Zed Body Assembled

Quick post today. This past weekend, Boo, C and I put the hood, rear hatch and doors onto Zed, in that order. That's really all there is today, but we did learn some things, as we always do, along the way.

Hood

hood, door on

We started with the hood, not because we thought it would be easiest, but because it was the closest to the car, and we didn't want to trip over it. When I removed the hood to shoot it, the hood was open. Now, that sounds kind of obvious, but earlier, when I had it off, it had been closed. Back then, I could not get the mounting brackets to shift from closed to open position after I removed it. After all the prep work, I installed it to get the fenders and such to line up. When it came time to paint, I opened the hood and removed it vertically. I was by myself, but I figured if I scratched or dropped it as I removed it, it was not a big deal. For install, though, I needed hands to hold it steady or it would get scratched and that would have been super disappointing. I held one side and C held the other while Boo got all bendy, reaching into the engine bay with the bolts. Once they were fingered in, we lowered the hood (still unlatched) to put on the other panels.

Rear Hatch

hatch, door on

The rear hatch was the easiest of all 4 to install. C and I each held it aloft while Boo fingered on the nuts. The hinges were attached to the body, so they wanted to lay down in a way that we could not get to the underside to put on the nuts. C found some scrap foam and stuffed it under each of the hinges so they popped up enough to get the nuts on. The hatch still needs some adjustment to sit a little higher, I think, but I will probably wait on that until after I have the seal installed so I can get it where it needs to go. I figure I would have to adjust it after the seal goes on anyway.

Passenger Door

C and I planning

For the doors, I left the hinges installed against the car, and removed the bolts from the hinges into the doors. I did this for 2 reasons. First, and most obvious, the bolts that run through the hinges into the body are mostly covered by the fenders when they are installed... like they are now. With the body kit epoxied in place, those fenders are going nowhere. Second, the majority of the install wiggle is in the bolts the go into the car body. Once I got the doors where I wanted them before the last tear-down for paint, it is much easier to get them back where they belong with just the hinge-to-door bolts. Still, this is at least a 2-person operation: one holding the door (from the inside: protect the paint) and another threading in the bolts. I held the door, and moved it as requested while C did the threading. Boo, meanwhile, moved car-port supports and such out of the way.

Driver Door

The driver door was probably the hardest. Consider that the person doing the bolt threading needs to reach past the door from the inside, placing your head where the steering wheel is. Still, the process is the same: one person holds the door steady while the other threads the bolts. We took turns and after about 30 minutes we had the door on.

Front Bumper Adjust

bumper not yet adjusted

At this point, I cut C and Boo loose to get after their own Saturday afternoons while I fiddled with alignment of the various panels. I started with and got the hood square and evenly spaced on either side. I had to loosen the headlight bucket on the passenger side and push it outward, but otherwise the hood aligned relatively easily (read: 30 minutes). The doors latch, and they installed right where they were before, so I will probably leave them be until after the seals go in, like the rear hatch. Because of the nature of the latching mechanism for the doors, there really isn't very much forward/aft movement available, leaving just the height that you would really adjust. I am satisfied that the height is spot on, but once the weight of the glass is added, I may need to adjust them upward to compensate.

While standing back, admiring the front end, I noticed that the front bumper was much closer to the bottom of the passenger side headlight bucket than the driver side. It was a noticeable 10mm difference. I loosened the nuts holding the front bumper bar and tried to lower the passenger side or raise the driver side. It made very little difference (maybe 1-2mm). I had to loosen the front bumper brackets where they mount to the car and shim the driver side to make up the difference. They are exactly even now, but it took some doing.

Well, that's it for today. We have some housing things going on, so I'll probably go dark on the blog for a while. We had an unexpected opportunity to grab a small farmhouse on a large lot around the way. So, my time will be taken with home repair projects and then moving. Suffice to day, I will probably not be doing anything major on a car until winter.

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Zed Shot

Following the post from last week, I spent this past weekend getting Zed (1979 Datsun 280zx) painted. This has been such a long time coming, it is really hard to believe the painting is over. I may circle-back around and shoot some touch-up clear coat some day, but for now, the painting is complete. I have not color-sanded nor cut/buffed, but that isn't technically painting.... and I'm not going to do that for a while anyway. Unless I change my mind, cuz that never happens. About that painting...

Scrapping Booger Epoxy

base shot

I concluded my efforts the prior weekend with removing the clamps and confirming that the bumpers held in place. This confirmation was simply me tugging on them in various directions. Everything set right. Starting Saturday morning, I got after reducing the epoxy spread along the seams of the front bumper. Recall, I put that clear epoxy all over where you can't see, but wanted to make sure it really held to the fenders on the ends. So, I applied a bunch where you couldn't see and then ran a bead along the seam. this stuff sands off in boogers, so rather than suffer that again, as I did with the side skirts, I tried a different method this time.

Using the razor blade, I etched two lines, one a hair above and the other a hair below the seam. Then, using a piece of 320-grt sandpaper, I worked the edge of the epoxy until it lifted off a little bit. I grabbed that edge and pulled off small sheets that left a clean edge along the seam. This took far less time than straight sanding, and left a much cleaner finish. In the final picture below, you really can't see any evidence of epoxy peeking through.

more base

With the epoxy lines clean, I repaired some masking and performed my usual degreaser cleanse. Next, I set up for paint, laying down my air lines and mixing station, getting the supplies in place, etc. In the past, I did not get 100% ready, leaving things like lacquer thinner or a parts-cleaning brush in the garage. Inevitably I would have to open the garage door, letting all that stink into the house, just long enough to grab something. This time, I had my gun set up with the line drier, paint set out on a sheet of crap plywood, tarps on the ground, walls on the carport, etc before I even thought about mixing paint. Once I was set up, I took a break for food. Figure each coat takes about an hour, and I didn't want to be shooting hungry.

Shooting Base

Once fed, I wiped the car and the detached parts with a tack-cloth. I felt ready to go, but a little anxious after borking it the last time. I had the paint-correct activator this time though, so I was hopeful. Similar to the prior paint shoot, I mixed 20oz at a time, pouring most of the mixture into the hopper on top of the gun, leaving a little in the jar so it wouldn't drip out the air-hole at the top when I'm shooting at a sharp angle. Unlike the last time, I literally used a jar to mix in, versus a plastic measuring cup. The paint would stick to the plastic cup; it doesn't stick to glass. I pre-measured my mix lines (4oz for activator, 12oz on top of that for base), and simply poured in the activator to the first line and filled with color to the second. I hand shake the can of base for a few minutes before each session, and then shake it for a few seconds before each mix into the jar... because this has metal flake in it. I imagine, if this were just color (no flake), I wouldn't need to do that pre-jar shake. I want to make sure there's plenty of flake in each mini-batch.

hood base close-up

Because I failed to set up the gun correctly the last time, I was a little more sensitive this time. I had at least one coat still on the car, so I didn't need multiple coats everywhere, and I didn't have a full gallon left anyway. So, to set up the gun, I roughed-in the pressure by setting the pressure at the compressor to 30. I have read that there is some pressure loss down the lines, so rounding up a couple of pounds is better. I have a pressure regulator with a gauge at the gun plus the pressure control knob on the gun itself. I understand that necking down the pressure only at the paint-gun end of the hose will reduce the pressure, but the volume of air increases. So, by setting the pressure at the tank closer to your end-desired pressure, the volume will not meaningfully change when you lower the pressure at the gun by a few pounds. Anyway, with the pressure set, I hooked up my in-line drier, opened up the paint volume knob and started shooting test fans on one of the replacement hoods I got for ToyoTruck. In my last session, I used some cardboard. I don't know if this made a huge difference, but I figure test-shooting onto auto-steel is probably a better fan-test than paper.

Satisfied I was getting a fan that laid down without orange peel, spitting or thin spots, I set to shooting the arrayed parts (hood, tail gate and doors) and then the main shell. I had thought I had enough paint for 2 coats. I was wrong. When I thought I had enough for 2 coats, I shot the most important stuff first (omitting the door jams), and then did not have enough paint to get the door jams. So, after the weather seals are on, there may be a few spots in the door jams that don't have the coverage the rest of the car enjoys. Since I was out of paint, I just moved on. I figure I can get a rattle can of this paint (9mm metallic) from Eastwood if it really bothers me.

Shooting Clear

hood clear'd

I have read that letting your paint dry for up to 4 hours before applying clear coat is a good idea. Others have said you can shoot it as soon as the directions for the base say you could shoot another coat of base (like 15-20 minutes in my case). I decided that a little extra off-gassing / drying wouldn't hurt so long as I shot the clear coat within 24 hours of the base. Outside of 24 hours, the base needs a scuff for the clear to really adhere. I figured early Sunday afternoon was inside the 24 hour window, since it was now past 4PM. My other options were to shoot right away or wait a few hours and shoot after dark. I didn't like either of those, so I cleaned up the gun, and the work area.

Sunday morning started similar to Saturday afternoon. I already had the walls up and the tarps down. So, I just needed to set up the painting rig. I had chosen Eastwood's Low-VOC High Solids clear. The reviews were not as good as some of their other clear coats, but most of the complaints were about it's ability to flow out the gun. The advice was to include reducer, which I did. The standard mix for the clear is 4-parts clear to 1-part activator. I added about 1.5 parts reducer. Similar to my use of a jar for the paint to get my measurements consistent, I used a different jar for the clear. Otherwise, the process was the same.

rear clear, in the sun

The weather for both Saturday and Sunday was peculiar for the west-of-the-Cascades Pacific Northwest. The sky was overcast, which made painting much easier. When I shot a few weeks ago, it was very sunny. You would think all that light would make it easier to shoot, but it didn't. Seeing the fan and the paint lay down was much harder in all that light. The overcast skies created a flat light that allowed me to see the target and the paint (and clear) much easier. Weeks ago, I used a GunBudd to help me see. This time, I didn't need anything to see. I did, however, have to wait for the weather to warm up to 70*F. It's a really strange feeling, waiting for the air to get above 70* in August, but that's the world we're in, I guess.

front p-side clear'd

The clear laid down very well, and flowed out the gun without issue. I probably could have used a little less reducer, as I suffered a few drips and sags. Still, I was able to get 2 nice coats of clear before I ran out of reducer. As the clear dried, I became less and less concerned about the drips/sags and more pleased with the overall look. From the pictures, everything looks a little wavy, but I'm okay with that. Without the camera, I think it looks amazing and the difference in the way the color looks between sunlit and shadowed is remarkable. In the first clear picture of the hood above, you can see my elbow in the lower right corner reflecting off the hood. My arm is probably 5 feet away, and that's not a shadow (I'm actually facing west); that's the reflection of my arm. I think that describes how deep this paint can look once it's wet sanded, cut and buffed. Thinking of the imperfections, I know I can sand those drips down and the waves will sand flat. I have more clear, so I can re-shoot areas if I really need to. For now, I am going to let everything sit for a few days, and then start gingerly attaching the hood, rear lid and doors.

I don't know for sure what's next. Well, strip the masking, but maybe I'll clean the engine bay and then start re-installing the electrical stuff. Or do I do windows next? I don't know. I suppose the next logical step is to sort through the shed-room and figure out what I have and don't have. Let's not forget, when I inherited this project, it was a basket case. After all the painting, I still have boxes and piles of unlabeled parts. So, I guess the next step is to empty out the jigsaw puzzle pieces and start sorting.

That's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Painting Zed

It has been a very busy couple of weeks. I had taken a block of days off work for a camping trip in Hapy, but with Boo's arm, that was not going to happen, So, instead of a road trip and corresponding post, today I will cover what I DID do those days: take several major steps forward on getting paint on Zed, the 1979 Datsun 280ZX. Apologies for the late post. I finished painting yesterday, and I am back to work today. So, while this is a day and a half late, there's a lot to cover.

Priming Body Kit 

end state

Recall the last post about Zed, I was fitting and wrestling with the fiberglass body kit. I got the gaps set, and panels attached with bolts. I described the effort on the rear bumper and the side skirts, but did not detail the front bumper. While it did not seat as well as the rear, it was not as much trouble as the side skirts either. Similar to how I filled the gaps on the skirts and rear bumper, I matched the height to the side skirts and then set the spread on the front bumper. Similar to the others, I shot cooking oil into the gap, cleaned the fiberglass, applied Bondo, removed the bumper and sanded the Bondo smooth. After sanding, I repeated the process a couple of times to get the front bumper to sit as well as the rear. Once the seams were as good enough, I set the panels on that old blue tarp with the replacement driver fender, and shot them with the black urethane primer I used on the rest of the body. That was day one of my vacation.

Sanding Party

Ah yes. The fun of sanding. The more you prime, the more you get to sand. I had the 5 panels, and they sanded down smooth with 320 grit, eventually. I discovered, however, that if I started with 120 grit and did just a quick pass on the panel before shifting to the 320 the finish was as good or better, but it took far less time and material.

final priming shoot

Of course, I re-sanded the rest of the body too. Why? Well, I got a little overspray from the priming onto the passenger side of the main shell. Since the doors, hood and tail gate were still on, the tiny dried paint bits made a difference. There was a slight sandpaper edge on the whole car. It only took an hour or so, to sand it back smooth but it all adds up. Next time, I'll cover things with an extra tarp.

Next, I prepared for paint by removing the hood, doors and rear tail gate. I arrayed them on the blue tarp with their less-likely-to-be-seen sides up. My plan was to paint these areas first and then paint the flip sides when I shot the rest of the car. This plan was a good one in that I got to learn the feel for my new paint gun (Atom x27). As before, I disassembled and cleaned that gun with lacquer thinner and then re-assembled with a "larger" 1.4mm tip. I quote larger because 1.4 aint so big. This was where my day 2 ended.

First Spray with Color

hood underside shot

I am continuing to use Eastwood paint material, and chose a base-coat / clear coat urethane combination. For color, I am shooting "9mm" grey. The paint has very small metallic flake on a medium grey base that appears to have a touch of olive green in it. The olive green sub-color is not apparent in online images, but it does appear after it has been applied.

This first day of shooting was focused on body parts that mostly won't be seen: the insides of the fenders, the side skirts, the bumpers, the insides of the doors, the underside of the hood, the inside of the rear deck lid, the radiator supports, around the engine bay, the hidden parts of the headlight buckets and the door jams. The first coat laid down extremely well in the over 33C (92*F) heat. When I shot the second coat, however, I could not see the material hit the panels very well. Between wrestling with my glasses, which were fogging up from my sweat, to sweat droplets on my glasses, all aggravated by my lack of direct light on the panel.... lead to a dry-spray effect on most of the panels. The under side of the rear deck lid and radiator support were mostly spared, but the others had varying effects. So, the next morning, I chose to sand the bumpers, door jams, and door-insides planning to re-shoot them when I did the rest of the car.

In the background of the rest of the pictures, you will see that Boo and I added side walls to the Harbor Freight car ports. I ordered 2 8' x 20' walls from TentAndTable. They attach with clips, and, because they are 20 feet long, they can be used in different configurations around the 20' x 20' covered space we have. After the end of my final day of shooting paint, we shortened them to 10' long on the sides to allow air flow (after the surfaces flash-dried) to let the fumes out. These walls did a great job of keeping the light and temperature consistent while also preventing dust and bugs from drifting in.

Side Skirt Install Fun

pop rivetted

Before I could do the rest of the painting, I wanted the side skirts installed. Of course, that meant that the fenders were re-installed first. I mounted the headlight buckets to the fenders, and installed the fenders with M6 bolts. The side skirts had been held in place during the Bondo cycles with M4 bolts through the panels into the side of the car. I did not want to repeat that for the finished work.

I had hoped that the epoxy would hold well enough that I could remove the bolts and the panels would hold in-place just from the strength of the epoxy. I was not so lucky. Both the contact cement I used for carpeting the speaker box and the clear goop stuff that delivered with the panels failed. So, I cleared the goop and tried again with the goop and then, once the goop had set up, I replaced the bolts with pop-rivets. Of course, once the side skirts were on, the fenders are now effectively fixed-in-place. I applied small spots of Bondo a-top the pop rivets and sanded them smooth. Last, I cleaned up the goop along the top edges. The goop label said it was sand-able and paint-able. If by "sand-able" they mean that you can apply sandpaper to it, then, yeah, it's sand-able. It does not powder down, though; it sanded off in big boogers instead. Cleaning the goop took an hour just by itself. Grr.. But, the side skirts are in. With a gloved hand, I wiped primer on the spots I had put Bondo or otherwise sanded down to fiberglass. The next morning, I cuffed the primer down and after one more dance around the car with 320 grit, we're ready to shoot. I did not take a picture of the finished skirting, but the pop-rivet and booger repair is unnoticeable in the final finish. They look completely straight and flat.

Paint Prep 

no boogers, no rivets

Before I could shoot, I had to set up the space and then prepare the panels. For set up, I started by flipping over the hood and rear deck lid. I considered how the paint might flop on the panels, and considered that the hood is effectively flat, relative to the ground, and the rear deck lid is fairly close to flat. The doors, however, hang vertically. I don't have a means of holding a 20# door in the air vertically, but I do have saw horses. I hung the doors on one side of a saw horse, attaching it to the horse with bailing wire. This way, the door is as close to vertical as I can manage, allowing the paint to arrive on the panel in the correct orientation, and for the paint to cure that way as well. I don't know if it matters with this paint, but I figured it didn't hurt to take the extra step.

On shoot day, I have found that I follow a very similar path. If I know that I have touched the car with anything other than a gloved hand, I clean with de-greaser. Either way, I sweep the painting area clean and then vacuum every panel. Last, I pass over every square inch with a tack-cloth to get every speck of dust that might have attached itself to the panels.

arrayed for the shoot

Once the car and panels were wiped down, I set up the paint gun with an inline desiccant from Harbor Freight followed by a pressure controller. I added an air-system quick-release to the inlet side of the desiccant so I could move without the hose attached. With the gun set, and the panels placed, I was ready to mix paint.

By the time I got to this point, we were entering the heat of the day (2:PM), after the end of a heat wave peaking at 39C (102*F). On this day, at this time, it was 27C (80*F) so I set up with medium speed catalyst rather than the fast-dry I used a few days earlier.

 

Main Shooting

When I researched the root causes of dry-spray, I believed the problem was that I was not sending enough material out the gun. In retrospect, I think I was unable to see well enough, and moved too fast, or did not overlap my fan well enough. Regardless, when I set out to shoot this time, I opened up the mixture so more material would pass out of the gun. This, unfortunately, caused orange peel that I was unable to sufficiently account for during the second coat. Unlike the painting session 2 days earlier, this time, I was running the GunBudd, shining light directly on the work. I decided to turn up the pressure and apply a third coat. This time, the orange peel was reduced significantly, but it was not eliminated. Since this is metallic paint (albeit tiny flecks), the recommendation is to not sand, lest the flakes are disturbed. C and Boo said that they really liked the texture, that it looks bold and "badass". I'm not so sure.

unfortunate orange peel

Frustrated at my mishap, I decided to just get after the clear coat anyway. At this point, however, I discovered that I had just used the catalyst designated for the clear coat, consuming almost all of it. I determined that the catalyst I used was fine for paint, but the paint catalyst was NOT fine for clear. So, I could not shoot clear coat until I had more catalyst. Getting catalyst from Eastwood will definitely push me outside the 24 hour re-spray-without-sanding window so I will have to at least sand a little bit for the clear to adhere. Since I have to sand a "key", I think my mistakenly using the clear-coat catalyst creates a new opportunity: I can sand down the remaining orange peel and then shoot another layer of base before switching over to clear coat. The extra coat of base should address any flake flakiness. Of course, I have to wait for FedEx, but I can start sanding while I await the catalyst's arrival. Yeay.

At this point, we have color on every panel. There is orange peel, but I think there is enough paint build to allow me to lightly remove enough of the peel without burning through. Then, I can shoot another coat of base and top it with 3 coats of clear.

Thanks, as always, for following along. I'll post on the finished job once it's done-