Paint finish

The car has large sections of poor paint. In these areas, eg base of A pillar and top of wing/side of wing and doot top section on the driver's side, the paint is orange peel and whitish. Examination of the door-to-wing join shows this and it seems that there is decent paint underneath and the orange peel may actually be a poor quality over spray- the original finish is visible in the picture below against the door edge.

Close up of over-spray area note smooth paint finish lower centre left around door pillar and orange peel over-spray to the right.

I tried a combination of GRP restorer and T cut metallic to reduce the roughness.

Chalky orange peel area at base of A pillar and top of wing

 After rubbing there was some improvement but its still very poor and I suspect a more drastic method is probably needed.

After rubbing compound

The worst of the orange peel surprisingly came off as a white powder using  a sharp gasket scraper (V CAREFULLY)! Using T cut then improved matters but its still not reached "acceptable" yet. I now think this is poor quality overspray and may well be removeable if given a professional polish... Well I did check and the verdict was "No Way"! It seems a full respray is required and whilst I have to agree, I can't justify that cost so soon after the rebuild... anyway the resolution of my front bumper problem is still a long way off so bodywork is a dirty word with me at the moment!!

It seems difficult to get touch up paint... I need an aerosol spray and a touchup kit. The usual kit seems to be a Chipex but despite sending them the paintcode from the VIN plate (A35 silver) and the ICI number ( ICI P4217379), they couldn't match it. Autopaints in Brighton were more positive and I eventually got both from there. I'm very pleased with the colour match achieved.

As well as the whitish orange peel regions I also have some deep chips... well gouges really, and sadly despite my precautions there is a good chance that I am responsible for at least a few of these. Anyway I filled these with fine stopper (   ) and rubbed them flat with a sanding sponge.... * note added later... use a solid block. Sadly this did also remove the lacquer clear coat from the immediate area, but I am going to over spray with lacquer anyway which I hope will cover it. I will apply thin primer over the stopper followed by touch up which I will feather around with the thinner supplied.

Nasty gouges filled and smoothed- not great but who knows... Hole is for windscreen washer tubing P clip- missing since I had the car.

Returning to the exterior I did manage to get some aerosol A35 silver metallic and decided to check this out on the A pillar front windscreen border. This is a self contained part limited by 2 obvious joins in the GRP.

Pitted and poor quality overspray visible here. I rubbed it down with 380 grit paper on a sanding sponge support. I had to use a 240 grit briefly to remove the worst pitting and then ran over this area with 380 before finally rubbing the whole pillar section with 600.

After a clean and degrease I masked the area and sprayed using an acrylic primer (Hycote).

 I followed this with two coats of Lotus A35 metallic silver base coat and finally 2 coats of  clear lacquer

Overall I'm pleased with the effect and its a vast improvement on the pitted and blown paint that was there before. Its nowhere near as good as a proper respray but for the money it seems effective.

Feathering
Well so much for a nice self limited and defined area... sadly apart from the top half of the door, the rest of the affected paintwork merges seamlessly into areas of good finish. My attentions on those will make them worse so I need to merge the new paint into the old to obtain the best blending I can. Its necessary to understand at the outset that this is a bodge! Its not going to work 100% ...or even 80%, but hopefully it will look better than whats there at the moment. The trick is to avoid sharp spray lines and then belend the transition using T cut or similar cutting compound. I've done it before- never with any great success but  then eventually a respray will sort it out! I decided to try the feathering approach above the door where the initial sections are as affected as the A pillar, but the rears are perfect.
I rubbed down the affected area, stopping well short of where I want to make the transition, and de waxed the area thoroughly with meths- extending over and past the area of transition.
Next I masked the area. The trick here is to avoid sharp lines so use the masking tape as usual along the edges, but anywhere you need a fading transition, curl the tape and stick it on with the curl still upwards. The idea is that as you spray, the curl will increasingly shade the paintwork beneath giving a gentle fading transition of over-spray to no over-spray. Of course its essential that you don't try to spray deliberately under the curl, that would defeat the object, just spray over it as if it were an ordinary edge. This works best with wide masking tape but I only had 1"!

• Section above door sprayed as before. Note upward curl of tape to give fading transition.

Effect when tape removed.


The transition is visible- not so much colour change as texture- the new spray just isn't mirror smooth like the old- I'm not sure it ever can be from shake cans? Anyway I need to let it harden for a few days before cutting back.

I cut back using 1500 grade paper on a firm block. Sand wet until you get a smooth finish. This shows up as uniform glossy when wet and uniform mat when dry. If there are still glossy spots then keep sanding... However I found removing all would probably mean a respray as it would go through the finish elsewhere. Probably a case of better priming needed. Anyway, once its all smooth matt, rub with T cut metallic and polish off to restore shine. This vastly improved the finish. Sadly the paint transition is still visible but I think I can live with it. All in all this gave me the confidence to tackle the upper front wing.

However as I'm spraying outside, the wind (and occasional seed head) did become more significant on a wider flatter area and it was hard to get the paint smooth. I may need to flat back and give a second coat here. Luckily the flatting and T cut did help- not perfect but improved!

The contrast with the unretouched door is now extreme.

Pitting visible on door

I rubbed down the upper half of the door panel, masked and and primed it before spraying in basecoat. Unfortunately I ran out of paint and I suspect this area will need a second coat.

Panel after rubbing down

Window frame passenger side.

The passenger's side window frame has always been rusty in this car, although I am hoping that I have tackled this in time.

Rust on vertical window divider

the worst rust was in the window channel at the top, which seems to have actually penetrated though into the framework.

I rubbed the window down with 320 grit on a block and scraped loose rust out of the top channel.

Window frame rubbed down

I treated the rust with Jenolite- this is a thin watery liquid and will run down wherever water has penetrated. You have to  keep working it for around 20 mins and then wipe off and allow to dry. During this time rust is converted and bare metal acquires a bluish tinge.

The treated frame was masked up and sprayed in rust preventing zinc primer

The whole frame inside and out was then sprayed with silk finish black paint

Resprayed top frame gutter

Resprayed frame

Finally I infilled the penetrating rust with Purafix  waterproof stopping

This has left me with a vastly improved frame which will hopefully last. However masking was very tricky and I have got a fair bit of over-spray to remove!