Sunday, August 10, 2008

Paint's Done !!!

Racing to the finish so to speak. I have 5 days to get the stickers on, install the electrical system, fluids and fire it up for the race ICSCC race at Portland International Raceway on Saturday August 16th.

Holy s#^@ Batman....we're not gonna make it!

White and Blue are now under 3 good thick coats of clear. Let her cure a day or two and put on the numbers, DATSUN logo, and various others. My assigned Novice race number is 312. Tried registering as #311 as in the car model SPL311, but I figure "311...312...whatever it takes".
Anyway, I'll be trying to make it regardless.














Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Paint time!!!

A few more bondo additions, then sand smooth. Lots of sanding. Then primer. Thirteen hours worth of hand sanding including the post-primer sanding phase to smooth out the orange peel surface I created trying to prime. It wasn't me actually...its was inferior air supply (and learning curve).

Lesson learned...there is no substitute for displacement. Usually a phrase aimed at engines, but I'm applying it to compressor motors now. A little 6.2CFM/8 gallon compressor cannot drive an HVLP gun to give any sort of decent surface finish. Even if the gun does say only 4-6 CFM required, you need 3x that. The gun just cannot atomize the paint properly using a wimpy compressor; especially a thick filler primer with a 1.5 gun tip. Adding 20% more reducer to the paint helped tho. Leave the small stuff for nail guns.

So, a few dollars later, the 220V 16.4CFM compressor is on line and functioning very well. I painted 4x as much in 6x less time with way better surface finish results. Happy worker bee finally:-)
The culprits:
WIMPY WIMPY :-( HEFTY HEFTY :-)

Some pics of the car after post-primer sanding and paint dust wash.
And a couple after initial paint (Mazda White). Color accents are next, and then 4-5 coats of clear coat. I get to learn to spray metallics next.That'll be an interesting lesson.



Sneak peak inside....Dude! Where's my dash?