Projects Tim's (aka anothercarguy) 1938 Ford Club Cabriolet Build Thread

Thanks for that feedback Dale! Very helpful.

 

Looks great Tim!!! I like your idea of the second round of clear. I may be looking at a second round of clear on my back doors also.

 

Nice to get to this stage of the build...looking good.

 

Thanks Sam. Eager to see how yours is coming along also.

Thanks...indeed, it feels great to see the outcome of the hours of slogging through the dusty bodywork stage!

 

I'm going to share the bad here to show that not everything goes perfectly all the time...

I'll start this post with a photo showing just how bad the paint/clear looked on the parts coming out of the booth...spoiler alert, they looked really bad! And, this was one of the worst.

I'll add...that in my efforts to correct this...I laid the clear on even heavier...which resulted in some pretty good runs...so that wasn't much better. My only solace was that I knew there was enough material on there to sand and polish it smooth.

Now, the last time I painted a car was about 5 years ago and for this project I'm using paint and clear brands that I was not previously familiar with but...frankly I was quite disappointed as I 'd expected better results than this (even being out of practice). I did however finally figure out my issue and I'll share it in case it proves helpful for somebody else.

I have a collection of spray guns (including the cheap Garbage Freight purple gun at the lower end, a number of Vaper brand guns with different tips in the mid range, and a Sata 3000 gun at the higher end). All are HVLP. The Vaper brand guns spray high build primer through large tips (1.8 and 2.3 mm) really well at very lower air pressures (just higher than 15 psi at the gun inlet with the trigger pulled). This is an advantage in that there is very little overspray and most of the material ends up on the panel being sprayed. This however proved problematic as I started to shoot the epoxy sealer on the first set of fenders at this pressure with a Vaper gun with a smaller tip (1.4). The output was very rough! After having a discussion with Anthony here on the HAMB, he suggested the pressure was too low...and recommended a starting point around 25psi at the gun inlet with the trigger pulled. I reset the regulator feeding the spray booth...and indeed he was correct, the results were much improved.

For the basecoat and clearcoat, I used my best gun (the Sata 3000)...my mistake...keeping the booth regulator at the same pressure I had set for the Vaper guns. The Sata gun (after finally referring to the users manual...note to self...read the manual idiot, that's why you keep them in the "manual drawer") requires 29-30 psi. The manual actually refers to spray pressures of 10psi at the air cap...but that's a meaningless measurement without the equipment required to measure pressure that way (heck, even Anthony said he didn't have the equipment required to measure in that way!). So....wet sanding the orange peeled panels smooth with 400 and then 600grit...and then another couple coats of cleared sprayed at the correct air pressures yielded far better results! Just for ****s and giggles I then wet sanded one of the fenders and one of the doors with 1000, 2000 and 3000 grit (which went very quickly as the panels were quite smooth right out of the gun using the correct pressure (Doh!!) followed by a round of polishing compounds. While it's a bit difficult to capture well in photographs, I am very pleased with the results.

And to show the outcome straight from the gun (without the 1k, 2k, 3k wet sanding and polishing), here are a couple photos of one of the re-cleared front fenders.

Much better...back to the shop...more parts to sand and re-clear.

 

Next time try the Lint Free Roller!

 

Lol...And, I'm on the lookout for one of those "spray your car using a vacuum cleaner attachments" that were advertised in the era magazines.

 

[

 

That colour looks great!

 

Looks great Tim! The neon reflection in the panels was a nice touch. I share your pain with the paint application woes.

 

Lol...I'd never seen the paint mitt before...hard to imagine how/why that never caught on!!

Thanks..."Almost Tony Green"...

Thanks Sam...I'm confident that we'll both get were we want to go, even if we take the long way to get there.

 

You haven't sprayed a car for 5 years. You haven't used this product before.

You had less than perfect sprayout, even though you knew you were going to cut and buff after.

I'd say this is not much off expectations, and well within the results of anyone who has that long a gap with no experience with the paint.

Even that AMBR body & paint guy that was interviewed by Bad Chad cuts and buffs, with a dedicated shop and highest quality, known steps at each point.

You may be being a bit hard on yourself!

 

BTW, the roller paint jobs were fun, but the mitt applicator is just funny!
Friends cheer, owners beam at results! Laboratory tested!

 

I sprayed mine with a Sata jet 1500 but did splurge on the digital gauge for the end of the gun. It was an eye opener to see the difference in pressure from the regulator to the gun, 25' 3/8" hose and HVLP fittings. Probably 22-23 at regulator dropped to 12 at gun. I did adjust the regulator so that the gun was very close to wide open. I got pretty lucky spraying in my little garage.

 

Thanks for that feedback (the paint on your coupe looks great!)...I found the best results came with the Sata byp***ing the booth stepdown regulator completely and just used the regulator at the gun...I've not yet stepped up to the Sata Adam gauge and fittings. That may be in the cards before the next project.

 

My dad painted a seed drill, 2 tractors and a BSA motorcycle with one of those back in the day. Lol

 

You never stop learning
Gun A sprays different than gun B
Paint A sprays different than paint B

the difference between a hack and a pro is learning from and how to correct mistakes.

looks super

slight peel is normal, there are some collision guys that spray multiple cars daily that can lay it down like gl***. That’s the difference between 1 every few years and spraying 20-30 a week.
The best painter I know doesn’t stress out over some peel. He’s gonna cut and buff the **** out of it anyway. The collision guys try to avoid that step plus cars have peel in em at the factory so the collision guys only have to spray it as bad as the factory did.

 

My father rip said back in the 50s he used to spray enamel and no thinner but they would heat it on a hotplate til it got loose then sprayed the car before it cooled off .crazy I went to high school for auto body and in '79 they had just come out with Imron by DuPont. It is a cool color

 

Nice!

 

The body shop I worked at after highschool our painter his name was Earl LaJet, usually didn't go in the spray booth til he finished a 6 pack of buds,he was painting a '67 country squire one night and got a sag in the middle of the 1/4 panel ,so he kept loading it up with paint and it just sheeted to the bottom then he took his finger and ran it along the pinch weld and took off the drips it was so crazy ! You can't make this sh$t up LMFAO

 

Lol!!

 

Funny you should mention the vacuum-sprayer. I found one in a box of Christmas ornaments, although my dad used it to flock the trees every once in a while. I actually never tried to paint w/it. Was from an Electro-Lux, iirc. Both vacs are gone too, I think. As far as the paint-mitt, my dad also mentioned he & a friend painted at least one car, using enamel & a powder-puff(like ladies used to use for makeup). Said the paint was specially formulated for that, so's not to give streaks. Said it laid out well & very smooth & shiny. At his funeral, I talked to that friend, & he verified the story, but also couldn't tell me anything more. It was in Minnesota near the South Dakota border, in the early 50's. Who knows... I never did find out who made the paint, or the formulation.
Marcus...

 

It's been a few weeks since my last update. I was making good progress on the painting working my way through the large pieces and lastly getting to hanging the various small pieces for their turn in the paint booth...

When my daily driver Avalanche decided to be jealous of all the attention being lavished on the '38. It has one of the aluminum LS based motors that we don't speak about...with active fuel management/displacement on demand...anyway, that system (a known GM issue) decided to **** the bed...and required some loving. So, in order to free up a bay in the shop...the '38 body, ch***is, and any of the tools/piles of parts on wheels got loaded into the paint booth. It was crowded!

The truck received about 2 weeks of love (down to the short block) and parts and is now back on track. So I was able to return to working on the '38. The next project is the wheel wells and inside of the fenders etc.. I decided to use a Raptor brand box liner kit and rather than going with the standard black color, I decided to try the tintable kit. I could have tinted the box liner with the paint used on the car...but at over $800.00 a gallon, I decided to try a more cost effective approach. Home Hardware is a Canadian company (a much smaller version of Home Depot) that has their own paint line under the brand name "Beauty Tone". Within this brand, they have an alkyd enamel that is pretty much the same as Rustoleum or Tremclad. The advantage is, that Home Hardware has the color scanning cameras and they will tint their alkyd enamel to match whatever you like (at a cost of about $25.00/qt.). So, armed with my painted sample they mixed up a batch for me. I used this paint to tint the box liner. The following photo is a function of taking a picture while not paying attention or wearing reading gl***es...while looking at the resulting photo, I realized that I had taken a picture of the French side of the Raptor coating box.

Armed with the shutz spray gun, I sprayed the tinted box liner. While the mixed tinted Raptor coat is not a dead nuts match to the body color, given that it's in the wheel wells, it's close enough and I'm pleased with the results.

 

Looking great! I’m anxious for the day when I get to that point on my ol heap.

 

Despite your timeouts to work on other vehicles including late model stuff ( That I wouldn't even consider working on) you are catching up to my projects progress. You are a very talented and efficient craftsman Tim ! Your 38 project is looking great!

 

Wow, what a great idea with the tinted box liner! It turned out great! I wouldn't have thought of getting beauti-tone tinted to match. That's really neat and I'll have to save it in my idea bank.

I too have a second-Gen Avalanche. Mine has had a lifter tick for the last 160K kms when cold but it goes away quickly. One day it will give up, but I've had an AFM delete programmer since I bought it at 80K. Hopefully mine survives a while yet. I sure hate all the tech on it, my 04 was the sweet spot. (BCM died last winter, truck became a brick)

 

Thanks guys!

Another small update...after the success of the Beauti-tone tinted box liner in the wheel well areas, I decided to spray the "Almost Tony Green" tinted alkyd enamel on the interior detachable panels as well as the entire inside of the body. It too worked very well. I thinned the alkyd enamel with the medium reducer (4:1)(the same reducer used for urethane paint) to make it sprayable, and then added a couple capfuls of Japan Dryer to help speed up the drying process and harden the paint. Again, I'm pleased with the results.

I'm now pretty much done with painting the body and various parts...I'll probably spend the next few weeks wet sanding and buffing the body and body parts before moving on the the ch***is.

 

Nice contrast.
Marcus...

 

Wow, great progress, looks amazing

 

Looks terrific Tim!!!