Paint

[GreenGSX]

Vinyl was our first choice for graphics. We've seen cars wrapped before and they look great. Plus its something we could have farmed out which given our limits for time would have been great. But, I have learned that I really don't understand the vinyl business. I had thought it would be a $500 job but it turns out I was off by a factor of 4x. From what I understand, in order to get the vinyl to conform to the curves of the car a high end 3M vinyl needed to be used. That vinyl comes in white so everything would have to be printed on it. Then it would have to be laminated and finally installed on the car. A full car wrap is $3000 all the estimates I got were a 2/3 wrap which is $2000. Not in our budget plus I was having troubles even finding somebody willing to do the job. Our last hope was paint.

Tuesday night I pulled the VR4 into the garage and started laying out the graphics using a photo of the rally car, a tape measure, and my eye. The stuff on the hood and front fenders was easy. The stripes on the side of the car were a royal pain.

Wednesday morning I got up early and finished the stripe layout, scuffed the car, and degreased it. I took me a few hours to finish masking the car and cleaning it again.

By 1pm I was mixing paint and shooting color on the car. I started with the silver stripe then green. After each color was painted it had to be masked off in order to shoot the next. Painting the red was a lot of fun. When I painted the Mitsubishi diamond star on the hood I knew it was going to be cool.

The last color and by far the biggest area to paint was the blue. The entire rear of the car is blue and two little stripes on the front fender are too.

Once the blue was on the car I removed all the tape so I could clear everything. That's when disaster struck. As I was pealing the stripe tape off the silver and green stripes on the passenger rear door the paint lifted leaving big white spots. Needless to say I was cussing my heart out knowing how much more work that would cause. The area had to be masked off again the the stripes sanded down. Then both the green and silver colors needed to be sprayed again. It was almost 8pm before I was ready to clear again.

This time the paint stayed on the car and I started laying out the clear. After a few coats I let it sit while I cleaned up the gun. Then I carefully pealed away the tape and masking paper to see what I had done.

Although its not a perfect paint job the colors and stripes really pop against the white and I think it looks killer. In about a week I will wet sand and rub the car out which should make it presentable.

Now we need to get some sponsor logos on the car!


One more thing,

I will never paint a car with stripes again...
I will never paint a car with stripes again...
I will never paint a car with stripes again...