I did some small test areas on the liner with 3 different products. Two aerosols and one of just straight Simple Green sprayed out of the bottle. I'm currently letting it sit for a couple days to see which was best at extracting the grime.

 

I got the paint booth up and running Saturday. I spent most of that day getting it stocked with everything I will need. Here are some details on its design:

Here it is disassembled. The vertical portions of the wall are chain link fence tubing for strength, and the horizontal pieces are 1” PVC. The walls go all the way up to the 9’ ceiling. The doors are all PVC while using furniture fittings for the hinges. Notice the large box mounted to the ceiling enclose the garage door when it is open. I use a heavy-duty clear plastic to enclose the booth with a combination of packing and duct tape to seal the booth to the floor, ceiling and walls and to seal the filter banks to booth. If I tape everything carefully, it’s pretty airtight.


The filter frames were constructed of roof drip molding in a standard 24” x 24” opening. Both intake and exhaust frames are assembled together with sheet metal screws to make up complete filter banks. The intake filters are a rigid, self-supporting design. They are simply inserted into the frames and are held in place by a friction fit.




The exhaust filters are flimsier and are supported in the frames by a 3” x 5” screen. They are usually held in place by zip ties. This time I am using those zip ties used for radiator fans or oil coolers. I’m still waiting for those to come in. These filter banks also serve as the car entry doors. The personnel door is at the rear of the booth to allow any possible outside contaminants to go straight to the exhaust and not getting on the car.




Due to the design and limited space I have in the shop, I was forced to make this a negative pressure booth. There’s a 36” diameter fan mounted to a large plenum outside to allow even flow across the entire bank of exhaust filters. It’s powered by a ¾ HP motor and does a nice job in evacuating the booth. This isn’t the best way to ventilate a booth, but I don’t think I get any more dirt entering the booth as a professional type.


For lighting, I use the existing LED ceiling lights along with 4’ horizontal LED lights around the walls. I added two more 4 footers above the rear to make up for light that is lost while the garage door is open.

 

Yesterday, I got the engine bay painted along with the exposed areas of the underside of the hatch, the body perimeter of the hatch and the door hinge pillars.








Next up is to shoot all the areas that are hard to get to, (when assembled), such as the door hinge areas, the underside of the doors, etc. The rest of the door jambs will be done when the car is painted. I don’t like to mess with tape lines so I simply open the doors as required to get those areas. The hard to get to areas will already be painted so I just need to do a little blending there.

I think I have my technique down. I reshot the practice hood and it looks great. As soon as the nose is done I will assemble the car and prepare for the final paint.

 

Sorry if you mentioned this already, but what color code are you going with for the grey ground effects? I’ve been trying to color-match on my ‘83.

 

That is a very elaborate paint booth and honestly, quite impressive too. Once that was set up, I would never want to take it back down.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing, I was reading an article last night about DIY painting that talked about not even bothering with a booth. After seeing this post, I'm not sure my OCD could handle that.

 

Here are the labels:

 

Thanks! I think it works as good as a professional booth for a cross flow type. If those shelves weren't in the way I'd place the fan at the intake end and make it a positive pressure type.

If I had the room, I would probably leave it up too. In fact, typically after a vehicle has been painted, I'll take the plastic down and eventually get around to taking down the rest. I do leave the box frame above the garage door up permanently since it's pretty much out of the way.

 

I got the nose bodywork done today. I applied 3 coats of flex primer-surfacer which I will let dry overnight. Tomorrow, I’ll see what defects I missed after wet sanding. I can already see one area that’s sunken in a little where it meets the fender and a few other spots. The consistent color of the primer helps in seeing these defects.




I’m glad this is coming to an end, although it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I got used to how the Flex Filler spreads and sands. Just another new learning curve.

I figure tomorrow, I’ll finish shooting the door hinge areas and the areas of the fenders that can be seen when the doors are opened and start assembling the car. We’ll see how well everything lines up. It never fails; I can have the car mocked up just the way I want it and when it’s time for assembly, something always gives me trouble.

 

It looks like I am going to beat the heat! Next week will be in the 70’s with rain this coming weekend. Perfect timing to keep the dust down. Based on this forecast, I’ll paint no earlier than Monday. I’m sure it will be later, but it’s still a good time to paint.

 

Rather than clogging up your thread, here's what I wound up doing, if anyone was curious:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/auto...ml#post6582964

 

Impressive, so that place matches a color AND year also? I can find touch-up paint here but they label GM 17 as “Switchblade Silver” but yours says Slate Grey. What’s the deal with paint codes?!

 

It's weird how the system works. There are many colors that that were close. This one just happened to be 1982.

I just went through their paint samples and compared them to the bottom of one of the door pieces. That area has been somewhat protected over the years. I brought in a wheel too and it looked pretty close.

 

All the underneath, behind, edge, etc., areas have been based and cleared. I’ll let them cure overnight and start assembling the car tomorrow. Here are some of the parts:

 

It’s starting to look like a car again. Mostly everything is lining up fairly well. One thing that needs reworked is the nose. Since the car was on the rotisserie when I was doing metal/body work, I wasn’t able to install the nose. I forgot how the outer ends at the headlights were bending in towards the hood. When I bend them out it also raises them to match the height of the hood. I’m going to apply heat to bend them back out. It looks like it will work.

 

I got the ends of the nose roughed in and conforming to the hood. Some heat and a little filler did the trick.


I also discovered that my aluminum plate repair was a bit overkill. I didn’t get the contours of the aluminum exactly and it deformed the nose a little. I didn’t notice it until the hood was installed. Part of that may have been because I didn’t have the upper support bolted up to it. But, I felt there would have been lot of stress on the support and nose if I tried to bolt it up and have it to to try to force the nose to it’s proper shape.

So before I even attempted that, I used a cutoff wheel and an air saw to cut the plate in half. That allowed the nose to flex like it normally does. The upper support allowed the nose to lay like it should when bolted up to the car. It looks like hell but it functions, and that's all that matters at this point.

I also realized that the structural adhesive is doing its job. I can't see how these plates are ever coming off.



If I were to do this again, I would cut the plates a little bit smaller and keep them separate. I also didn't take into account how the upper and lower nose supports would interact with the plates. There are two locations where the supports contact the nose where the plates are. I had to sand about an 1/8" off the front of them to ensure the nose freely lays on them without excessive pulling when it's bolted to the car.

Upper


Lower

 

How thick is the aluminum again?

 

1/8". It's what I had laying around that was big enough. I think 1/16" would have been plenty. It's not like it has to support a large amount of weight. Just a little support in case the plastic tries to warp again.

 

There's also several brands of "plastic weld" solvent (glue) that will "melt" certain plastics together...

 

I'm not following you. What is the plastic glue for?

 

Ha. Sorry. Looks like I was trying to post regarding your plastic dash repairs (post #295) and I somehow missed all the rest of the progress in the thread. Weird. I presume you got it all fixed so please disregard. Sorry for the confusion.

 

Got it.

No, I haven't got to repairing the dash yet. I got some plastic welding rods from Polyvance. I'm hoping that will do the trick.

 

If that doesn't work, there's a company called "weld on" that sells little tins of plastic solvent/glue (for various types of plastic.)
Lots of folks claim good success with them.. I've had some successes and some misses because of the various types of plastics that I am not familiar with.

 

That sounds easier than welding since I just have cracks and not damaged/missing material. If I can positively identify the type of plastic, I might consider that method.

 

You got me thinking... These cracks weren't the result of something hitting it, or like a plastic object being damaged from being dropped, etc., Since they are cracks from the constant stress and vibration of going down the road, the repairs very well might crack again. With welding, I can add more material to beef up the crack-prone areas.

 

Since painting is one of the more stressful things, (along with starting an engine for the first time), I tend to lollygag around and don’t get in too much of hurry. I’ve been slowly getting the booth and the car ready the last couple of days. I take my time thinking of things I need to do, like going over the car several times looking for defects.

But, the car is finally ready. I figure the temps tomorrow will be high enough around mid-morning.




There wasn't much masking to do. Protecting just the pre-painted areas are all I am concerned about. The pretty blue interior got trashed almost immediately when I started priming without masking.

I use that soft edge foam masking for areas like this. As you already know, I based and cleared these areas already. I scuffed the area above the foam so the paint will stick. It will be a simple matter to scuff and buff to get a good transition. I did the same for the hatch.




I loosely attach the front and rear bumper covers so paint will flow between them without bridging the two surfaces.


For the door jambs, I’ll simply open the doors and blend the new paint into the pre-painted areas.

 

Ah, now it makes sense. I had wondered why you cut in the door jambs the way you did, but I didn't ask questions because I figured there was a method to your madness. I'll have to try your same process on my next one.

 

Yeah, I don't know if that's standard procedure but it worked great on my 69. I can't think of an easier way to get complete coverage when I don't want to deal with paint lines, or when I can't paint everything in pieces.

I have no choice with the hatch as it's not hinged yet. And it would be too hard to get all the hood's nooks and crannies even with it open.

 

Is an additive to allow the paint on the bumpers to be more flexible a thing of the past?

 

I've been out of the business for 13 years, but at that time, it was starting to be a thing of the past. Depended on the paint line.

 

Urethanes and epoxies are flexible enough to be used on bumpers. But, everything else has to be specific for plastics, such as the body filler. I used Polyvance's Flex Filler 2. It's an epoxy base, similar to the properties of JB Weld.

The Primer surfacer I used was also Polyvance. It's water-borne. It's sprays on almost as thick as Slick Sand or Feather Fill.

 

Not painting today. After stressing out during the recent heat wave trying to get it painted before it got too hot, now it’s been too cool. It’s only going to get up to 70ish today. Monday or Tuesday is looking better.

Stay tuned…

 

Success! The paint didn’t turn out half-bad. There’s too much orange peel in my opinion and there are some dirt nibs here and there, but that’s OK because I knew I was going to be wet sanding and polishing it anyway. I’m happy!

The first thing was to shoot one good covering coat of black sealer, the color that Nason recommends. Then, two coats of base. I could see some mottling on the hood and hatch. I didn’t see any on the sides, for some reason. So I tried a drop coat on the hood. That seemed to help, but it was going on a little dry. I didn’t try to fix the hatch. I decided to go with it.

After three coats of clear, it all smoothed out nicely. I can see a little bit of mottling, but I am OK with it. I will let it cure for a few days then after wet sanding and polishing it will be mirror smooth.

 

You are over the biggest hurdle now. Yeah... I know there's still a lot to do, lol. But the biggest hurdle has been cleared.

 

Awesome!