Kermit gets a Green Coat

[larry47us]

Ahhhh, the end is in sight. Got a call from the mill yesterday. The fabric is completed, and will be shipped to me next week. I am on vacation, and I asked them to send me 1 yard so that I can sent it to Autos so that they can do my seats.

Mike has painted the car. Here are a few pix of the work that he has done. Unfortunately he has a cheapie digital, and the lights in his shop don't do justice to the Viper Green of the car, but it shows that the paint is completed.

The plan was to put 4 coats of paint on, but there was one section that he wasn't happy with, so he block sanded it, and resprayed the entire car. Five nice coats of paint. The color should be really deep!! Next is all of the color sanding and polishing. Realistic due date is now Mid October. We'll see if it holds, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it ain't a train!!!

larry

[larry47us]

Well, I won't show all of the pictures that he sent me, but here are a couple more of the "parts". Here's a shot of Mike working on the rear bumper ( I think)

[larry47us]

The rear deck lid

[larry47us]

Here's Kermit Hisself!!

[larry47us]

And here's a shot of the business end!!! (He is going to paint the engine compartment. This shot is before he did that, but I wanted some shots before I went on vacation, so he sent me this one before he finished.)

Mike said that he usually uses a half gallon of paint on a Targa, but he said that he used nearly a full gallon on Kermit. Should be GREAT!!!

Then it's on to the assembly work.

larry

[pwd72s]

Hang in there, baybe! I know it can't be soon enough, but the roads will wait..

[neilk]

Looks great. What kind of paint is Mike using?

My car is about to be painted in the next couple of weeks. I was asking my guy about paint and he told me that you only need about two coats of paint depending on the color and then a shot of clear coat. He said that most important part was the primer and how smooth and even you got those coats on the car after all the dry and wet sanding. I have seen his work and have ZERO reason to doubt him, but I always thought the more layers of the paint the better.

Any comments?

[YTNUKLR]

I know that if you get too many coats on there it may crack...I don't happen to know what "too many" is though...

[larry47us]

Paint . . . . . . now there's a real issue to discuss. Mike is using DuPont Chromaone. It is a single stage urethane paint. We decided to use a single stage paint, rather than a clear coat to be more consistent with the car's originality.

He and I discussed paint extensively at the start of this project. I got viewpoints on several threads here and on Pelican. The upshot is -- the shop should use whatever paint he is comfortable with. I have been told by a rep that sells DuPont and BASF paints (including Glasurit and Seekins) and he likes the German paints because they have "more solids in them." But he felt that DuPont was a good paint.

But the consensus is that painting is an art. That unless they know how to "fix" a problem -- a bug flies into the paint, a drip, a spot, a piece of dirt -- they will be experimenting with your car, and you run the risk if something goes wrong. I finally decided to stick with what he knew. Also, I know a trusted someone on this board who has seen his work, and he said that Mike does the best paint job he has ever seen.

Mike uses a high filling primer, and was very particular about the smoothness of the primer coat. You are right, it is the filling and the primer that create the smooth finish. The DuPont paint "chemically bonds." The four coats were put on within 20 - 30 minutes of each other so that they would bond together. Different than your typical paint. This way it is really one very heavy layer of paint. Very strong.

I remember, when I was a kid, seeing special Hot Rods at a show, and they were doing 10 coats of hand rubbed paint. So I don't know how much is too much. But, I trust Mike to do it right. He is blown away at the way the car looks now. And this is certainly not the first car he's painted!!!!

Here's a close-up shot of the rear fender. And this is before color sanding and polishing!!!

larry

[pwd72s]

Larry, Just imagine what a few decades of lovingly applied wax jobs will do!