Paint Booth Build and a Coat of Red
With the white applied to the body, it was time to prep for shooting the red. Since red is a color that seems to find its overspray on just about everything within a 3 block radius I decided to build a paint booth in the garage and spray the body there so that the dust could be controlled and not ruin relationships with the neighbors.
First I pulled the car into the garage and put four jackstands under the frame so that I could get better access to the rocker panels and the quarters with the paint gun. After that I wiped down the surfaces with Eastwood Pre solvent, let it flash, and then began the taping process....almost 3 hours to tape it off!
You can see in the pictures above that I "backtaped" at the tutone parting line so as not to have an edge where the colors meet. After that it was time to put up the PVC frame. I basically used the same pieces I had in the basement but I ended up needing more since the distance required to gain access at the back of the car was much more than I thought I would need.
Even after my son and I measured things out very well, tested the garage door going up and down several times, and double checked the clearances, when we finally closed up for the night wouldn't you know it but the latch caught a horizontal section of PVC and launched it into the masking paper at the trunk. How it stayed away from the body I have no idea.
After that we covered the frame in 4 mil plastic and sealed it off the best that we could. You can tell in the immediate picture above that I set up a HVAC filter for the booth. Basically a 20x20 cube is connected to a whole house air handler.
After everything was set up, I blew off the car, vacuumed the floor, and gave the body a final wipe down. The paint went on extremely well and the booth served its purpose well. Things were extremely tight in the booth and the garage, and since the car was up on jackstands and the ceiling had to be kept low because of the garage door opener I could not spray the top of the car. It was masked in plastic before spraying.
Obviously the filters did their job, and for the most part there was very little dust in the air the entire time I was shooting paint. The quarter panels and the tail panel look very, very good although the entire body is not 100 percent perfect. From the photos you can see that things look nice.
Hopefully I can finish up the paint before it gets too cold around here. At times this has turned into a restoration project that defies all logic and normal standard of getting things done. Take this scenario for instance:
Yep - I caught a mosquito just resting on the masking paper one morning. Not wanting this little sucker to get into the paint I decided to tape it down to the paper for safekeeping! The nuances of limited space, time, and tooling make this project much bigger than it really is. However, once this car is completely painted it will be all down hill from there...