Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[wheee!]

I buy a lot of pads from Adams polishes and products. Their swirl and haze remover is amazing.

[charliekwin]

What you see on the roof and body on mine is done with Meguiar's M105 with a red foam pad after sanding to 3000. I'll follow it up with M205 with a yellow pad.

I needed to do two or three passes with the DA to get the shine back, with more pressure than I thought it would take (that was key). The compound and foam just don't take much off at all. It's fairly idiot proof in that sense, but tougher to get out scratches. The ones I have left, I think, are from 2000.

The thing I have the most trouble with is how far I can sand. It's easy to tell when the paint is flat, but I'm worried about sanding through.





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[Patcon]

I totally understand. I think a lot of that is just experience. Both with stacking paint and knowing how much paint you've taken off. I am not sure any of us will ever paint enough cars to get to the level of experience where wet sanding is second nature and care free.

[charliekwin]

Last weekend I repainted the fender. It's not perfect, but of course, it ended up getting probably the best paint job of all the panels.

Before re-prepping it, I spent probably 10-15 minutes trying to sand through the original paint with 1500 and didn't. Even after hitting it with 320 there was still blue, so I figured the likelihood of sanding through on the other panels was minimal and I may as well go for it. I got the hood and doors to 3000. Also, I learned that I hate wet sanding. Still, I'm going to re-do the rear quarters and pillars, and may put some more time into the roof.

Today was satisfying: for the first time in a year, parts are going back on. The masking is gone and the doors aren't in the living room any more. They need to be compounded and polished, but I'll do that at the end.

 

[Patcon]

9 hours ago, charliekwin said:

Last weekend I repainted the fender. It's not perfect, but of course, it ended up getting probably the best paint job of all the panels.

Before re-prepping it, I spent probably 10-15 minutes trying to sand through the original paint with 1500 and didn't. Even after hitting it with 320 there was still blue, so I figured the likelihood of sanding through on the other panels was minimal and I may as well go for it. I got the hood and doors to 3000. Also, I learned that I hate wet sanding. Still, I'm going to re-do the rear quarters and pillars, and may put some more time into the roof.

Today was satisfying: for the first time in a year, parts are going back on. The masking is gone and the doors aren't in the living room any more. They need to be compounded and polished, but I'll do that at the end.

 

Excellent!!! That was good thinking to experiment on the panel to be recoated. I am filling and blocking right now. I'll take wet sanding over that any day.

[charliekwin]

I didn't really mind filling and blocking at all. The creative aspect of it and seeing things come into shape appealed to me. Rewarding. Wet sanding is repetitive drudgery that comes with a sore back at the end ?

[Patcon]

1 hour ago, charliekwin said:

I didn't really mind filling and blocking at all. The creative aspect of it and seeing things come into shape appealed to me. Rewarding. Wet sanding is repetitive drudgery that comes with a sore back at the end ?

I like the creative aspect but I have gone to wearing a respirator while doing it. So that makes it less pleasant and I stink the whole shop up doing filler work. Also I have dust everywhere! I do like the look when you can tell a panel has slicked out.

[grannyknot]

7 hours ago, charliekwin said:

Wet sanding is repetitive drudgery that comes with a sore back at the end ?

Are you wet sanding with a block?

[charliekwin]

Yup.

[charliekwin]

Lots of little projects over the last few weeks, and a lot of progress made, but this one's all about paint, because I finished sanding and polishing today. Some time around Christmas, it was starting to bother me that the fenders and doors were looking quite a bit better than the roof, rear quarters, and hatch. So I re-sanded and re-polished all of them. They're still not perfect, but they're better than they were and the effort was worth it:

The roof; before, during and after:

Sail/quarter; before and after sanding:

And the hatch:

With those done, back to polishing. I found it took at least 3 passes with the red pad and M105 to polish out the haze and most scratches. Red pad gave its all. That was followed up with one pass of the yellow pad and M205. Like I said, I finally got it all done today, and it's nice to be over that hump. Even with the screw-ups.

Those screw-ups and some thoughts tomorrow...now I just want a cocktail!

[charliekwin]

Now that I have all* the panels on, everything polished, and a couple days to look and think at it, I figured I would do kind of a postmortem on the body work and paint, complete with an acknowledgement of all the things I did wrong.

*The struggle with the hood continues.

Body work first...

Hits:

• Really happy with the way the fender and headlight buckets came out.
  
• The hatch, the driver rear quarter, the passenger rocker, and the top of the driver door all needed a lot of work, and all came out well. I was especially concerned about getting the swage line back into the rear, but that looks good.
  
• For all the problems that the hood had, that came out pretty nicely too. The only thing I think I should have done better on is a slight jog in the center line at the bottom of the bulge.
  
• Rear bumper holes are gone
• There were numerous dents and dings all over the car, almost all of them fixed.

Misses:

• There's a couple very small dents that I missed. Should have been more conscientious about blocking.
• I didn't get the body line quite right on the section of the rear valence that I replaced, and you can see the difference in the gap on the tail light panel.
  
• The roof was really rough, and while a lot better, it's not perfect. I can't see it in the body when just "looking at it", but the distortion of the lights in the reflection tells the story here. I set myself up badly by not stripping out the headliner and butyl mat before I got started (in retrospect, probably a choice I shouldn't have made), but the roof was probably the hardest section of the whole car, and I didn't really pick up on some of the defects until it was painted an polished. More experience needed here.
  

And paint...

Hits:

• I painted a car in my garage. It looks a lot better than it did when I started.
• Some of the polished sections look really good.

Misses (sadly, more misses than hits here):

• Dust was a problem. In some areas, especially where I sanded aggressively, there's some spots/flecks of the primer showing through. They're not noticeable from more than a foot or two away, but I know they're there.
  
• There are imperfections in the paint, and there are some scratches. I'm not sure if they're left over from blocking or from wet sanding (either from 1500 or from stray dirt/grit), but I sanded off a lot of paint and didn't want to take my chances trying to sand further.
  
• There was a high spot on the hood and a promptly sanded through the paint. I may try to touch this up. I know it won't blend well, but badly blended color will probably look better than primer showing through.
  
• There's a couple spots where something odd happened with the paint and it looks almost...cloudy/splotchy, maybe, from certain angles. A total guess on my part, but maybe there was some paint that wasn't mixed well? I haven't been able to get a good photo of it, but you can kind of see it here:
  
• Bad job spraying on a handful of panels. Most I could sand out, but some places I couldn't and the imperfections can be seen from certain angles. The edges of the hood are the worst; I mostly left them alone after sanding through early on. I might go back and try sanding some more.
  
• Even on sections where the paint is sanded smooth and the body work is good, the paint still seems like it has some texture and sometimes seems a bit flat and lacking some depth.

There's two major things I will definitely do differently in the future:

1. Better dust control.
2. More paint with each coat. The fender I had to repaint was easily the best panel I did, and even that little experience helped.

Looking ahead: I still need to paint the engine bay, which won't happen until I work on the motor, probably a couple years from now. When that time comes, I might consider fixing the roof and any other outstanding body issues and doing a respray if I think it's needed.

Edited January 7, 2019 by charliekwin

[grannyknot]

All in all I think you did a fantastic job, it is a better job than I have paid thousands for to so called pros. Well done,  the center line of the front of the hood and the main body lines running down the sides look sharp and defined,  did you do any build up of those lines with filler?  If so would care to share the technique?

Thanks.