Paint Process
This is what happened over a 6 day period, after I finally decided to paint my own car. I used much advice from some friends in the buisness, but that was the only help I got during this DIY project.
Above: This is the original drawing I did (using Microsoft Paint) after many different thoughts on the best looking scheme I wanted for my car.
It took about 12 hours the first day to disassemble and tape off the car to ready it for the paint process.
Above: This is the car after applying 2 coats of Diamond DP-20 primer. This stuff goes on thick and can fill holes normally only filled with body filler. A friend of mine said he used this to fill some bodywork he did after sanding it with 36 grit, just to see if it would do it.
Above: Rear shot of primered car
Above: The base coat of the 3 stage Diamond Bright Pearl White is applied 4x to get proper coverage to the front portion of the car. Where the gray & white would meet I just guesstimated on where I would be applying the tape and oversprayed in that section.
Above: The section where the gray & white would meet was taped off using 3M Fine Line 3/8 masking tape. This tape allows you to do curves without the tape bunching up on the bend allowing paint to spray under it. It only took about 15 min to get both sides of the car taped off to match perfectly. (Well, close to perfect!)
Above: After 3 coats of the base coat Charcoal Gray Metallic, I had proper coverage and I then removed the tape to reveal the first part of the graphics scheme.
Above: As you can see when I retaped the car to spray the Pearl coat I set back the tape to reveal a little of the Dk Gray. This allowed me to spray the Pearl coat onto the Gray turning it a cool shade of Silver Metallic Pearl. This was something I did as a last minute thought, and if it didn't look right I had planned on covering it with the Reflective white vinyl I'm known for using from
time to time.
Above: After two heavy coats of Pearl I got what seemed to be the perfect amount. And waited till the next day to shoot the Clear-coat.
Above: Here is the final look at the graphice before the Clear-coat was applied.
The Clear coat was applied first thing in the morning and a total of 4 coats were done. The Clear was allowed to cure until the next day when everything was untaped and put back together. And the final results are seen on page 3.
