Dave..
RMS Regular
- Messages
- 10,037
Fair play, the paint looks great.I had booked some time off work in anticipation for the restrictions lifting slightly so I could head to my friends in Newcastle with my TIG to help him make a downpipe for his car, as you are all well aware there was no restrictions lifted so I decided to use my time off wisely and set about getting this 180sx progressed.
The next big thing to tackle on the car was its paint, as you will see above I ordered some fresh paint for it so it was going to have to happen at some stage but I had sort of been putting it off due to the effort it takes.
First things first was stripping it down, the car was obviously originally black in Japan and had a poor paintjob carried out where many of the shuts/interior sections were totally disregarded, I wanted to fix as much as I could within reason.
A few of us split the costs of a portable spray booth, I had never used one before and was very surprised by just how easy they are to get up and down plus how well they work, perfect for an amateur painter like myself, took another crying look around Liams Datsun when I was down grabbing the booth from Ste.
Also me looking happy but really hating my life sanding and prepping all the FRP and fixing minor imperfections with the shell.
Once we had the booth fully set up and everything ready to rock I laid some primer down on all 18 pieces of bodywork, this was a bit of a nightmare as fitting everything in the booth with space to spray it all and not walk into other stuff meant it all needed done in small batches. It pretty much took a whole day to get all the FRP/Wings/Bonnet etc primed.
I let all the primed parts sit for a day before proceeding to paint them, again another day of moving everything about and strategically placing things in places where they wont get damaged, I tried to get these all out of the way so I could then focus on the car itself, meaning any imperfections in the bumpers/skirts etc could be fixed after curing for a while.
The next day I got up at 4am to start prepping to paint the shell making sure to get the most out of the daylight, a coat of primer was needed first. After some cure time I laid down some paint which came out great considering I am a cowboy who likes to give everything a bash.
After having a day off with a paint (and maybe some beer) hangover I got back down to the garage yesterday where my now mostly cured panels were waiting and started fitting them all together to make a car again, this can be tedious especially with FRP stuff. Managed to get it mostly back together and today I pulled it outside for a couple of photos to show off on Instragram.
Pretty happy with how the paint came out considering I have limited experience in painting cars and was using a dusty blow up spray booth. It will be getting a good mop once the paint fully cures in about a week or so.
Got 4 new tyres coming and a new dash to go in next weekend, then a few indicators and side markers to buy before she should be pretty much ready for an MOT.
