Not much of an update for a while but there's been plenty going on at cheese towers....
Some less rusty rear bumper metalwork arrived and needed hitting with the wire brush before a hefty coating of epoxy primer.
One of the corner sections was bent and rusty, typically my original one was also rusted but I could make a decent one by joining the best bits of each one
The van has been getting a lot of attention recently, mostly because it was mid-prep for paint and looked a mess, spent a week or so looking like this
Thursday I had a kid free day to crack on with the paint, I was hoping against odds for some vaguely decent weather....
Thursday dawned clear and sunny and promptly clouded over during breakfast.
Regardless I decided to crack on and continued flatting the roof and tidying a few bits, it took much longer than expected.
I bargained on a hour to mask up and it took nearer two.
I mixed up a load of two pack and fired up the compressor and put a small amount in my favourite gun but had my doubts as when I last checked it had something up with the fan pattern. Hoping that was just an issue with pressure or viscosity - but no, he fan was heavy on one side and nothing on the other.
I swapped to my new cheapo primer gun and carried on painting after about 20 minutes I noticed that the pressure was dropping and the compressor was not recharging.
I had to stop and check the compressor, eventually finding a duff contact in the pressure switch and just bridging it out.
By now there was an ominous grey cloud passing by, aware of the time constraints I crossed my fingers and continued to paint.
Ten minutes later it started to rain, not a lot but big rain drops. The shower passed but not before making a mess of the front panel, roof and passenger side.
I carried on painting on the drivers side and on the lower bits of panels.
The raindrops dried and I continued to whack more paint on, there was a fair bit of dust and now the flies had arrived
I carried on painting until I had a decent coat all over, with extra on the rain marked panels with a view to being ale to flat it out.
With the light going and temp dropping the van looked like this.
Not bad, fair bit or orange peel and a bit blotchy - I left it to dry.
This morning I went out to take a look - not good, it had dried streaky and some areas had bloomed badly. There were a few whitey patches and the front panel was almost all a light grey colour.
And the masking tape had let go and a few sections were flapping about - I pressed them back down and hope they stayed.
Now for a favourite trick of mine, load the gun with 25% satin black celly and celly 75% thinners. A light dustin all over and the paint just softens and dries uniform and matt almost like a black cast iron in texture and colour. The results were good and the bloom was all gone. Yay!
I could now un mask and refit the bits....
Well happy with that, and my youngest summed it up with "AWESOME!"
Where should that number plate go? Central as above or offset to the right?
The tailgate has the reflector removed
But it'll be going back on, after a bit of carbon film work
Retro rides tickets turned up today, wheels still left to paint - looks like the plan is coming together.
