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-

 

Zed Primed Again

I get that this is becoming almost comical in how cyclical the priming on Zed (1979 280ZX) has been. Today's post is another "Priming the 280ZX" posting. As much as I would like to say it is the last, I know there is one more primer shooting day coming, when the body kit arrives.

I did this work around another heat wave here in the Pacific NorthWest with temps pushing 40*C (104*F) at the peak. I spread out the final prep work over the full day Saturday and shot the primer Sunday morning. All of the other final sanding was after work in the heat of the day the week prior, causing me to literally pour sweat. Anyway, off we go.

Why More Primer

First, the obvious question... why more primer? For starters, this shoot was black 2k primer intended as the final coat of pre-paint. Hi-build primer can absolutely be your last coat of primer. In the reading I have done, many people have had great success with shooting their base/color coat(s) on top of the hi-build. I decided that I wanted a harder shell underneath the base than the hi-build provided. Also, the primer immediately under the paint is what is exposed when you get a rock chip. I think the light grey would show more than the black. Consider too, the color of your primer has a subtle impact on the color of your base coat, unless you put extra coats of color on to cover that. I felt that the black undertone beneath the gun-metal grey would darken the grey. Last, through the final rounds of Bondo, I sanded through to bare metal in a few spots. Those, at least, needed priming.

Preparation is Key

If you have read any of the posts about my efforts on Zed, this section is probably moot. Still, it is worth underscoring the importance of getting the panels as flat and straight as you can before you start spraying. Why? Because the paint is a very thin film of color laying on top of whatever your body shape is underneath. So, if it is lumpy, bumpy, or even deep scratched, it will show through. I performed many rounds of Bondo application and sanding, each time getting a little better at it, and each time getting the panels that little bit nicer. My final process has proven effective: mix a small batch (250ml / a US cup or so), applying slightly too much Bondo to the imperfection area on one pass (and don't touch it once it's applied), sand with less coarse paper (150 grit) for shaping and 400 for smoothing, and last, circle issues for further repair with chalk. This worked for me, and would probably work for others. The higher grit number means you use more paper and it takes longer to get the shape. I hand-block rather than use a DA orbital sander, which is additionally slower. I found this to be a fair price to avoid over-sanding.

Once sanded and smooth, the dust needs to be removed. Pigpen, my shop vacuum, is relatively effective at removing dust. The dust is so fine and Pigpen is so old that dust finds its way around the filter, creating a small cloud of dust around the canister (hence his new name of Pigpen, from Peanuts). I followed the vacuum with blowing compressed air on the panels (after the dust cloud passes) and then I set up for shooting. Since this shoot included the insides of the hood, tailgate and doors, there was considerably more prep than the last few cycles. I repaired the masking at this point as well.

For this spray session, I also prepared the hinges. I started with spray cleansers, but found they were not efficient with the 40 years of grease embedded in the hinge works. So, I grabbed a bucket, tossed in a dishwasher detergent pod and dropped the parts on top. I filled the bucket with a garden hose and then moved the parts around with a pry bar. I let the parts sit for an hour or so, agitating the bucket or moving the parts with the prybar periodically. I drained the dark grey wash water and rinsed the parts with the hose. All of the grease was completely gone.

Set Up

With the panels off the car, I need a wide area to shoot everything. I use a second carport space, laying a big blue tarp down as a floor. This keeps the dust away and protects the driveway. Onto the tarp, I arrange the panels to I can easily move from one to the other without drooping my air hose onto wet paint nor creating a weird maze to navigate while trying to spray. Once arranged, I blew off the panels again with compressed air and then cleaned the panels with oil/grease cleaner (Oil Eater). I do one last check, by holding the air hose and walking the area, making sure I can get to everything.

I have gotten relatively quick at getting the gun ready now. The 2k primer is a 4:1 mix. So, for a 20oz ($20US<) Harbor Freight purple gun that means 16oz:4oz of paint to reducer. I pulled a clean pickle jar out of my glass recycling to use as a mix jar. With a measuring cup and water from the kitchen, I marked a 16oz line and a 20oz line on the jar. My process was to pour in 16oz of primer to the first line and then add reducer to the upper line. A quick mix, and pour into the gun and I was ready to go. Doing it this way gave the air compressor time to catch up to me.

The Shoot

I checked my spray fan against some of the masked off glass, as well as the underside of the hood (it was flipped upside down so I could shoot that side first). With a decent fan, I started shooting around the radiator support first. I figured if there were any mishaps, better they happen in an area that will be almost completely hidden from view later. There were no real issues. I had a few "tiger stripes" where the gun would sporadically not produce a paint fan... resulting in what looks like a tiger stripe. I believe this could be attributed to either too much air pressure or a crappy gun. I will recalibrate for the next shoot. Overall, though, the primer laid down very well. Once all of the undersides were done, I sprayed out the rest of that batch and flipped the doors, hood and tailgate over. Then, I shot them. One thing I did this time was take advantage of the 1/2 squeeze on the trigger to blow air: If you press the trigger halfway, compressed air comes out, but the opening isn't big enough to pull paint. So, I was able to quick-blow the panel immediately before spraying. This trick will be more useful with the color, but it was good to practice it.

After I was done, and the primer all dry, I looked back over the spots where there were significant Bondo sections (again, not thick, just a wide area) and they look very good. Even the middle of the hood, where all eyes will be most of the time, the center ridgeline is exactly centered and looks just as I intended.

The pictures on the right show the before and after of the passenger rear quarter panel. I think they show how careful work can produce some pretty great results. I really like the satin glow. It shows the body contours very well, allowing me to look for remaining imperfections fairly easily when compared to the hi-build which sat flat. Everything looks pretty amazing to me, and I do not intend to pursue any additional rounds of Bondo on these panels nor the main shell. That is a huge milestone.

Next Step Musings

I am still waiting for the arrival of the body kit that I ordered in June. This is not a supply chain issue, really, it is about a manufacturer getting their business back operational after a CoViD shut down. I understand that my kit has been produced and is in transit. Depending on timing, I may 400-grit sand what I just shot and then plan for base coating the areas which are going to be either under the kit or under other body panels (like, maybe paint the front supports for the fenders, for example). I know I want to do those on a different day than the rest of the body, but I don't know how far ahead I want to get without the body kit in-hand. I understand that these kits are really one-size-fits-none-perfectly. So, there will probably be some shaping at least. Regardless, these kits need to be minimally surface sanded to remove the gel coat for paint to adhere. Last, I have read some advice about leaving newly formed fiberglass panels in the sun for a week so they get nice and warm help to complete their off-gassing / curing. Apparently, they will behave better over the long term if this is done. I recognize it sounds a little odd, but this came from someone who does these body kits all the time, so I'll trust it. If the kit arrives soon, I should still have time to finish the prep and paint before the weather turns... assuming the weather stays warm/dry until the middle of October like it usually does/used to. If necessary, I will switch it up and paint everything I can, leaving the body kit for next year.

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

Zed Prime

No, not like Optimus Prime. Today we celebrate getting Zed primed in 2k hi-build primer. Before I begin, the CoViD numbers are getting flat-out scary, but it doesn't seem like folks are taking this news and processing it into action. I take a walk every afternoon for some exercise around suburban residential streets and there are lots of fellow walkers or runners out there. Please remember that just because you're outside, it doesn't mean you can walk right up to me without a mask. I'm wearing one to protect you; show me the same courtesy, dammit. Now, about that primer.

Layout

set up for ease of movement

I started out by backing Nemo out of the other covered spot, and laying a big blue tarp on the driveway where it had been. I then planned my route for moving from panel to panel with a spraygun and air hose. I moved the air compressor out of the garage, but at the edge of it's power cord. I wanted to make sure I could get at different angles without bumping into wet paint, and without dropping the air hose across a panel.

Clean

This is the part that most car shows don't televise: the endless cleaning. Garage Squad is the clear exception, but I think that's because the car owner is usually doing it. Anyway, by now, dust from the Bondo is pretty much everywhere. Your hands and the oils ever-present on them (combined with Bondo dust or not), have run all over all of the panels. Both of these things ruin paint jobs. So, we start with a bottle of degreaser and a roll of paper towels. Since the car has been outside and the weather has been windy and damp, I did not feel it was necessary to shop-vac the interior before I began. I stand by that decision, but I encourage you to vacuum or air-compressor blow-out crevices at least. With bottle and towels in hand, you clean everywhere you intend to put primer. And clean the places nearby so tape will stick. I found the degreaser left a film on plastic so I had to reclean those plastic pieces with window cleaner sprayed onto paper towel so I could get tape to stick. Neat.

Mask

driver side rear quarter

With everything clean, I completed the masking next. I had started a few weeks ago, masking off the engine bay and the windshield. The sides of the dashboard near the doors, the door seals and some of the door hardware all needed to be masked. The fuel inlet did too. Again, it is probably worth stating that the purpose of masking it to keep paint off of stuff you don't want painted. That sounds obvious, but sometimes we get aggressive with tape and overdo it. So, with that perspective, it is better to under mask and have a little bit of rubber or chrome get paint on it than to over-mask, and have a line of unpainted body when you pull tape. Been there; it really sucks. Removing a little paint from rubber or chrome is way better than trying to get paint on that edge after you've messed up the masking. Last, I cut up some kitchen garbage bags and covered the tires. I'm not sure if we are going to keep them or not, but either way overspray would make them worth less. 

Paint Gun Assembly

I knew that once I had metal etching material applied, I was all-in on priming. Metal etch is an acid that converts rust, but it also cuts into the steel, making primer adhere better, but also creating a means of rust suddenly appear where it otherwise wasn't. With mid-Fall NorthWestern Oregon weather (read: damp), you do not want to create a rust opportunity. So, I set up my paint gun next.

A while back I got 3 of those purple Harbor Freight paint guns. I figured I would have a different gun for each of the various steps: prime, paint and clear. Well, since then I got a much better gun (ATOM X27) for applying the color and clear. For primer, though, especially this high-build stuff that has some thickness to it, I did not want to put that through the new gun.

The purple Harbor Freight paint gun ships with one tip, a 1.4mm one. That is too small to reasonably throw thick primer. The Eastwood guide for this 2k high-build primer suggests anything from 1.8 to 2.5mm. So, I drilled out the 1.4mm tip with a 5/64" (1.98mm) drill bit to get as close to a 2mm hole as I could. I did this a few weeks ago during paint gun disassembly, cleaning with lacquer thinner and re-assembly. Now, with the gun set up with a nearly 2mm tip, I was about ready. For timing... from end-to-end, gun disassembly, tip-drill, cleaning and re-assembly took a little over an hour. I work slow.

passenger rear quarter

To the air-inlet, I applied plumbers tape, and then threaded on a regulator with a pressure gauge (like this, also pictured on the right here). On the threaded end went more plumbers tape and then a inline desiccant dryer/filter (like this) and more plumbers tape. To that last bit, I threaded on an air hose quick-release. I set the whole contraption into a spray gun stand (like this) that was held firm to my bench under the weight of a vice. Be advised, these things are not balanced, and need to be fixed to something -or- have the baseplate under something super heavy (like a bench vice that I never attached to the bench) or they will fall.

Etch

With the panels clean, the gun ready and the masking done, I grabbed my small bottle of Eastwood metal etch and a foam brush. Panel by panel, I liberally applied metal etch. Because it was in the upper 50'sF (14*C) and relatively damp, the metal etch stayed wet for quite a while. That's a good thing, as it gives the acid time to cut into the metal and convert any rust without creating flash-rust.

Mix a Batch

hood looks real flat

Again, not like Letterkenny. The Eastwood hi-build 2k polyester primer requires the addition of liquid hardener: 0.2oz hardener per 10oz of primer. The cup that comes with the purple gun max's out at 20oz. so, I made 15oz batches per spray cycle. 15oz of material needs 0.3oz of hardener. Now, I have an old plastic syringe from when I was playing with biodiesel years ago that holds up to 12ml's, but it is graded in milliliters not oz. Apply some math and we need 8.87ml of hardener for 15oz of primer.

I grabbed a plastic mixing pitcher from the kitchen baking materials (did I mention that my wife loves me? I'm a lucky man.) and with blue tape marked the 15oz. line with the top edge of the tape. I did this so that I could quickly see when I hit 15oz while dumping paint from a 1-gallon pail. I opened the can, and then spent about 15 minutes thoroughly mixing the primer, deep churning the solids off the bottom so it was consistent top to bottom. 

Once mixed, I poured 15oz into the mixing pitcher (to the top of the blue tape) and opened the hardener. The hardener comes in a tube, but is as thin as water, so getting it into a syringe was not really a fruitful exercise. To solve, I removed the plunger, turned it upright (small hole at the bottom) and covered the small hole with my gloved finger. Into the now-open other end of the syringe, I squeezed just shy of 9ml in and then dumped it into the mixing pitcher. I mixed for about a minute and then poured the now-activated primer into the gun paint cup and threaded on the lid. I repeated this process 3 more times during the primer-shoot.

Prime

passenger headlight bucket

With primer in the cup, the lid fastened, the air compressor turned on and my painting overalls on, I was ready to go. I set the air pressure at the compressor to 40 and played with the regulator at the gun to get to 30psi while spraying. I got there, but I think, in retrospect, it would have been better had I run the pressure at the compressor higher so I could get more pressure through the gun. I say that because I found that the fan was not as wide as I would have liked, which forced me to hold the gun closer to the panel (like 4 inches rather than 6-8).

It is recommended that you test your fan on cardboard. I was shooting primer and was going to be shooting multiple coats, so I was fine with getting the fan set on a fender while shooting. My car, my choice. It took me a few passes to get my pass-speed right, but after 3 coats, the coverage looks really good. I found that I was initially moving too quickly, making my first coat quite light. Also, because I have a 21 gallon air compressor, I had to wait for the pressure a few times. Honestly, I expected much more waiting.

Because of the high-build nature of the primer, I made sure that I got a nice build everywhere, and then circled back on the trouble spots (fenders) for some extra. Once it all dried overnight, the panels look very smooth, though after touching them, they will definitely require a bunch of sanding. I haven't decided if another round of primer will be necessary. I guess we'll see after the sanding. At this point, though, I am super-happy with how everything looks.

Clean Up

passenger door

Similar to the cleaning of the car prior to painting, the cleanup of tools gets virtually no coverage in MotorTrend / Velocity / Speed television shows. That's really too bad. I know it isn't terribly entertaining television, but ignoring it implies a bad habit of not cleaning things as the way that the professionals do it. We know that is absolutely not the case. I spent over 2 hours spraying primer and another hour cleaning up. I may be slow, but I try to be meticulous. I started by pouring some fresh lacquer thinner into the paint cup and sloshing it around. This didn't free the dried-on primer, but the still wet primer was now suspended in lacquer thinner. I sprayed the material out until the cup was empty, and then removed the air line from the gun. I removed the cup and set it aside while I poured more lacquer thinner into the measuring pitcher. I used the pitcher from this point as the cleaning "sink". I dunked the cup in the "sink" a few times while I cleaned other things so the remaining paint on it wouldn't dry.

I removed the mix nuzzle (on the end that sets the fan-direction vertical or horizontal) off the front spray gun and then pulled the needle from the rear. With a pair of channel-lock pliers, I removed the tip housing, and placed them all into the pitcher. I set the gun in last, upside down. I added more lacquer thinner and then started cleaning things with a brush, getting all primer off of everything, including the outside of the paint gun housing and the paint cup. Once everything was completely clean and wiped down (an hour later), I re-assembled the gun, wiped out the paint cup and put everything away.

Some might argue that these guns are only $15US so why bother cleaning them. To me, treating them as single-use is an environmentally hostile way to operate. Ideally, I would not even have these, and I would have high quality tools (like the ATOM X27) instead. Still, the way we treat our expensive tools is how we should treat our cheap ones, IMHO. I have heard that these start leaking after no more than 10 hours of use, so I may have a couple more jobs before this starts to fail on me. That's still more than once. 

Curing

I let the panels (and the main shell, of course) sit in-place and under the carports overnight. The following morning, it had started to sprinkle so I carefully moved the panels back into the warm garage. I will let them sit until I am ready to sand the primer. I expect I will know if another round of primer will be necessary or not from that. Either way, the window for painting this Fall is effectively closed. Even if I can get sides onto these carports, it will be very hard to warm 400 square feet of space to 70*F (21*C) when it is under 40*F (4*C) outside. Any cooler than 60*F (~15*C), the paint won't behave properly, and it seems like everyone encourages painting at temps closer to 70*F (21*C).

I have read that the polyester primer can protect the metal underneath if the primer is not disturbed (read: sanded). Once you sand it, it is much easier for moisture to get in. I don't know if that's true, but I will be leaving the car un-sanded in primer since I can't get paint on it, so we'll find out. For now, everything except the main shell is in the garage. The shell is sitting under a car port. So, it is semi-outside, but out of direct weather and (extremely limited seasonal) sunshine.

Thanks, as always, for following along. Once the Zed body parts were moved out of the car port, I moved Hapy in, so I expect to be returning to Hapy work in the next few posts. 

$50 paint job

Hapy Cinco-de-Mayo!
A few years ago, there was a sensation across the car-centric internet about a claim that you could paint your car for $50 (original web site). This concept generated an amazing backlash of "myth" web sites and postings de-crying the process. In my usual fashion, I decided I'd try it anyway.

Running Some Numbers
Yeah, that's right. I decided to paint part of the bus with the $50 paint job method. I already had gloss white Rustoleum paint from painting the pop top a few years back. I used the same paint on the bumpers, and they look okay (except for where I dropped the rear bumper on the ground, but that's an easy touch-up). I have all the other usual stuff for non-spray painting... sandpaper in various grits, blue tape.. So, in terms of materials and supplies, I'm sorted. Incremental cost for supplies: $10 can of primer.

I live in a typically-rainy-in-spring area and in a rented house. So, other alternative ideas like shooting paint outside or setting up a temporary spray-shed were not options. Hanging plastic all over the garage wasn't cost-effective, and even if it were, the fumes would have either leaked into the main house, caused an explosion from the open-flame furnace and hot water heater or both. Over-spray and other evidence of painting all over the floor or driveway would have voided the lease too. I even considered setting up a paint shed on the lawn, but the paint would have killed the grass... and the rain could have been a factor anyway (thinking muddy undersurface and humidity disallowing paint to dry). Last, I don't have the skills, equipment nor time.

I went looking for someone to do it for me. Craigslist netted one person and my network was fruitless. Everyone is either already busy or the job is too big. The one person would have required me to tow the bus across town ($75/day for a tow dolly from UHaul) and run me around $1500. He would have taken a week or 10 days from drop off to pick-up.

Calendar Pressures
Since my only real options were either to do it all myself or pay $1500 for someone else to do it, I went digging for a third option. Festival season starts in a few weeks, and we already have tickets to the Hootenanny on Memorial Day weekend. I realized that about a week ago, and forced a third option: only paint the section above the belt-line so I can get the windows back in. I want the upper section white, and that's the paint I have, so I can make decisions about the lower 2/3 later. With that decision effectively made by the calendar, I set off.

Final Prep
Like the interior job, there's always more that you find at the last minute. New tiny rust holes. Little dings. After all that's settled, the old paint got a sanding with 150 grit sandpaper and then a re-sanding with 400 grit. I sanded the entire exterior that way. Then I applied Rustoleum primer with a brush. Yes, a brush. After it dried, I wet-sanded the whole thing with 400 grit paper. It was ready for paint.

Paint
Like the guy in the $50 paint job link, I thinned the Rustoleum 50/50 with mineral spirits. Using a few different sized foam brushes, I brushed on the gloss. Like any other painting, it is important to always maintain a wet edge, and to brush from the unpainted area into the wet edge as you lift off the surface. Those little things will make for a much better brush job. Of course, its still a brush job, so it will only look as good as the sanding you do when it dries. With the thinned paint, it dried overnight and it didn't drip, run or sag as some detractors claim. My garage wasn't terribly warm, but I left a fan going all night. Once dried, I wet-sanded with 400 grit and did another coat. Wash-rinse-repeat, and now I have 3 coats of paint on there. I intend to do at least one more, but I will probably keep repeating until my seals arrive from BusDepot.

That's it for today's installment. The pictures along the right side show the bus in various states with the last couple showing the result after 4 coats with wet-sanding between each. As always, thanks for following along-