tires are covered with trash bags. We are almost there...
Zooming in on the picture above will let you see the way that I masked the tutone break line for the stainless. Though the parting line will be hidden, I did roll the tape back so as not to get a ridge or a hard line where the colors will meet. The cardboard on the floor is so that I do not have a lot of red dust to clean up afterwards. There is not a drain in the garage so wetting it all down like normal is out. The paint booth was next to be assembled around the car as it was positioned in the garage.
Looking at the photos you can see how tight everything is once we got the PVC frame up around the car. There is little room where the garage door closes, and unfortunately while my son and I were testing out the measurements and assembly before we put the plastic sheeting on to enclose it, we had an incident when the latch on the inside of the garage door caught a horizontal piece of PVC and about snapped it in half as the door was closing. It launched a piece through the masking paper and into the trunk. Thankfully none of the body was damaged. The sooner I can get the red on the car, the better! Nice weather is quickly fading away!