Moving swifly on, next on the agenda is a dose of stonechip paint, a thick rubbery paint that dries with a texture. Its main purpose is to prevent stone chips breaking through paintwork to the metal underneath but it goes on with a texture that you can control with the thickness of the paint. This is what I'm interested in. Because I have replaced the sills, rear quarters, rear panel and heavily repaired the front quarters I want to lay on a 'distraction' line along the bottom of the car to hide any slight contour changes in my filler work or the new panels which will show up in flat gloss.
This is what I mean:
Basically this pillar is heavily repaired and I have filled the outer face smooth. It's under the flipfront and out of view most of the time but when I open it I don't want people going uuuugh when they see welding lines, so I have hidden them under the stonechip. You can still see them but it's not screaming in your face.
At the back of the sill you can't immediately see that the replacement sill isn't exactly the same shape as the original:
Once painted one colour and with a bit more primer the texture will mask that line and you won't notice it. Same at the back:
This is underneath the back panel so you won't see it at all, I guess I got bored and wanted to waste precious paint:
Finally while I had the mask out I doused the exhaust manifold wrapping in VHT (very high temperature) paint. I put enough on there to soak in well to give the wrap some added support and strength and hold the fibres down.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, meh
