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Howdy all,

As requested just thought i would give a brief run down of what i did and some pics to go with it during my DIY respraying adventures. :sorcerer:

Basically car had a few dents in it and signs of rust and cracking paint due to age. It was apprarent that the car had previously been black, then red and finally purple. So first issue was to take it back to metal as best as possible as it was pointless to spray over the top of the current paint as all the underlaying cracking, etc would just come through with time. As for dents, just a good ole pole hit on the driver door, a decent amount of damage on the passanger A pillar and the odd dent here and there. Finally a bit of rust on roof and boot area.

So first objective was to strip the car back. Two options here, paint stipper of manual labour with disc sander and a whole lot of elbow grease!! Considering it was to be done at home i didnt want to deal with the mess of paint stipper as that stuff is nasty. So sanding it was. This was achieved with thanks to a mate, 2 x orbital sanders and about 2 full days. Using about 80 grit discs to chew through the clear coat and layers of paint then 320 once close to metal to try and reduce the swirl marks left in the metal.

Once the car was back to pretty much metal, it was time to fix up the body.

The pole damage to the driver door meant i had to pull the door apart and take to it with a hammer from the inside to try and pop out the damage as best as possible. The A piller was just needing some nicky / filler as there was no way of getting to it from behind to lift oput the damage. So a good scuffing up of the metal and on went the filler. Next was the rear quater panel, i decided to remove the aerial which lift me with a gapping hole in it. So piece of metal sheeting bit of welding, moluding and filler and the hole was no more. Lastly just some little touch up of dents here and there.

Next step was rust removal. Most of it was removed with the sanding process but some areas did require a bit of cutting out. Roof was easily done with angle grinder and some areas with a simple bottle of rust remover.

Now the issues of damage / rust were fixed up, i blocked the filler back to as smooth as possible and made sure the body was looking pretty straight.

Time to spray the highfill / primer. Quick run over with Prepsol and it was time to lock and load with the spray gun. This was easy but just has to ensure the first coat of primer went on with no runs or imperfections. Then it was basically 4 coats of primer then the last coat was done with black mixed through. This is done to give you a guide of imperfections and different level differences when sanding it back.

I let this sit overnight and then next step was sanding it back to as smooth as a babys bum with wet n dry 800 grit. Now this took 3 days!!! :O:) Making sure the primer coat is 100% perfect takes a long time because any tiny imperfections will show up 1000 x worse once the base coat hits the car.

Next stage is the base coat. Now i had 2 x 4L cans of acrylic paint with metallic in it. One was a mix of green / blue / purple and the other was Phantom Black. As well as a can of gold pearl and another can of baby blue pearl. I had no idea what to decide on so finally decided to use all of it except the black. :O

With one more wipe over with Prepsol it was time to get the base on. This I would say is the most stressful part. Any stuff up now and there was no turning back.. well for me anyway! Last thing I needed was a run of mis spray on the base coat. I ended up spraying 4 coats of base onto the car with no issues at all. Then it was time for 2 coats of gold pearl and finally 1 coat of baby blue pearl. All sweet at this point!

Lastly 3 coats of clear coat and the car was done. Unfortunately on the second coat of clear I noticed where I had fixed up the A pillar there was a tiny bit of bubbling. :wave: Now this could be attributed to many things…. Grease on the metal, reaction between the paints, etc, etc who knows! But I was over worrying about it and was going to be a mission to stop and sand it all back again! So onwards I went, hey nothing like a sticker to cover it up :mad:

So pretty much that was it. I now have to leave it a couple of weeks to let the clear coat really harden, then its time for another wet n dry with 1500 grit. I did experience a bit of moisture come thru the spray gun on the final coat of the clear, causing a few ‘water marks’ but this should hopefully come out with the cut and buff.

So overall was very much a great experience. Cost all up, including everything, I would estimate to be about $500, with a very good mates rates on the paint!!

With only a couple of tiny issues I am very happy with the effort. Considering i did it in a driveway with bugs, dust and windy conditions a zero experience, hey i can't complain! It would of cost thousands to get done professionally, yeah it would of come out cleaner, but then i wouldn't be able to say i did it myself and still have $$$$ in my hand!

There is plenty of minor details which I didn’t go into but if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask!

Some photos of the process!

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post-263-1168757396.jpg

post-263-1168757417.jpg

post-263-1168757444.jpg

post-263-1168757463.jpg

post-263-1168757485.jpg

post-263-1168757506.jpg

post-263-1168757524.jpg

Catch yas!

Ando

:P

lukin gud mate

how much da paints cost u ?

-dan

Paint as said got off a friend for only a couple of hundred dollars. But to put it into perspective, if you just buy a 2L paint tin of Phatom Black it would cost a couple of hundred dollars. The overall cost of all my paints would of been almost $1000 but all the different colours and metallic put into the base coat then + the pearl paint.

Looks awesome :)

What kind of air compressor and spray gun did you use?

I wanna try this some day

I used my own compressor for the primer coats which is a supercheap 2.5HP one. But for the base coat you need a BIG one so you have lots of consistant pressure which is vital when spraying the paint, so i hired one from Kennards for $70.

Nice one Ando. Love it. Can't wait to see it in my rear view mirror!! haha :verymad:

Yeah rear view, then side mirror, then out the front windscreen as I fly past :):verymad: ha ha...

Damn your very brave! I would never contemplate such a project. To many factors that could possibly go wrong. Outside especially! So hows the final finish? I mean, is it show quality?

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