While painting the car and seeing a job well done is where all of the glory is, the preparation is the key to getting there. Most people don’t have a true understanding of just how much is involved in this process, including Isaac and myself. It is extremely time consuming, tedious and at times frustrating. Every step is unpredictable and can possibly add more time and money to the project. It seems like each time we think that we’re about done, we learn otherwise and there’s more prep to be completed. And even then, that’s just the beginning in getting a truly nice paint job on a vehicle.
Since we are completely changing the color of the car, it’s even more necessary to take off more parts of the car. At first this didn’t seem that daunting to Isaac and me, as we thought of the bigger items such as the hood, hard top, and trunk lid. Yet the disassembly seemed like it was never ending and there was either another piece of trim to be removed, or worse, rusty bolts that broke off along the way. I was also told during the process that unlike my opinion, hammers and crowbars don’t always solve the problem.
Just some of the pieces that were removed
As our lead painter says, he can get paint to stick to just about anything but if what it’s applied isn’t sticking, you have issues. Fortunately, the existing paint on the car has been there for many years and adhered well to the body of the car and it means just scuffing the paint using 180 – 220 grit sandpaper and red scuff pads. The initial goal is to get the surfaces scuffed where there’s no more shine to it so primer will adhere to it.
The much easier side to sand.
Again, doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Keep in mind that we’re changing colors AND we want a high-quality paint job. The top of the hood was fairly quick, but the underside? Even with the right tools they can’t get into all the cervices and other areas making it quite time consuming. Sanding, more sanding, scuffing, sanding, the realizing there are still missed spots! (Isaac did wear a mask for most of the work, although we did enjoy the above dustless system and it works extremely well.)
After way too much time, it’s mostly done.
Each time we both think, we’re almost there! We’re not. There’s more. And then there’s even more.
For us doing this as a side project, we decided not to track just how many hours we’ve spent prepping the car just to get to the point where it can be sprayed with primer because knowing that number would really hurt. Numerous times during this process Isaac said, so this is why a good quality paint job costs what it does. Yet, we just can’t wait to see the finished product!
To read additional parts of the build, in the Categories widget on the right select Miata Project Car.
