More progress today paintwise. Got the underside of the hood cleaned, scuffed, and painted today. Always scares me painting underhood areas, as I am scared of missing getting oil/grease off the surface and having a mess of fisheyes. Looks like I got it clean, no sign of any problems. Did use Bulldog adhesion promotor and fisheye eliminator as insurance... Another thing I decided to do was save the factory underhood decals. They were all in pretty decent shape, so i cleaned them up, masked them off for when I sprayed the basecost, and then unmasked them before clearing the hood, so now the decals are "preserved" under clearcoat....

 

Paint looks excellent! Keep the updates coming!

 

Another warm day in GA, so did dome painting. Today was black day....got a bunch of small parts painted....side mirror heads, arms and bases, hatch hinges, door handles,and the tail panel between taillights. Use basecoat/clearcoat gloss black...like the gloss look better than the factory semi gloss...tomorrow i plan to roll the car outside and paint the side window frames black. Once thats done, the rest of the car is ready to be wetsanded with 600 grit paper and then on to paint on the body. Its getting close...

 

paint works looks good. what brands and how many coats are you using? id like to do my mirrors the same way this summer

 

The black in the latest pictures is PPG DBC topped with U-tech 4.0 clear. On the car, I have been using wanda primer and wanda basecoat with u-tech 4.0 clear. Seems to all work good together. Paint prices have gotten ridiculous, to get the same paint I bought for about $600 bucks to do this car, Sikkens was going to be about $1100-$1200 bucks, PPG even higher. I refuse to pay over a grand for paint alone. Did some research and picked good "economy" urethanes....

 

One of todays projects involved the repaint of one of my LE wheels to confirm the factory wheel color. With the help of Dave (mazdaverx713b) we came up with the factory color being Sunbeam Silver Metallic. Ended up being a dead on match....so one wheel down, 3 more to go, unless I redo my backup set too....

Wheel on car, 83 vintage, untouched:


Wheel after stripping/scuffing/basecoat of sunbeam silver....


Wheel after clear coat....done....

 

Looking very good... Weather always complicates winter/spring projects, huh? Nice days = "paint days" here, too.

 

Exactly....and now that I am getting more decent weather days, its getting time for pollen to start falling....hoping I can beat it....

 

 

Paint prices have gotten ridiculous. My car is being painted with PPG and the cost has gone up 16% this year. Gone are the days of spending under $1k for a paint job.

Your car is looking great.

 

I got some time this afternoon, and some very warm 75 degree weather, so I decided to do some painting.I put another coat of clear on the LE wheel I painted the other day, then wetsanded and recleared one of the headlight lids (a bug landed in and left one hell of a divot in when i dug him out a few weeks back). Then it was time for the big project of the day.. to spray the hood.....I taped off the already painted underside, wheeled it outside, put 3 coats of chateau silver basecoat on followed by 3 good coats of clear. I ended up with a very little bit of trash, but over all it looks good. I have decided that I am gonna wetsand and buff the entire car when I get done anyways,since there is no avoiding trash when painting outside, no matter how careful you are....

 

Finally have paint on the body. I took the afternoon off and did a bunch of work. I got the doors prepped, everything masked off, and sprayed them, inside and out. They turned out pretty good. If everything goes according to plan, I will do the 2 front fenders and part of the engine bay on Sunday.....anyways, heres the doors...

 

Lots of progress today. Got up early this morning, sanded the doors back down (didnt like the way the color turned out, put on one too many coats and it was too dark). Got them reprimed a little before lunch, then about 3 pm or so rolled the car out and masked everything off, and resprayed the doors, the front fenders, and the underhood areas I wanted to get paint on. Hopefully in the next week or two I will be able to get the roof and rear done....

 

Man, I do sometimes envy you guys in the 'free' states... trying that here in SoCal would have at least three state agencies (plus the HOA) at my door inside half an hour.

Sucks to have to live among fascists, I tell ya. Even if the weather is nice.

 

Thats one good thing about GA....nobody even bats an eye when ya roll your car out to paint it....just watch which way the overspray goes and dont let it blow on the neighbors cars...lol

 

I really hope to see the finish product at an OGTA meet sometime in the near future.

 

I'm really enjoying this thread. Keep up the good work!
I have learned that planning and prep make perfect when painting. Thank you for that.

 

Not too much to write about in the last couple of weeks....since I last posted about painting the doors, i had a problem and will have to repaint the doors (Tip: never sparay an extra coat of metallic on a car you are painting apart, it will dry darker, which will **** you off and make you redo them...then, when you redo them, do not sand down/prime/and respsray the next day, you will trap solvent in the first paintjob and the new paint will not bond properly. Good thing is you can peel paint off in sheets and its easy to reprep for paint). Thats whwre i am with the car, doors will be resprayed this weekend (round 3). Did manage to get some time yesterday and got the front spoiler sprayed. Also got the front and rear bumpers primed and ready to be wetsanded and painted (may do them as well this weekend).

Here is a couple of pics of the spoiler, looks much better than it did in the first pictures in this thread....

 

Looks clean as hell, I also own a 83'LE, Thanx for posting the wheel color name, I could def use that soon.

Good luck with ur 7

 

Really cool story!! Looking forward to the outcome!

Also, I say pull the dash. I always thought it was a daunting task, until I pulled my '88 RX's dash, & couldn't believe how simple it was. 8 dash pulls later & I actually still enjoy it lol. Just study the FSM beforehand & you'll be set. Then you can really clean that front carpet. I scrub them in oxy clean & water, then pressure wash them & they come out practically new!

 

This week i worked on the front and rear bumpers and got them painted. Had to build a wooden jig to hold them in the proper orientation so the metallic will hopefully lay the same way as the rest of the car. Went ahead and painted the body moulding black and sealed it in clear. I like the high gloss look.

Hopefully i will be able to get the rest of the car sprayed this weekend. Have the roof, tail, and door jamb section to do yet.


Front bumper, still on jig:


Rear bumper:

 

that jig is actually a great idea, those bumpers are all floppy off the car....

 

They definately arent the easiest thing to figure out how to paint, even with the metal bumper still under the skin. You just cant sit them anywhere or hang them to spray. With the jigs I solved 2 problems, how to get to everything at one time to spray as well as getting them sitting like they are on the car so hopefully when i bolt em back on they will match. I painted the metallic basecoat with them sitting like you see them in the pictures, then turned them so they were pointed skyward to spray the clear. Appears to have worked well, and they only took about 10 minutes and 2 10' 2x4's to make each one.

 

Finally got to a point where I can say I am way over the hump now....I had good weather this past weekend and got paint on the rest of the body. Turned out good, except the stiff breeze that picked up about the time I got well into spraying clear and nicely tossed some "fallout" pollen in my paint...nothing colorsanding wont fix. All the big parts are now painted. Car is, of course, still in about 1 million pieces. I started wetsanding today, so soon i will start buffing and putting back together. Hope to have it on the road at some point this summer.


Primed and taped....


Pics of the backend after i got it pulled back inside and untaped, had to rush getting it back inside as trash was falling all in the roof from the breeze...




Drivers side view of car...

 

Not sure why I haven't posted here yet, but damn that's looking good! Glad to see I'm not the only one who totally disassembles the car to paint it lol