Thinking about installing an BMW M6 engine in my Z

[heyitsrama]

Granny if you can, take lots of photos. Are you thinking about the same color? Or gonna change it up? 

[grannyknot]

The colour hasn't been decided on yet, but this time it's not my call. I was thinking about putting the car up on BaT this coming spring and mentioned that to some of the local BMW  Z4 guys, within a couple of days I got an email out of the blue from someone saying he was interested in buying the 240Z///M.  We came to a price and now I'm painting and putting the car back together for this nice young couple.

He's having the dash covered in Alcantara  leather over the next month and he just dropped off some new Recaro seats he wants me to install.  I wasn't really looking forward to repainting the car this winter, more of a necessary chore but now I'm actually enjoying it.  It is going to remain local so I'm very pleased about that.

I found some masking tape that had been mudded over.

 

 

[grannyknot]

I got all the paint off, sanded down to fresh metal and laid on 2 coats of epoxy primer, there will be no rust starting this time around.  I tried to order a set of the new Acrylic Linear blocking tools  but everyone was sold out so I ordered some polycarbonate sheet and put these together. I'll never go back to the hard foam blocks, these cut so fast and flat.  2 coats of high build primer went on next and that has been blocked out to 220 grit and I put another 2 coats of HB primer on today so I should be able to start with 320 tomorrow morning.

I picked up the paint and clear so I'm all set, the colour will be Sport Classic Grey is 63A / L63A. a Porsche colour.

 

[Patcon]

Chris,

I'm sure its colder there than here. How are you heating your space, maintaining heating, fresh air? I'm stalled on paint because of low temps

C

[grannyknot]

I have a 8 ft ceiling mounted propane radiant heater, a 3ft electric radiant heater near the door and portable propane burner that I can move under the car to heat the metal up. The big furnace fan that condenses the water out of the compressors air does double duty by keeping all the air in the shop moving around. There are so many cracks and gaps in that big garage door that fresh air is something I don't have to think about.  If it's below 0 Celsius then it can take about 6hrs to get everything up to temp, 68-70F but it's easy to keep it there once all the objects in the shop are warm.  If it's like -10 C there is no point trying to get it up to spray, the heat gets sucked away too quickly.

I finished installing the LED strip lights this summer and it's great to have twice the amount of light than I use to, also those long lines of light are perfect for showing ripples and waves in the paint.

Edited January 20, 2022 by grannyknot

[Patcon]

My main heat source in the shop is an overhead forced air closed burner propane unit, but it stirs up a lot of dust. I can probably get the heat up, keeping it warm would be a problem until it's out of dust. So your just letting your overspray settle where it wants? No forced air movement? No concerns about the open burners and paint fumes going boom?

C

[grannyknot]

I do have a  2ft by 2ft fan blowing out the small access door on the main garage door, you can see it on the right side of the pic just above your last post. That is running all the time that I'm spraying.  Primer doesn't put much of anything into the air so that doesn't seem to be a problem, paint and clear coat do so when painting I have to stop occasionally for a minute and let the mist clear out.

Clear coat really mists up the air but since I'm going to wet sand all of the clear anyway I don't worry about it, overspray from the base colour coat is my only concern so I have to go slowly and take short breaks to let the air clear.  It's certainly not ideal but I have learned how to work with it.

Boom, yes always top of mind, the propane burners open flame is never on while spraying, I'll also turn off the big overhead radiant heater while spraying paint or clear only leaving the electric radiant heater on.  Once the car and panels are up to temp. they stay warm enough for the 10 min. it takes to get a coat on everything, as soon as the mist has cleared I turn on all the heat to let everything cure.

[Namerow]

Hi Chris:

Congrats on your pragmatic solutions here.  A few questions, if you don't mind:

1. I've heard a lot about extreme increases in paint prices, so I'm curious about what the real-life numbers are.  What were your approx. over-the-counter costs for the three categories of paint used (primer, colour, clear)? 
   p.s. Costs in stated Cdn $ work fine for me.  For once, I won't have to re-engineer costs stated in US $ to figure out what they mean here in Canada 
2. What was your source for the overhead strip lighting?
3. Please explain the materials you used to fabricate your new flex sanding pads.  

[grannyknot]

When painted the 510 last winter I bought a gallon of paint and a gallon of reducer for $500-600.00, blue paint is always more expensive because of the solids. Just yesterday I picked up a half gallon of white paint, half gallon of reducer premixed, I paid $400.00 and white is the cheapest colour. So yeah the prices have gone up.

High build primmer $100, hardener $30, a gallon of thinners for clean up $22, clear coat and activator $260, now I can tell you if those have gone up since last year, I have to have them so I don't look at the price.  To paint a car with quality materials your looking at least $3,000

ebay for the LED strips

The polycarbonate is 3/16th thick, the black pipe is ABS from the hardware store, the straight blocks are glued with epoxy panel bond, the flexible block I used Permetex Polyurethane glue.

[grannyknot]

The paint is done!  Always a good day when the last coat of clear goes on, I can let the stress go now. I'm going to let it cure for at least a couple of wks before starting the wet sanding.

 

[Patcon]

Is it the same color as before or different ?

[heyitsrama]

Damn granny that was fast.