Decided to paint my car

[Flatspyder]

Here's the cost
Paint orange gallon $200(you will need some to touch up the engine area and under hood)
Hardener for clear $50
Clear coat $120
Reducer $45
Paint suit $12
Glassfilled body filler $12
Spot body filler $8
Sand paper, tapes and razors $40

Before paint



Bumper remove, trim lights etc removal






Dent pulling and filling








Removing the vent panel in front of windshield took only 30 mins


In the paint tent



Final cleaning and lacquer thinner prep







Red base coat (free) (this was free paint I had in tent used as a primer to cover the filler). You will need to do this if you have any filler, coz all filler I've ever used can creat spiders cracks in the paint. Using actual paint as primer will guarantee you no spiders cracks when painting with the real color.





Sure enough, I had 3 spider cracks in the paint. Sanded the entire car w 600. Took 1 hour to sand the red basecoat down to smooth. Just don't focus on the rough parts and sand to smooth by hand.

Then

Orange paint (3 and half coats) and 2 coats clear (had to paint within 30 mins between coats couldn't take pics).





In two days will cut the clear and buff

[RRoller123]

Cool, thanks for sharing. We love to see lots of progress pictures, they help tell a great story even better.

[Flatspyder]

The paint is set.. Impress how the paint matched the color of the gas cap lid I brought in.

[Flatspyder]

Wet sanded w 1000
Then use running compound on the whole car
Then washed off with just water and very little soap
Will buff and wax in about a month

Running compound




Bumpers installed


The luggage rack was bought from fellow forum member Todd Blanset.

[burlybryan]

Uh, is that a cat in that last pic? If so, it appears to be a bit rough having weathered the "paint tent"!

Thanks for the progress pics. How much time did you invest?

[Flatspyder]

Nah it's my dog. She love that tent for some reason. It's pretty cool there as we live 2 miles from the coast in San Diego. When the car is gone, I guess that can be her dog house. We had to wet the tent and floors. Soaked it before it painting. The same paint job with all the body work, bumper removal and wiper panel removal I got quoted $3200. I was able to get 1 coat of primer, 3-4 base coats, and about 3 coats of clear for $850. The cost included new antenna, new gasket for the bits, new 124sport emblem, painting the grill black (30 mins) and polishing some of the chrome bits. Good thing the car had zero rust on it. I'll be honest, it took 6 days to do the body work and sanding the car smooth alone. And your clothes and hair will be orange. But I'm happy w the results, coz even if you take it to the shop, they will just tape off the door handles and as you can see i took the time to removed the rear section of the top so I can paint it.

I'm looking for some parts to complete it still.

1800 manifold (previous owner installed a dual plane manifold)
Quarter panel glass seals (pair) the repop ones didn't fit.
New seatbelts (buckles, belt tongue, and retractor). I currently have 4 pt racing belt installed with racing seats. Score a set of black leather seats. Want regular seatbelts..(trade for racing belts anyone?)

[Auspider]

Wow nice work! New to this forum but it was interesting to read about the spider cracks in paint from filler. Theres a fair few on the top of the front fenders of my Fiat 130 Sedan (not sure if you guys have heard of them in America?) so that explains them! I've primed and painted over filler before and it seems fine so far though, does it only happen under certain conditions?

[Flatspyder]

Spider (weblike) cracks in paint has to do with the fact that we as humans can not mix the same batch of filler/hardener and paint/reducer over and over again; and mother nature. Mother nature because if you let filler cure over night, condensation and flexing of the molecules do occur due to changes in temperature/humidity. I have found that even filler that has cured for a week can caused these spider cracks also. I've painted 10 cars and when i used primer there will be spider cracks after the first coat of the color paint, after sanding off the spider cracks, the second coat of paint does not develop the spider cracks. So I skipped the primer completely and just use color paint as the first coat (replacing the primer coat). (saves about 1-2 hours). Some primers, especially self etching primers tend to create more spider cracks than others. so to save time(which we all know is money), I just use whatever paint I can find as the primer coat. Just have to make sure it is urethane if your using urethane paint to paint your car, etc.

If you are using single stage paint, you can just sand the spider cracks down, and wait for at least 3 hours and then spray the single stage paint over the sanded/cleaned/dried area. you will want to put enough single stage paint over the spider cracks so that you can buff and polish the paint down.

[Flatspyder]

Next week the paint will be wet sanded and buff.

[Flatspyder]

After 2 wetsand a w 1000 grit
3 applications of rubbing compound,
2 applications of scratch polish
2 applications of megaurs show polish
And one application of turtle wax









The towel is there coz the new top needed to be shaped to fit the windscreen tighter!

[Flatspyder]

Last post




MR2 seats



New side mirrors

[aj81spider]

Looks fantastic. Nice job!

[RRoller123]

Beautiful color! Nice choice.

[Exit98]

Wow, you do nice work.

It never rains in San Diego right?

[toplessexpat]

Hey - great job on the paintwork. Always impressive to see someone working through this themselves.

Question - those seats. You say they're MR2, and they look like late 80s? What modifications do you need to do to them to get the runners to fit, and the seat be the right height etc?

Cheers

Andy