Archive for July, 2010

I ordered the wrong seal for the hood, but I finally got the new one and stuck it on. The car is looking great! It looks really high in the rear since there is no engine or batteries in; those will make it sit lower. The front is lowered, but it will also sit lower when there is weight in it. Obviously I need to deal with the rims still..

CIP1 sent me two right hand tail light seals, so it took a while to get the other left side. They eventually got it to me (after accidentally sending another right seal), and were really great and helpful to work with (especially Megan who I owe a big thanks to for getting it straightened out).

Note: this post is out of order; I did this quite a while ago, but our internet (Surfnet Wifi) has been down at home.

The rear luggage floor, behind the rear seat, was rotten with rust. I didn’t want to replace the entire panel ($200) as I figured it would be a pain to spot weld it in. I thought it would be easier to just weld in a new piece of sheet steel, and save some money. I also had plans of widening the rear area about 2″ to fit in more batteries. It turns out I couldn’t do that, and we’ll see why below.

At lunch during work Shane came with me to Sims Metals in downtown San Jose and we picked up some stock. I found some outdoor 16 gauge steel, which is much cheaper than new sheets. Unfortunately the piece wouldn’t fit in my car, and I wanted it kept larger than 4′, and their clean cutter cuts a max of 4′. I had the guy torch cut it, and it didn’t warp it too much. I always prefer to drive the Prius over my truck. The truck gets 10 mpg and the Prius gets 47 mpg. I drive 40 miles each day (to work and back), so driving the prius is less than one gallon of gas (~$3) while driving the truck if 4 ($12). That makes a trip to sims cost even more if I have to drive the truck, so I avoid it if I can. Anyways, the piece fit:

I tried to cut out the old junk with the jig saw, but that wasn’t getting me close enough to the edge:

So, I ended up using the grinder to cut it out:

Now, I wanted to widen the area to fit more batteries, but taking a close look at the wheel wells meant I would have to cut into the metal that appears to be partially structural, so I opted to not do it and deal with the battery location problem when I get them.

I cut the new piece with the jig saw and then tweaked it slightly with the grinder until it fit just right. I tacked it in with the MIG welder and then welded it all around to keep the water out.

I finally pulled some pictures of the final painting of the car. No front picture yet, as I haven’t put on the hood (I bought the wrong seal). I’m quite happy with the result. Metallic silver on top, and metallic red on bottom.

Before clear coating:

The hood and engine deck lid being clear coated:

Front shot:

Final clear coat shot of the side with the fenders on:

The side is *slightly* darker than the fenders, but it is really hard to notice. That is because I put more coats on the side to get rid of some striping I got from the metallic paint. Overall, I’m quite happy with my first ever paint job.

I ordered a new interior set; black carpet, black seats, and a gray headliner.

I basically have two jobs right now; working at Apple by day, and being a car painter at night and on the weekends. I’ve been working really hard to get the primer all sanded smooth and just perfect for painting the color. I tried to do some “block sanding” (good idea, Mark!) by getting some foam sanding blocks and using those to hold 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper on and wet sanding till it was perfect. I think it helped, and I’m glad I did it, as it also let me get rid of some orange peel left by the primer. After I did it with 400, I did it again with 600. I also filled in a few small indentations I found, but in the end I missed a few small dimples that didn’t show up until after I hit it with color. I could have caught those by doing true block sanding by first spraying a light coat of a dark color over the primer and sanding until it was all off (the low spots being left dark, meaning they are low spots). I masked the top of the car off and sprayed the fenders and lower body all nice and metallic red.

\

I had some problems with the door looking striped when you looked at it just at a certain angle. I solved that by putting more coats on (4 or 5 I think). One side still has a little bit of a stripe, but it is hard to see it. I may paint one more coat on to get rid of it. I tried to take a picture of the problem, but it doesn’t show up. It just looks glassy smooth (and this side is perfectly glassy smooth — the finish turned out REALLY nice!).

The fenders have 3 coats on them. One has a little dimple at the top, but you’d have to look hard to see it.

It looks great so far.

Note to self: the primer goes on really thick and slightly orange peel’ish, no matter what I do. Sanding to 400 grit seems sufficient to get a good finish (I don’t think 600 was necessary), and I need to spray with a wide pattern to avoid stripes. The wide pattern is when the gun nozzle is slightly turned in from level; too far in, and the pattern is too “tight” and doesn’t fan out enough.