The Project Pad

We should split this into a sticky:)
Noob question about galvanized panels, I am assuming acid or etch primer is unnecessary and you can go strait to epoxy primer?

timmmy wrote:Agreed with all comments above, etch is a personal preference, I guess I'm old school and still like it.

You can use etch over paint and filler etc, and you can paint over the etch with epoxy. Having said that if the acid has been on for more than a few hours, you need to scuff it with Scotch pads prior to the next coat in order to key the surface. It is worth noting that paint reactions can occur between coats of even the same type of paint, it is important to follow directions on flash times between coats, as well as how much reducer is used and how thick the coats are. As a general rule, if you are too quick between coats, and put on the coats too heavy you will likely get a reaction and it will wirnkle and you have to sand it ALL off and start again. The key with paint is prep, following the instructions and patience.

For products, I use:

Bondo (Generic description of plastic filler) Evercoat brand, Featherfill or quicksand.
Spot putty, again evercoat, but any epoxy is fine. Stay away form anything that does not require a hardener as it will shrink.
Primer: Mar Hyde Ultimate 2K primer, more recently I have shifted to Evercoat products.
Base & clear: PPG or Chroma.
Single Stage Urethane: I used the Summit single stage on the S4K interior, underside, engine bay etc and have been very happy with it. Its tough, easy to use, great finish and cheap.

H

It is good to know that the Summit single stage worked out.... I used their 2 stage and honestly I think it is the worst paint ever formulated by human beings. The clear coat was terrible and very thin and the overall finish was garbage. I am not sure who makes their paint for them but man.... I was not happy with the 2 stage. PPG and DuPont are great paints and the DuPont Nason line has been very good to me. If I was going all out I would spring for the higher DuPont lines but they can get pricy. I was stoked when the guy told me Nason Tornado Red was only 125$ a gallon.... that is pretty good for a red pigment.

Justin, I would personally go with an etching primer if you are bare metal all over but as stated above it is all personal preference. The idea is to seal the metal as best you can so you wont have moisture issues later.... the factory does this with the e-coat and that is gone on your car now so you want to replace that with something basically. Whatever you end up doing I am certain it will come out just as good as all the other stuff you have done. Just take your time and prep, prep, prep.... the easiest part is the actual spraying.... the hardest part is prep and the finish work. Once you learn to paint then you wont stop....

I have to stress this though: If you are doing this in your garage take all the necessary precautions and make sure any pilot lights are off and that no flame will be coming on.... protect yourself and buy a good mask and a suit and ventilate the area. About 10 years ago a Macco exploded in downtown Reno and a few people died. It happened because of carelessness and I think about it every time I pick up the spray gun.

Oh and pick up a good HVLP gun and get a moisture filter for your air compressor line and a filter for your gun.

audifreakjim wrote:We should split this into a sticky:)
Noob question about galvanized panels, I am assuming acid or etch primer is unnecessary and you can go strait to epoxy primer?

actually ive always been told to etch galvanized stuff with muriatic acid then paint.




as far as paint, we generally use the dupont chroma line. never had a problem so we stick with the tried and true.

audifreakjim wrote:We should split this into a sticky:)
Noob question about galvanized panels, I am assuming acid or etch primer is unnecessary and you can go strait to epoxy primer?

Agreed on the paint sticky stuff.

On new panels, its probably e-coat as opposed to Galv, but yes just scuff it with a red scotch pad and go straight to epoxy primer Jim.

I dont have anything more to add to the paint stuff. ^these guys have way more experience than do. I cant wait to see the finished product though. Maybe you should take a couple weeks off of work so the rest of us can see a finished product.

hey i work cheap too :p

Mentosman42 wrote:hey i work cheap too :p

lol, wanna come to NoVA and work on the car and tour DC when you're not working on the car?

I'm glad Jim asked about the galvanized metal, as that's what I made the rockers out of. So if I just scuff it, I can apply the epoxy primer over it and forget about it... right? issue is, in the spots where I did the bondo work, I'm sure I sanded through some of the galvanizing... so would acid etching hurt it at all? Or it's just not really necessary since it's already protected?

Thanks for all the help, guys. This has been a great read, and I've learned quite a bit!

ive always been told to etch galvanization with muriatic acid mostly to get the oils out of the galvanization.


etching the galv steel will help everything stick to it because when they put the galvanization on it leaves an oily residue. if you sanded and cleaned those areas i think you will be ok as long as you were using something that is a degreaser of some sort(final klean).

I've been rubbing down all surfaces I work on with acetone and scrubbing them. I then follow that up with water w/ a slight dab of soap in it to clean off the residue and dry really really well. Then let it evaporate off. Tech told me to do this, as well as let it bake in the sun a little bit before putting any paint on it. Said it will burn off contaminants and all will be good.

I've sanded all the rocker panels (galvanized) w/ 80 grit paper on my orbital sander. I will go over them w/ the acetone/water/soap trick, and pretty sure that should get all the oil, etc off.

that should be fine.

acetone will cut any oils on the surface and just make sure u wipe it down well. leaving them in the sun is so all of the acetone evaporates because putting paint over acetone doesnt work.


on galvanized surfaces i would

clean with acetone
sand with 80 grit
clean with acetone
sand with 120
wipe down
clean with final kleen
prime.

cleaning before and after each sanding step will stop you from forcing the oils into the metal. thats what you should really do on just about any metal surface you paint if your going for the show quality paint.

awesome, sounds good. Glad to know I wasn't too far off with how I've been doing things!

I guess another good question while we're at it is: What's a good budget HVLP gun? I have a cheapie HF one, but something tells me that's not the ideal thing to use. I have yet to use it, but figured I'd get a decent one if I were to be spraying the entire car.

I currently have this for my aircompressor to help separate the water out: http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/117/947/=dd00gk (item 43775K51). Works pretty well unless you're spending a LOT of time running the compressor on really humid days, then it just can't keep up. Then again, I'm also only using a 6gallon compressor, so it's running constantly and getting REALLY hot... will need to upgrade or borrow a bigger one if I were to start spraying. By the sounds of things, I should pick up another additional filter of some sort to really make sure the water stays out of the lines? Any suggestions?

Thanks all.

I'm by no means an expert, I've only done the engine bay and primered my 2002, but I got this, http://www.eastwood.com/devilbiss-auto- ... ystem.html, and seems to be decent. Gets you both a primer and paint gun, cheap and I doubt it will be the limiting factor for a newbie like myself and you. I believe Devilbiss to be a decent brand too, but hopefully that's not an uneducated opinion

bimmerboy wrote:I'm by no means an expert, I've only done the engine bay and primered my 2002, but I got this, http://www.eastwood.com/devilbiss-auto- ... ystem.html, and seems to be decent. Gets you both a primer and paint gun, cheap and I doubt it will be the limiting factor for a newbie like myself and you. I believe Devilbiss to be a decent brand too, but hopefully that's not an uneducated opinion

The Devilbis stuff is pretty good, and the 'starting line' is a good starting line LOL. I have a set like that and its fine for in garage paint jobs. I have a Devilbis JGA3 Finishline gun for base and clear and I like that too. However I think I might change soon for a newer style that has clear disposable paint cups as its good to see how much paint you have left.

H

timmmy wrote:

bimmerboy wrote:I'm by no means an expert, I've only done the engine bay and primered my 2002, but I got this, http://www.eastwood.com/devilbiss-auto- ... ystem.html, and seems to be decent. Gets you both a primer and paint gun, cheap and I doubt it will be the limiting factor for a newbie like myself and you. I believe Devilbiss to be a decent brand too, but hopefully that's not an uneducated opinion

The Devilbis stuff is pretty good, and the 'starting line' is a good starting line LOL. I have a set like that and its fine for in garage paint jobs. I have a Devilbis JGA3 Finishline gun for base and clear and I like that too. However I think I might change soon for a newer style that has clear disposable paint cups as its good to see how much paint you have left.

H

Agreed with the Devilbis Starting Line stuff. Dont let anyone tell you that guns are all the same because they arent.... the more you can spend the better here. I have a primer and a base/clear gun. I dont like to shoot primer out of the same gun I clear with.... I would allways get a top feed gun so angles are not an issue while spraying and make sure to change the little filters in the gun itself on every coat.

I allways use prepsol to clean the surface not acitone and I give the car a good wash with dish soap before I prepsol it and spray. Dish soap is good because it does not leave a residue behind when it drys like other soaps are designed to do for protectant. Dish soap has none of this so in a paint prep scenario it is a good thing.

Jretal wrote:I guess another good question while we're at it is: What's a good budget HVLP gun? I have a cheapie HF one, but something tells me that's not the ideal thing to use. I have yet to use it, but figured I'd get a decent one if I were to be spraying the entire car.

I currently have this for my aircompressor to help separate the water out: http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/117/947/=dd00gk (item 43775K51). Works pretty well unless you're spending a LOT of time running the compressor on really humid days, then it just can't keep up. Then again, I'm also only using a 6gallon compressor, so it's running constantly and getting REALLY hot... will need to upgrade or borrow a bigger one if I were to start spraying. By the sounds of things, I should pick up another additional filter of some sort to really make sure the water stays out of the lines? Any suggestions?

Thanks all.

I would go a bit bigger on the tank but an HVLP gun will surprise you.... and make sure any filter you use is not designed to put oil into the line for the tools. A lot of filters do this and it is bad news for painting. I even go so far as to have a seperate 50' air line that I use only for painting and nothing else. I wouldnt worry too much about water as long as you have a good moisture filter at the start of the line and a filter on the gun side.

Sounds like that suggestion will work, bimmerboy! Thank you. Only thing I was wondering is if there's something else out there that has the clear disposable cups like Hadyn had mentioned. Would make clean up a helluva lot easier!

Michael, any tips on filter for the gun side? It a mcmaster part or what? The separator I have is just that... no oiling, etc. It's a self emptying air/water separator setup, but otherwise that's about it... nothing too fancy.

Jretal wrote:Sounds like that suggestion will work, bimmerboy! Thank you. Only thing I was wondering is if there's something else out there that has the clear disposable cups like Hadyn had mentioned. Would make clean up a helluva lot easier!

Michael, any tips on filter for the gun side? It a mcmaster part or what? The separator I have is just that... no oiling, etc. It's a self emptying air/water separator setup, but otherwise that's about it... nothing too fancy.

Hey Justin,

Eastwood have some good deals on Devilbis gun kits right now, they also have the Dekups system as a starter kit for $99 the starter kit would be more than you need for a complete paint job.

http://www.eastwood.com/dekups-34-oz-pr ... r-kit.html

http://www.eastwood.com/devilbiss-2-gun ... tem-1.html

H

perfect! Thanks, Hadyn!

It's been a bit since I've teased you with a little progress on the 4000 so figured I’d toss up an update of life’s fun the past few months. Unfortunately, I don't really have TOO much to share considering that I've been unable to spend much time on the car due to complications and life changes. The project has followed a bunch of weird twists and turns, but things are slowly snapping in line.

Mid August, I finally received enough heat/pressure from both the HOA and my cousin (who's townhouse I was staying in) that I called it quits and had to get the car moved. Thankfully, I have a very very gracious group of friends in the area and with their help I was able to get the car trailered to my one friend's house, where he and his wife happily let me store the 'ol bird as well as all my tools, etc.

The work I was able to accomplish (both before I moved the car to after) gives me a HUGE appreciation for the skills of a good body worker. This truly is an art, which I will get better at with time, but I will never ever be able to touch a true body guy.

With that said, given that I don't have a money tree hidden away anymore (and am currently house poor now - more on that later), I am starting to take on parts of the car one step at a time.

First thing I tackled was the rocker panels. As you might recall, there was a bit of welding involved to get these attached, and my seams weren’t as flawless as a more skilled craftsman, so filler was def required. Not a TON, mind you, but they still needed work. I believe I had about 15-20 hours into the two rocker panels, and I'd go out on a limb to say they're about 90% flat. I just don't have the talent to get them that last 10%, and this is where I will more than likely bring in a body guy on the side to work a little bit of his magic.

But after getting the 'ol girl home, I started in. My ability to mix and spread the filler has gotten a lot better than when I initially started, so that's at least ONE bonus:



Here's what I was starting with. As you can see, there was some filler required, though really not terrible in the grand scheme of things:



slimed:




sanded and reslimed:





These steps were repeated ad-nausea until I got them almost to where I liked them. It is a painstaking and aggravating process where you think you have it good, then run your hand over again and find a dip/bump/etc. I have to skim it w/ a final filler, and then maybe I can get it almost smooth.

I also started messing with smoothing out the front clip a little bit. This is a good excuse to call practice w/ filler. I had shaved all the unnecessary holes/clips/etc on the front of the car... only b/c I could, not b/c I had to. Pretty sure no one will really NOTICE this, but what have you.



Next up was after I moved the car at my friend's garage. I had full intents of building a crazy dust booth around the car, as after cleaning my cousin's garage I had a new appreciation for how fine this dust was and that it went EVERYWHERE! I mean, even the ceiling had a layer of dust so thick that I could write my name in it. But three days after I moved the car, I got a contract on a 3 car garage w/ a house on the same lot More to follow on that after more progress reporting (yes, I'm a tease).

This work happened over Labor Day... and I got about 8ish hours in before the heavens unleashed... as I didn't want to destroy his garage, and given this was the only day I was going to have to work on the car before I moved into the new house, it wasn't worth the effort to build the dust booth.



My goal was to tackle and finish the front clip, and then address the rear quarter panels. I got the fiberglass portions really close to where they needed to be, but the gaps and how they fit w/ the bumpers still wasn’t perfect in my mind. So I went at it w/ duraglass in hand and had at it, so to speak.



This also gave me the chance to address and fix the remainder of the dents I had pulled from hitting the tire wall last year. I was really impressed w/ how well I was able to pull the dents w/ a tree and slide hammer, honestly… as it didn’t require THAT much filler to get it smooth again.





At this point, that’s about as far as I was able to get before the skies had opened and left me with nowhere to go/work… but I did get a solid 8-9 hrs working on the car, and made some solid progress in the grand schemes of things.

Next comes the newest life news… I officially have my own house again !!! After living with my cousin for two years, and looking for houses for the past 8+ months, I finally was able to find a perfect house that suited all my needs, and will be something to grow into as time goes on.

Obviously… this was the most noticeable part of the home:


It's a 28'wide by 30' deep garage. Unfortunately, the bays are on the narrower side of things (9' give or take), which isn't really conducive for the kind of work I've been getting myself into. To fix this issue, I made the decision to take over the middle garage bay and build a new supporting wall to hold up the 750sq ft room above the garage (yes, you heard that right… lot of potential in the garage too, not to mention the house!). This new supporting wall was also to allow me to build a containment booth in the garage… both for dust as well as for a future redneck spray booth as time allows.

The garage started life looking like this:




And with the help of my buddy, we were able to build the wall and remove the necessary supports to really open up the bay:



Once the wall was up and all supports were removed, out came the plastic and I started wrapping everything. This is just a pic before I finished everything. All seams are now “sealed” with duct tape, so this is as airtight as I can possibly make it. Not perfect by any means, but will be more than ample for the work that I will be doing in the garage.



The only thing left that I need to do is install air filters along this wall so the fan I have in the window on the right side of the garage can pull “clean” air across the bay and hopefully vent the dust/fumes out of the garage. It all works in theory, so hopefully it will work suitably in reality.

As of Sunday, the ‘ol girl made her longest drive under her own power this year… the 1.5 miles from my friends house/garage to my own… and yes, I drove the ‘ol bird on the street (with my buddy in front and my gf in my car behind) sans doors, hood, fenders, trunk, lights/signals, and exhaust. It was almost comical to look at peoples’ faces as I drove past them… absolutely amazing.

If it works, here’s a link: https://picasaweb.google.com/jretal/400 ... 7493356562 to a slightly crappy video of us making the drive… even w/ the windows shut on the Mountaineer, you can still hear the car… I saw people pointing in awe, as well as covering their dog’s ears as they didn’t want them to spook from the noise :-P

And here she is all safe and sound at her new home. Now that I am getting about 1-2 hrs a day back in my life since my commute is now 7 miles each way (15-25 minutes depending on traffic) I’m hoping to get some serious work done in the coming months…





So that’s about it for now… more to follow.

nice justin!! your new garage is sweet! /jealous

Looking good! Congrats on the garage..oh and house too:p

Why all the filler on that front crossmember...you're adding nose weight! :-)

Congrats on the place man! Looks like an awesome place! The 4k is looking great too!

It's been a little while, but figured I'd bring this back from the depths

Life hasn't been playing nice with me the past 3 months. After getting everything in and settled in the house, I was bitten by the "87 yr old house" bug just before Thanksgiving That bug came in the form of the cast iron piping going to the 2nd floor bathroom finally showing its age (though showed signs of being replaced in the 50s more than likely) and gave way. What started with a rusted out flange to a toilet (which was gone LONG before I bought the house... guess it was just disguised well enough, or previous owners were that blind to the slowly sagging drywall in the living room below – oh, and home inspector missed it too… Holmes Inspection would not approve!) turned into a 50% gutted bathroom, an 8' x 20' section of ceiling (which was all plaster and lattice mind you) removed from the living room and all new PVC drainage installed to replace all the cast iron. Needless to say, the 4000 has been taking the back burner much to my discontent.

But, that's all behind me now (just finished painting the bathroom last weekend and have the ceiling up in the living room awaiting paint), and I can devote a small bit of time on the car again. I did manage to sneak in 3 or so hours in Dec (yes the entire month, I worked that long on the car), but managed to get some good work done the past few weeks.

When I left you all off last, I had just gotten the car back from my friend's garage a mile and a half away and got it situated in the garage (with containment built). The next step in regards to getting the booth finalized was to install some "vents" in the walls to allow some cross flow in the garage to remove dust and fumes.



Unfortunately, reality hit me a little bit and I realized I was about to start entering the cold months of the year, and I’d be working in a garage which has zero insulation anywhere in it. So with that in mind, I made the trek once again to Home Depot (where they’re almost knowing me by name at this point) to get insulation. I proceeded to insulate the ceiling and all exposed walls of the “bay” that I built to make a feeble attempt of retaining heat within that bay while working in there or at least long enough to allow the body filler to cure when I apply it.





Once everything was set up as best I could, I started the fun I have grown to hate… making things flat. I originally had planned on getting this just flat enough and letting the body shop finishing the rest (90% solution). I started using a 6” orbital palm sander to get things flat, but after a few attempts I gave up and went for broke. After attempting to make things not to wave, I realized it was essentially impossible for me to get things right w/o using blocks. Initially I had purchased a set of sanding blocks that weren’t the best out there, but were still decent. Well, they proved very quickly to be VERY inadequate for what I had in front of me. Within the first few uses, the hard plastic support that you stuck the sandpaper to ended up separating from the handle and then cracking… so I bit the bullet and got “the good stuff” so I won’t have to deal with this again. I also picked up a 30” block to do the larger surfaces as well, though no picture:



With the tools in hand, I was ready to tackle the mess I had initially made w/ the filler when I put the first coat on before sending it off to the body shop the first time:





Needless to say, that alllll got sanded off and I started from scratch again. To say I’ve learned quite a bit since I’ve started is a wee bit of an understatement… but regardless, headway is being made!

The process went pretty consistent: apply filler, orbital sander to take off the high spots, block sand 90% of it off, dust w/ a light coat of primer to reveal low spots, sand and repeat. The amount of filler I’ve wasted doing this is sort of sickening, unfortunately… but it’s a learning process to say the least… but I digress.

Idea of what I did w/ the primer (a suggestion from the body guy when I initially brought the car in… as he said, there’s nothing like a cheap can of black primer vs. the expensive stuff!!!).




This honestly did a great job helping me find the high/low spots. The bad part is it has a tendency to gunk up the paper pretty quickly (so you need to clean it after a couple swipes), which I’m not sure if the proper stuff would do. Regardless, it’s a minor inconvenience and in all honesty, for the 97 cents a can it costs me… is worth the trade off.

But after countless hours sanding away at the two rear flares and the rear doors… I hit a milestone last night. The ‘ol bird got her rear doors back!

Here they are all finished up:



And installed!!!





I can’t tell you how happy this made me. Unfortunately, since the car is 10 different shades of green/white/gray, it doesn’t LOOK that impressive… but everything lined up (with a little bit of sanding) as I had hoped. I still need to address the tops of the flares, the door handle area and get everything between the rear quarter panel and door to line up properly, but it’s getting there.

At this point, I’m working on getting the gaps correct for the doors. I had them pretty close when I did the initial fiberglass, but at this point I’m making it clean and not too overly nasty:







I’m hoping now that the house is essentially buttoned up (for now) that I can devote a few more hours a week to the car, but we’ll see. My last semester of PhD classes started up the weekend before last, so I need to concentrate on those assignments before the car, unfortunately. Been doing decently well to this point, so don’t want to blow it and flunk on my last semester haha.

So that’s where she sits for now. Unfortunately, the cold weather def makes things move a little slower as I can only keep so much heat in the garage to help the filler cure. My family was kind enough to give me a 75k BTU gas heater for the garage for xmas, but getting it plumbed is a slow (and pricey) process. I was able to get it hung last week (with some help – holding a 60-80lb heater over my head and bolting it at the same time is a little difficult), but the piping, exhaust and electricity still needs to be done before I can fire the ‘ol girl up. I’m def looking forward to getting it running, though! Heating that bay w/ a torpedo heater w/ the rest of the garage at outside temperature is a real futile endeavor!!!

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the show… until next time!

Found it

Very nice. Looks like you made your fenders just a tad wider then urquattro fenders?