RPU, bodywork underway.

[donsrods]

Thanks Kenny, I hope so. Paint is always such a crap shoot.

I spent today going over the main body and filling any little pin holes, and then I threw the windshield posts and door hinges in the blast cabinet. I got them cleaned, wiped down, and hung up to shoot primer on.

They all came out pretty good, and tomorrow I am going to do the final sanding on the doors and these parts I painted today, and, if the weather holds out, on Friday it will be final paint time !

Here are the parts I primed today. I think I see some light at the end of the tunnel !

 

[donsrods]

This morning when I woke up and watched the weather forecast for the rest of the week, today looked like it was going to be the only day without 70-90% rain probability, so I decided to go for it and try to get the body sprayed today.

I still had to scuff the windshield posts and door hinges and wipe down the body a couple more times with degreaser, but when the area where my shop is cleared out at 5, I was able to push the stuff outside to start painting.

I did the windshield posts and hinges first, to give me some idea what the color was going to look like. It seemed ok, so I started spraying the body, and the more I sprayed the more disappointed I was. The color is not exactly what I had hoped for, but the bigger problem was that this paint is really FLAT ! When dried, it looks more like primer than paint, actually more like Rustoleum paint.

Dan stopped by after work, and he actually likes the color, but feels it is just too dull and flat. So, after we talked for a while, he dragged out a hot rod magazine that he had there, and inside was a coupe that was painted the same color as mine, but it has gloss clear coat instead of the flatter one I was going to use. So, I am thinking about ordering a gallon of high gloss clear, waiting a few days for the paint to cure, and then lightly sanding it and then shooting the clear on it to see how that looks.

Here are some pictures from today. I am still on the fence, and if I have to put some other color on top of this, I am ok with that too. There are a couple of places that I need to shoot a little more red on, spots that I missed during the painting.

 

[BillM]

Sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the result Don. Maybe it's my computer but it sure looks more like a tangerine than a red. I'm with Dan - I don't mind the colour but it is a bit too flat for me as well. I hope the clear solves that problem. Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[Old Iron]

My computer shows the same tangerine that BillM's does.
Here's the deal, if you don't like it now you'll never like it, dull or glossy and just living with it is not you.
You've done black so much you may be color blind to other cool colors
Some pin striping would bring out the cool factor too.

 

[donsrods]

The color is actually not very true on here, I photographed it inside the shop with a spotlight lighting it up. It is more red, like the windshield posts in those pictures.

Dan went back to the shop last night after having dinner with my ex, and he sat in a chair for a half hour looking at it. He says he likes the color now that it is settling down and drying. He is always brutally honest and has a pretty good eye, so maybe I am just being overly critical.

What I am going to do is go back over today and take a closer look at it, maybe correct a couple of areas, and then shoot some of the matte clear I have on it and see what I have.

If I still don't like it, I can scuff it and shoot it in black, I guess.

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

In my limited experience, base colors always look "queer until the clear".

I'm only saying, you might be pleasantly surprised, as I have been a time or two!

.

 

[donsrods]

You are probably right. I need to just relax and see what happens when I do a few more things to it.

 

[DozerII]

I like it, I think a semi gloss would be really cool on top.

 

[donsrods]

Thanks, just to cover all the bases, I just got off the phone with Summit and ordered a gallon of high gloss clear plus the hardener and reducer. I think I will shoot the windshield posts as a test and see how those look, and then go from there.

I do still have a gallon of matte clear, so that will give me that option too, if the gloss is not what I like. I should have the clear from Summit by Saturday, which will work out pretty good timingwise.

I will never wonder why professional paint jobs cost so much ever again ! I have more in filler, sandpaper, primer, and paint than I ever imagined !

 

[05snopro440]

It looks like you ended up with a red oxide kind of colour. I was wondering if the Summit Hot Rod paint would be too flat for my liking, in your results I see my answer .

 

[donsrods]

Yep, that is what it is, red oxide. I thought the matte clear would make it shinier, but I guess I need to move up to glossy to get what I was hoping for.

If not, I do have a gallon of black.

 

[Old Iron]

[ddd[ddd[ddd

 

[donsrods]

I ran over to the shop just now to see what the paint looked like today. The color is actually ok, I would describe it as barn red or Rustoleum red. I can live with it. I took some 320 grit and ran over it in a small section, and then with a scuff pad, and it came out nice and smooth, but duller.

My plan is, tomorrow I will spend the day sanding and scuffing the entire body, and then, by Saturday, I should have the clear coming from Summit. If the weather is ok, I will thin down one more coat of red, and then shoot some clear on it to see what I have.

What I will probably do is scuff the windshield posts, and shoot them with the clear first as a test. If I like what I see, then I can move on to spraying the body.

Now I see why I have always painted my cars BLACK !!

 

[05snopro440]

Sounds like a good plan. If you can, please post some photos of the glossy red oxide colour on the windshield posts. It's something I've been considering for my roadster.

 

[donsrods]

Sounds like a good plan. If you can, please post some photos of the glossy red oxide colour on the windshield posts. It's something I've been considering for my roadster.

You got it, will do. Hopefully, they photograph closer to the true color than the ones I posted yesterday.

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Please show us your experiments and results, Don.

Like I said earlier, I've seen colours change radically when the clear lands...

For example, our FC pictured below. In base colour, it looked like Grape Kool-Aid powder mixed with Ty-D-Bol water... very, very fruity looking and I hated it... however, when the clear went on, the colour completely transformed into a deep, rich hue that still makes me shake my head twenty years later...


P.S: I love BLACK and always will. (Current events excluded.)

.

 

[donsrods]

Yep, that color looks great on the FC. We sprayed a little wax and grease remover on the red yesterday to see how it looked shiny, and you are right, it did change the color a lot.

I am optimistic.

 

[bob w]

Colors never look like I want until the whole car is assembled. Of course, nowadays I seldom use paint.

 

[donsrods]

Ok, here is where I have ended up. Yesterday I went to the shop and started block sanding the red, it had a LOT of orange peel in it that needed to go. Sanding it was like sanding concrete. I started off with 320 grit, them moved to 220, then 180, and finally 120 ! Even the 120 was having trouble cutting it smoother.

Finally, Dan came to the shop and he got out his DA sander and started working on it with 320, and that seemed to help. After about 3 hours we had the red oxide sanded smooth, but it was, of course, very dull from the sanding and eventual scuffing with a scotchbrite pad.

Now, I am no professional painter by any means, but I have painted a couple of cars and a lot of parts, and no matter how I tried or what gun I used, I could not get this Summit Hot Rod Red to flow and lay out smooth, so I was done with that product. Someone else could probably get it to look good, I could not.

So, I made a decision. I went to our local paint supply shop and bought 4 SEM Hot Rod Black kits and am going to use those, as that is what we have painted two cars with so far, and it sprays great. It costs about 4 times as much as the Summit paint ( a quart kit is about $ 105.00 vs less than $100 for a GALLON kit from Summit) but I am so done with messing around with this #&^@@** body and need to finally get some paint on it.

Today I will go to the shop and sand the doors for the last time, and next week we are going to shoot one more coat of primer/sealer on the body, and finally shoot the black on it. The red color itself was actually not all that bad, but I just could not get it to spray smooth, no matter what I did. One thing is for sure, that red paint is so tough you could drop a bomb on it and it would not hurt it at all !

Your results may vary, as they say.


Here is the kit I am using this time.

https://www.66autocolor.com/SEM-Hot-Rod-Black-Auto-Paint-Kit-p/sem-hr010 qt.htm

 

[Old Iron]

The difficulty could have been an omen