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1962 356B Porsche Restoration Page 6!
Final straightening (hand sanding) & Paint!
A "mist coat" of red primer
was used over the heavy-build gray primer. Doing this helps detect
low spots. When hand-sanding the car with a flat block, low spots
(dents) remain red while the rest of the car sands to gray.
Then spot-putty can be used on the
low stops. You can see some pink spot puddy in the photos above.
I use water and a sponge to help keep the sandpaper clean.
THE CAR IS FINALLY TAPED AND READY!
AND....TA DA!
So there it is! Except all didn't
go smoothly. There were a lot of "dry" spots (spots that
didn't shine). Later I found out it was because the hardener the
paint store sold me was a fast-drying hardener for "spot repair".
There was no way I could have sprayed it wet enough to get a good
shine! Maddening.
So I had to use a scuff pad on my
finally-painted Porsche...I'm obviously not super happy about it.
It took 10 hrs to paint it the first time. When I painted the car
the first time I had the motor lid off of the car so I could paint
the underside of the motor lid and the engine compartment. I was
planning to paint the top of the motor lid when I painted the doors
and hood (which still are no where ready for paint). But since I
had to spray the whole car again I mounted the motor lid so I could
paint it with the car.
After I spent about 6 hrs getting
the car ready for paint again I started into spraying more color--this
time with the correct hardener. But after spraying the roof of the
car and the driver's side fender, I noticed the PAINT was CURDLING
in spots!
So then I stopped spraying and called
up Welle Auto for more advice. The owner, Ken Welle, drove out personally
to see the problem first hand. He concluded that the weak link in
my process had been the single-stage primer that I used after the
epoxy primer. This single stage primer (no hardener catalyst makes
it a single stage) was reacting to the thinner in the wet color
coat. SO! More work.
Obviously I had to sand off the
curdled paint, but then Mr. Welle suggested applying a TWO-stage
primer over everything. This two-stage primer would hopefully act
as a barrier between my new color coat and the single stage primer
that was under the first paint coat and sealer.
I had some fun while priming over
the color...I needed a good laugh.
 
Here's the car after the two-stage
primer. After spraying the "protective" two-stage primer
and had to sand the entire car yet again! Whew. All of this was
happening while TRYING To get paint on the car before winter took
hold of Minnesota! Daytime highs above 60 degrees were becoming
scare.
So finally the car is ready for
paint a THIRD TIME! And here it is.
VERY NICE. Now that's the kind of
shine I worked so hard to get.
Thanks for reading! Wave goodbye.
But wait...
More progress to come this spring. In the mean
time check out the rest of the Web site!
Do you have a photo you could put in our new
photo gallery?
....E-mail
Me....
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John Snell X 1999-2008, Vintage VW Cars LLC All Rights Reserved. |
Great Race 2008