Painting the Comet

 

Here are a few pictures that outline what I did to paint the Comet.  This outline is trimmed down considerably because my actual effort went around in circles as I made many many mistakes….so this is the “got it done the first time” outline.

 

I got most of my help from the guys at Autobodystore.com and at the SPI websites.   I bought my painting supplies from the Autobody store and my paints from SPI, except for the OMNI base coat which I got from a local PPG distributor.

 

Here is the Comet the day I drove / towed it home….

 

 

Below is the Comet after I used my grinder with a wire brush to remove most of the paint…

 

 

Here is an example of the bondo that was beneath the paint…Under the Body Work tab on the main menu you can see many of the other areas I needed to work…

 

 

Here are the doors when I got them back from the media blasters….lots of bondo on the driver side door…

 

 

Here is a close up of what I found under the bondo on the door..

 

 

I filled several of the holes in the engine bay and performed as much body work as I could on all the rusted through areas…

 

 

After I did all the body work, I sprayed the entire Comet with epoxy primer to seal the metal from future rusting.   If I were to do this again, I would spray everything first and then perform the body work…

 

 

After spraying on the black epoxy primer, I saw all kinds of areas where my initial body work needed more effort.    After that I then sprayed the entire Comet with PPG K-36 high build Urethane primer.  Again if I were to do this again, I would skip this layer or primer and spray on SPI Polyurethane high build primer right after the epoxy primer.

 

 

Here is the deck-lid and fender with the Urethane primer during the sanding/blocking process…

 

 

I didn’t do any filling or smoothing on the underside of the hood…

 

 

After I did more body work smoothing over weld seams and leveling the metal, I sprayed on my SPI Polyurethane high build primer…

 

 

Here it is after some sanding/blocking…and more body/filler work…

 

 

Here’s the hood after some more sanding/blocking…

 

 

To prepare my garage for painting, I hung plastic sheets around the perimeter and installed these box fans on the door to the back-yard using furnace filters…

 

 

I installed hooks all over the garage to hand my panels from…

 

 

Here are the doors and deck-lid after sanding down the epoxy primer…

 

 

I then took all the panels and sprayed two more coats of SPI epoxy primer to act as a sealer coat so the base will be sprayed on an even colored surface…

 

 

Same with the doors…

 

 

…and fenders…

 

 

…and deck-lid

 

 

Here are the first few coats of my Base coat.  I color matched this paint from a can of spray paint I found and one gallon of PPG Omni cost me under $100.

 

 

I found that my sanding was less than perfect and I had to apply  4 coats to fill in the scratches.   Next time I’ll sand better the first time….

 

 

…and here are the fenders…

 

 

I then sprayed the clear coat using SPI Universal clear coat.  I applied about 5 coats total during this entire process….

 

 

..the doors…

 

 

…the deck-lid after two coats…

 

 

…the doors….I had set my spray gun according to directions I found at the SPI forum and it really worked for me as far as minimizing orange peel and drips…

 

 

I painted the inside of the doors another color and I even painted over what is in the picture with a darker gray later on…

 

 

When I sprayed on my third coat of clear on the deck-lid, you can see I went too slow and got a bunch of drips that required me to sand down the clear and re-apply…

 

 

I sprayed my hood black and used a flattening agent.  It wasn’t flat enough for me so I ended up repainting with Hot Rod Flatz from CustomShop…

 

 

Here’s the deck-lid being sanded down to remove all the clear coat drips…

 

 

After I got all the panels painted, I moved the main chassis into the garage.  In this picture, I sanded down a previous coat of epoxy primer…

 

 

…and here is my sealer coat of SPI Epoxy primer…

 

 

…the engine bay…

 

 

…another engine bay picture…you can see all the un-needed holes have been welded shut…

 

 

I taped off the dash since that was going to be a dark grey instead of the shape of blue (Chevy Blue) I selected…

 

 

Same with the engine bay…

 

 

Here is the first few coats of base coat…

 

 

…you can see the darker grey color I painted the engine bay with…

 

 

…and the dash…in this picture, I have one coat of clear sprayed on…

 

 

Clear coat applied to the base coat…

 

 

Nice reflection of the clear coat…it went on fairly smooth without any orange peel…

 

 

 

 

Here is the hood with the Hot Rod Flatz paint.  It has the flat black look I was looking for…

 

 

The color sanding process is incredible.  I took the dried clear coat and sanded with 1000 grit wet on a sanding block to remove the orange peel, bigger drips, and gubbers in the paint.  Then I used 3M finishing film 1500 grit dry disks on an AirVantage random orbital sander to remove any 1000 grit sanding lines.…

 

 

I then hit the surface with 3M Trizact 3000 grit disks wet on the AirVantage…

 

 

Followed by Mirka Abralon 4000 grit disks wet on the Airvantage……

 

 

…and finally with my buffer using the Sure Finish product…

 

 

Here is the same process on the area above the deck-lid…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the dash and cowl after color sanding as well…

 

 

…and finally the entire Comet one year after applying the final layers of color coats…   

 

 

 

 

 

This is after the buffing process.  I still haven’t used the polishing wheel on the paint….I’ll do that later when everything is all put together….