Imperial Home Page -> Imperials by Year -> 1973 -> Kerry's Restoration -> Part 10
Painting a car is a lot of work! About the only reason to do it yourself is if you are a masochist, perfectionist, or like to suffer. I guess I am a little of all three. Mainly, I just like to say "I did it myself." Anyway, I have sanded, primed, sanded, primed, did more filler, sanded, primed, touched up the filler, sanded, primed, etc, more times than I like to think about. What a pain!
The good news it that I am getting close. The photo below shows the old girl out in Sundays 75 degree weather (This is one of the 3-4 weeks a year when you really want to live in Alabama). Last weekend, I painted the top with black Epoxe primer. I did not bother to do a great job prepping the top as the vinyl will cover even pretty good imperfections. The epoxe will seal the top and keep any rust from every appearing under the top again. Besides, the black will look ok until I get the vinyl top installed. And yes, I did say 'installed'. I will have someone put it on. Wet concrete and contact cement do not care about good intentions.
The reason she is outside is that I wanted to wet sand. First with 320 and then 600 grit. See the little blue dots in the middle of the fender? This is putty I'm using to fill some imperfections. I'm having a hard time with the seam on this fender where I welded the new front piece on. I just can't seem to get it right.
This is a nice shot of the other fender. You can see a reflection and although the photo does not show it, if you catch the light right, this is how you spot low and high spots. This one is about ready for color.
This is a really, really big car and even though I am tall (6'1) with 34 inch arms, it is a real bear to reach across the hood. This becomes even more important when the first coat of paint is still wet and you lean your coveralls against the wet paint. Makes you lose your religion and save evil words. Since this is not a metallic paint, I decided to pull the hood and trunk and paint them off the car. The hood is ready to paint. The spot near the center is water. Wet sanding can be difficult because if you are not careful you will go through the paint and get bare metal. You cannot apply color over bare metal. It WILL show up.
Remember where I put the patch panel on? The repair came out really well. I doubt if anyone will be able to spot my repair. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
This is the trunk lid, it is also ready for color.
Speaking of color, last week, I cleaned up the inside of both the hood and trunk and put some color on it. First, I killed all the rust and then sanded it fairly smooth. I did not get too carried away. But the paint came out really well. It is a perfect match for the old color and seems to flow very well without a tendency to run. I really, really like the HVLP spray turbine I borrowed from Ray Hickey. I ordered a HVLP gun that works with my compressor and will try it out.
I still have to touch up the front fender and then I am ready to paint inside the door jams. Some months ago, there was a discussion of 'fisheyes' in paint and a product called "Ting" was discussed. I ordered some and will use it. It is supposed to remove any oils and silicones and etch the paint. We'll see.
Kerry's '73 Restoration Saga Main...
This page was last updated on 08/22/2001. Please email me any comments at pinkertonk@bigfoot.com
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