Great Job

Is that a Devilbiss Plus gun your using?

Yes sir, Devilbiss Plus. The compressor kept up just fine. You can paint several panels without it coming on somtimes.

Ok, so at this point I had a freshly painted car with three coats of clear on it. What could be done here is to buff out the car and be done with it, and it would look great. But I decided that I wanted an even better paint job. If you search on the internet you will find that the hot-rodders and custom paint guys have a way for making a deep clear glass-like paint job. Basically, what you do is you sand the entire car down again until the clear is perfectly flat again. Then, you apply MORE CLEAR!

The more clear you put on the car, the less-flat the surface gets. That's because each coat of clear introduces a bit of orange peel each time. So what you have to do is cut the clear down - block sand it with 600 grit paper and prepare to reshoot more clear on to the car. The common objections to this technique is that you will be able to see the scratches left by the 600 grit paper through the clear. This is not true, and there is a guy on the Autobody forum that even goes as far as 320 grit. But 600 is enough to provide a pretty good mechanical bond between your clear layers.

So off I went sanding again....

You can really see the orange peel and dust nibs when you start sanding. With three coats of clear, you can sand and sand without much fear of sanding through to the base. Except around edges, where one should be very carefull.

Sanding the car down again also allowed me to eliminate the ridge that develops when you apply stripes. This door had to be agressivly sanded to get the ridge line eliminated.

So this is how everything looked when cut down with 600. FLAT!

More pics later...

Wow, sand and re-clear seems extreme, I have always had great luck wet sanding the clear from 1000 thru 2500 grit and then buffing it out. Interesting, I might give that a try once. I can see that it might add depth, but I don't see that it will make it flatter, if the OP and nibs are gone then it would be flat...hmmmm I have to think about that.

If your interested, check out these two links to see a similar procedure done on a cool 356 Speedster...

356 - Step By Step


356 - Finished Car -- Sweet

wow, good write up...i can't believe he was so calm about the guy hitting him, after all that work, if someone hit me only 2 months after i finished i would have gone crazy!

Thomas,

Nice work. Very time consuming for sure, but it come with rewards.

Question: After your initial filling and blocking, did you spray any etching primer to cover the exposed metal areas?

Andys

Yes, I always sprayed etching primer on the exposed metal surfaces. Generally, I am against stripping a car down to the metal, for this very reason. And also, the factory paint is providing a pretty string defense against rust, so I didn't want to disturb that barrier and cause more problems.

So, when all was sanded flat, back into the paint booth we went....

And out we come, now woth 5 total coats of clear...

don't stop there... I mean, since you over estimated how much you needed, SPRAY it ALL.... sandy sandy, painty painty, sandy sandy, painty painty, sandy, buffy, drivey... weeeeeeeeeeeee

I've seen "those" car guys do like 20 coats of clear... seems crazy to me, however, it looks like you can "walk into" their paintjobs


Now, if you're not quite happy with your paintjob, I'd be more than happy to let you "learn" on my car until you're perfect!

Well, so now, It was time for buffing. The final two coats of clear reintroduced orange peel, as one can see in the photo...

I started sanding with 1200...

And then I sanded with 1500 and finally with 2000 till it looked flat like this...

Then, it was time for buffing. Note to anyone considering this, it is always better to sand and buff your fresh clear within 3 days after painting. Buffing is much easier to do during that time period.

more more I'm lovin' it

I use this stuff made by Wizard. It smells good, but be careful....Bees like the smell too!

OK, so after buffing with the cutting pad, and the polishing pad, you can see in this photo, that the quality of the shine and finish is greatly enhanced.

Sometimes I just like to stare at my car...

...

Lookin great!!

sha-zaam!
I just like staring at your car too.

Wow, too bad you don't contract out work and live in the DC area!!!

For those of us that are lurking and loving it. How did you buff the area around the windshield and other small area.? Keep up the good work. The car looks great !!!

I stood on the seats and buffed the top of the frame. If the area is too small, you may not be able to buff it, at least not with a machine. For instance, under the rollbar. I will be doing that by hand... and I am not looking forward to it! Again, the best thing you can do for yourself is sand and buff as much as you can in that 3-day window after shooting your final clear. It is so much easier...

very cool. enjoyed the thread immensely!

Excellent thread! You did a great job. One question, why did you say it's easier to wet-sand and buff within 3 days of spraying the clear? I heard once from someone to let their clearcoat harden for like 2 weeks.
Yours turned out excellent.

The clear is just so much softer before it dries for two weeks. And so the scratches that you put into it by sanding some out a lot faster when it is still soft like that. For the panels that I waited longer for, I had to switch to the coarser compound to make the process easier.

Thanks for the reply. Again, excellent work!

Exactly. You are ALWAYS better off wet sanding and buffing within a few days. The longer you wait the more you have to werk at it and the WERSE your results will be. I have quite frequently sanded and buffed cars the same day I shot them. As far as using news paper to mask with .....bad idea. Paint WILL bleed through news paper and leave not only paint on the underlying surface but also newspaper articles. Real mess to have to clean up after. NO I repeat NO painter gets the "perfect" paint job every time (rarely), so don't feel bad about some orange peel or runs. It happens. As for the orange peel drive around some of the typical car lots and look at the brand new paint jobs As much as I love then Jeep has always been a HUGE offender in the paint department. Also take a look at a C class Benz then go look at an S class...drastic difference in quality! All that said good job and nice color combo!

Most excellent work. I'm debating on whether to do my own paint. I've done it before, but this time it would include some fiberglass work which I've not done but I figure if I screw it up just start over. I've already checked with one custom shop and they want $5500 just to get the car ready to paint, which includes making the body kit fit perfect (no small job). That may seem like alot to some folks, but considering the time it takes.....well you know what I mean for sure. I love to see guys do this kind of stuff on their own. Very nice. An asset to the club, I'd say.

Ed aka W9R1

Take your time putting it all back together. Take many many pics. It won't look this good forever. The first or second time you drive it you will get the notorious stone chip (it's the law of the west). I have gone through this enough times to know it's true.

It will happen, so don't worry too much about it (most people won't see the small imperfections that you will know are there).

Keep a bit of touch up paint for small chips and it will look like a million bucks for a long long time.

You did an amazing job. How many other cars have you done?

Oh I know, when you hear someone yell "No!!!!!!!", you'll know it was me. Right now I've been thinking about motion detectors to alert me via pocket pager when car-keying kids away, being that I work across from a high school. To your other question, this is the first whole car I have painted, but I have done other small jobs before to get my confidence/technique up.

Wow! Work of beauty! You got patience and mad talent

Breathtaking results. That blue really suits the 914 too

I'll be posting rebuild photos shortly, I got a lot of new parts (and a Raby engine kit one the way)....stay tuned.

Great Thread! Awesome Job Thomas!!!

Awsome work
I wait a year to cut and polish my clear coat. It was a lot of work but the shine was better than any car on a car lot. Next time I will do in the first week.

My wife is going to hate you forever for this thread I like to paint and seeing your results have inspired me to paint the 914. I figure that you have produced aprox. a 15-18K paint job by your efforts so I am thinking to do the same.

Great looking car.

Awesome Job Thomas

As another person that has done this let me tell you it is a ton of work.

I always wanted to see if I could do it and I did... but I will never do it myself again.

You results are much better than mine. Excellent job my man

I hope to paint my project this Spring. This thread has been a real inspiration. I have a question about the trunks. I assume you used the same paint with a base coat and a clear coat without sand the clear. I would think that would really be a pain.

That's a classic thread.

Really NICE!

Classic thread !

What will the total cost / hours be ?

The trunks are easy, and they are great for practice! But yes, you won't need to buff that, and you will want to be careful not to get runs. But even if you do, no big deal, you can take care of them by hand. They will have more grease issues, so you will want to degrease them with something like simple Green BEFORE you sand anything. Once you start sanding, there is the potential to imbed grease into the paint. Cleaning these areas can be a real pain, but it is worth it. The beauty is in the details.

Take your time and you can turn this....

into this...

Thanks Thomas.
The trunks look great. Seeing the trunks match the outside really makes a paint job outstanding. How many coats of clear did you use?