Buy a can of filler-primer. Just regular automotive primer, it has high solids to fill surface textures. Apply coats until the can is gone, following drying time directions blahblah. Between that and several coats of gloss enamel you'll flow right over that texture.
Hint: never paint cold metal. Especially if you desire a glossy finish.
As it happens, the some of the primer I have on hand IS filler primer so that might've been what I would have used. Not a whole can so I'll need to see about maybe getting more. I had planned on waiting for a nice day in the temperature range specified by rattle cans - in this case above 70 degrees ambient. I hadn't realized that filler primer would conquer that much texture because when I bought it I was thinking about pin-holes in bondo and such.
One thing I can't remember from other folks doing this: Do you mask off the lettering you want to end up bare or do you paint it and scrape the paint off later with a razor? I think I've heard it both ways.[/quote]
I used to use vaseline.wipe some on the letters,paint, then wipe off
I used to use vaseline.wipe some on the letters,paint, then wipe off
Okay, I get where you're going with this but from my understanding (not experience mind you) I've been told that you have to be careful with where you put the vaseline because it can cause the edges to bleed. This would seem to be especially a problem with the lettering because there's not a lot space there and if it bleeds it's going to look pretty ragged. I'm planning to use vaseline on some of the holes I have no other way to mask.
An informal work day at bam-bam's turns out more wagons than some other gatherings! Here we have 8.75 wagons pictured with another 2 out of frame.
But on to my current project. I've been prepping my valve cover and airbox cover for paint. I've already posted pics of what it looks like stripped of paint. My original plan was to spray a coat of gloss paint on and let that be good enough. Then I got a closer look at the surface of the valve cover under the original wrinkle paint. It's textured and to get it smooth I would have had to do more work than I wanted; either grinding/polishing it to smooth or spray it with enough filler primer to get a smooth surface. So I decided to go another direction.
First coat.
Second coat.
Third coat.
After two hours.
And into the shed it goes to dry for a week.
After a week I decided to go ahead and pop it into the oven for an hour @ 200 degrees to cure the paint.
Okay, so that's wrinkle paint. As far a I can tell, black wrinkle is readily available, red wrinkle is a specialty item, and blue wrinkle has to be shipped directly from Japan. So I adapted.
This color is called "Old Ford Blue"... it looked about right.
First coat, light.
Second Coat, light.
Third coat, heavy, and back into the shed to dry for another week. After the week I'll probably need to bake it again.
Did a little work on the valve cover today and airbox cover. I started by popping them into the oven @ 200 degrees for an hour. Once they were cured (and cooled) I set about un-masking them. I learned a few things such as even 3M blue masking tape get sticky and brittle when you leave it on for two weeks and two trips through the oven for curing. Also, I think my vaseline masking dried up after the first time in the oven. So next time maybe I'll un-mask and re-mask for each coat.
Once I removed all of the tape I got out a scraper... okay, maybe it's a putty knife, whatever, and scraped the paint off of the areas to be left 'in the white'. This worked pretty well and I only dinged the paint I intended to keep once. You can see it here just to the left of the H. I should be able to touch that up fairly easily.
Then I got out my little Mouse orbital sander and slapped on a sheet of 220 grit paper and gave the areas to be bright a good sanding. This was gratifying in that it got the job done quite handily. The only problem might have been that since it's a orbital it left that funny snail trail pattern. You probably can't see that in this picture but it was there. While that will probably be fine for most of the spots I wanted the lettering to show that horizontal grain like stock.
So I left the sandpaper attached to the Mouse and with it switched off I used it as a sanding block and cut in a very slight horizontal grain. I'm not going to get supper OCD about the recessed areas like the one to the right of the H because I can't quite get in there with my Mouse and hand sanding is not my favorite thing. As has been previously noted this is strictly polish on something not known for holding a high-gloss finish, figuratively speaking.
For now, I'm going to leave the horizontal bar across the airbox cover painted. I don't have any insignia to go there to replicate or replace the factory sticker (this'd be a great spot for a HCW.com sticker) and if I come up with something later I can always scrape and sand it like I've done here.
Dude that looks really good.
Amazed how that turned out.
Thanks! It's not flawless but it is a good result. I was worried the color coat over top of the wrinkle would cake up or look messy but by actually following the package instructions it turned out well. Who'd've thunk?
I need to touch up a couple areas and then make sure I have the money for a new gasket before I install.
Today I stepped out into a beautiful November afternoon to do the touch-up on the valve cover. If the paint is going to take a week to dry then I might as well get it started, huh?
Here's the gouge I made with the scraper yesterday.
And here's the piece retouched. In the spirit of the package instructions I dabbed on three coats with a q-tip. Basically spray the q-tip, dab the gouge. The new paint here is a little "bright" or shiny but I'm fairly sure it'll dry down. There was one other spot that didn't get wrinkle painted OR blue painted because it's the bottom surface of the little arm doo-dad that sticks out to the rear the the vc. I still forgot to get pictures! So, I de-greased it and shot it blue. Three coats, good enough!
While I was waiting between coats I decided to take the airbox cover out into the sunlight for a good picture, something I had forgotten to do yesterday. As I was taking this nice clear shot in the sunlight when it occurred to me that for all intents and purposes that the airbox cover is finished.
Here are the two side by side; a little before and after.
And here it is installed. It would look great with that bar in the white but for now at least I'm leaving it painted.
Just for giggles I laid the blue one on top of the current valve cover to get an idea of how it will look installed. Pretty darn good to me! If I'd had the stuff need to install it I'd've bolted it on today. The paint would probably dry and cure in the engine bay, right? I guess I can wait. :?
The flash makes it look overly bright in the engine bay but this one picture where I was further away and out from under the hood didn't trip the auto-flash and it gives the best representation of how the color actually appears in the engine bay.
nice.
You only have 152k more to go before you get in the leagues of my rex.
or 60k to get there with the wagon but that is on second engine.
Actually there's no good way of tracking real miles on this car; I know the motor's been replaced (hence the silver painted valve cover) and the instrument cluster is from a car with a manual
transmission (no PRNDL).
Been awhile, but holy crap thats an awesome sight with all those wagons, also GREAT job on the valve cover looks good. Man did you ever finish the pods? lol
Been awhile, but holy crap thats an awesome sight with all those wagons, also GREAT job on the valve cover looks good. Man did you ever finish the pods? lol
Thanks! I had seen another project online that had done color over wrinkle paint so I knew it could work. I just had to make myself follow the package instructions! I might've chosen a flat or satin finish paint if I'd had more choice but what I got looks pretty good. No, I haven't got the pods finished yet, sorry. :oops: I hope to do so in the near future, though. I want to get the pigtails at the same time I go for another Aerostar rack. I think this time I'll carry a 6-foot step ladder onto the yard if they'll let me. The last time it was kind of iffy getting up and down. If the windows hadn't already been taken out of the van i would've had to break them out just to have somewhere to stand in order to reach the roof. in the meantime I'm just trying to sort out projects for which I already have most or all of the supplies needed.
I've got most of what I need to repaint all of the bumpers and plastic trim and skirts. I've as much bumper coat as others have recommended I'll just need some adhesion promoter. That and enough warm weather to get through it. I'm not sure I'll get enough warm days when I can work on it before the spring. I might be able to hit the window trim in an afternoon, though.
Here we have picture from our special correspondent inside the secure compound at bamtech laboratories. The bam cam shows the newly painted valve cover and the airbox cover in place. Sincere thanks go to our special correspondent, bam-bam!
Note the chrome acorn nuts on ALL of the valve cover fasteners, and the sunvisor screw mod on the throttle body cover...
Sounds awesome! I did notice some shiny bits on the v/c but couldn't squint hard enough to tell what I thought I saw. Nor sure what you mean on the throttle body cover. Even more squinty than the v/c. Got any better pics?
LOL, Looks good, what all did you mix to get it blue?
The blue is not a mix, it's just Duplicolor "Old Ford Blue" over regular black wrinkle paint. You just have to follow all the directions for each layer of paint and make it's dry and cured. I took the extra step and baked each coat for an hour at 200 degrees.
Heck, my blue paint even goes pretty well with my sweet JDM timing belt cover!
These pics show what the engine bay looks like. bam-bam really put it over the top! He added the finishing touches on the valve cover and throttle body cover with the bright hardware and fasteners. He also cut the paint off of the bar on the face of the throttle body cover which I have to admit does look more factory. I hadn't ruled it out but hadn't got around to doing it yet partially through my impatience to get it bolted on the car, lol. And laziness. Never underestimate the laziness factor!
Comments
And Yoda isn't blue anyhow.
Well hell I don't care about his color.
It would be different.
That is what I say to Dodge guys.
There is a certain point when that turd will smear.
I used to use vaseline.wipe some on the letters,paint, then wipe off
An informal work day at bam-bam's turns out more wagons than some other gatherings! Here we have 8.75 wagons pictured with another 2 out of frame.
But on to my current project. I've been prepping my valve cover and airbox cover for paint. I've already posted pics of what it looks like stripped of paint. My original plan was to spray a coat of gloss paint on and let that be good enough. Then I got a closer look at the surface of the valve cover under the original wrinkle paint. It's textured and to get it smooth I would have had to do more work than I wanted; either grinding/polishing it to smooth or spray it with enough filler primer to get a smooth surface. So I decided to go another direction.
First coat.
Second coat.
Third coat.
After two hours.
And into the shed it goes to dry for a week.
After a week I decided to go ahead and pop it into the oven for an hour @ 200 degrees to cure the paint.
Okay, so that's wrinkle paint. As far a I can tell, black wrinkle is readily available, red wrinkle is a specialty item, and blue wrinkle has to be shipped directly from Japan. So I adapted.
This color is called "Old Ford Blue"... it looked about right.
First coat, light.
Second Coat, light.
Third coat, heavy, and back into the shed to dry for another week. After the week I'll probably need to bake it again.
Yep there were a few wagons on Saturday.
Once I removed all of the tape I got out a scraper... okay, maybe it's a putty knife, whatever, and scraped the paint off of the areas to be left 'in the white'. This worked pretty well and I only dinged the paint I intended to keep once. You can see it here just to the left of the H. I should be able to touch that up fairly easily.
Then I got out my little Mouse orbital sander and slapped on a sheet of 220 grit paper and gave the areas to be bright a good sanding. This was gratifying in that it got the job done quite handily. The only problem might have been that since it's a orbital it left that funny snail trail pattern. You probably can't see that in this picture but it was there. While that will probably be fine for most of the spots I wanted the lettering to show that horizontal grain like stock.
So I left the sandpaper attached to the Mouse and with it switched off I used it as a sanding block and cut in a very slight horizontal grain. I'm not going to get supper OCD about the recessed areas like the one to the right of the H because I can't quite get in there with my Mouse and hand sanding is not my favorite thing. As has been previously noted this is strictly polish on something not known for holding a high-gloss finish, figuratively speaking.
For now, I'm going to leave the horizontal bar across the airbox cover painted. I don't have any insignia to go there to replicate or replace the factory sticker (this'd be a great spot for a HCW.com sticker) and if I come up with something later I can always scrape and sand it like I've done here.
Amazed how that turned out.
I need to touch up a couple areas and then make sure I have the money for a new gasket before I install.
Here's the gouge I made with the scraper yesterday.
And here's the piece retouched. In the spirit of the package instructions I dabbed on three coats with a q-tip. Basically spray the q-tip, dab the gouge. The new paint here is a little "bright" or shiny but I'm fairly sure it'll dry down. There was one other spot that didn't get wrinkle painted OR blue painted because it's the bottom surface of the little arm doo-dad that sticks out to the rear the the vc. I still forgot to get pictures! So, I de-greased it and shot it blue. Three coats, good enough!
While I was waiting between coats I decided to take the airbox cover out into the sunlight for a good picture, something I had forgotten to do yesterday. As I was taking this nice clear shot in the sunlight when it occurred to me that for all intents and purposes that the airbox cover is finished.
Here are the two side by side; a little before and after.
And here it is installed. It would look great with that bar in the white but for now at least I'm leaving it painted.
Just for giggles I laid the blue one on top of the current valve cover to get an idea of how it will look installed. Pretty darn good to me! If I'd had the stuff need to install it I'd've bolted it on today. The paint would probably dry and cure in the engine bay, right? I guess I can wait. :?
The flash makes it look overly bright in the engine bay but this one picture where I was further away and out from under the hood didn't trip the auto-flash and it gives the best representation of how the color actually appears in the engine bay.
Day before yesterday on the way home from work she rolled up 200,000 miles! I pulled off the road about half a mile from the house to snap this shot.
You only have 152k more to go before you get in the leagues of my rex.
or 60k to get there with the wagon but that is on second engine.
transmission (no PRNDL).
I've got most of what I need to repaint all of the bumpers and plastic trim and skirts. I've as much bumper coat as others have recommended I'll just need some adhesion promoter. That and enough warm weather to get through it. I'm not sure I'll get enough warm days when I can work on it before the spring. I might be able to hit the window trim in an afternoon, though.
Here we have picture from our special correspondent inside the secure compound at bamtech laboratories. The bam cam shows the newly painted valve cover and the airbox cover in place. Sincere thanks go to our special correspondent, bam-bam!
The way he cleans stuff up.
Happy Turkey day to bam and family.
Heck, my blue paint even goes pretty well with my sweet JDM timing belt cover!
These pics show what the engine bay looks like. bam-bam really put it over the top! He added the finishing touches on the valve cover and throttle body cover with the bright hardware and fasteners. He also cut the paint off of the bar on the face of the throttle body cover which I have to admit does look more factory. I hadn't ruled it out but hadn't got around to doing it yet partially through my impatience to get it bolted on the car, lol. And laziness. Never underestimate the laziness factor!
I was at pap today and forgot to ask Bam did you need anything.
We raped a wagon out there. Wanted to get the hood but did not have space for it.