Painting my MX5 MK2 matt black. What a nightmare eh?
We set aside two days... 4 days in and we're on the final stretch
The biggest problem we found is that it's been hard to ignore all the little things wrong with the car. I can imagine a garage has an easy time not touching anything that looks a little... suspect... but for me, once we got the car on the two post lift I was breaking everything I could!
"That break-line looks a little flimsy... if I caught on something like THIS!... yup, look, came right off!"
Until last night most of the work was cosmetic. Sanding out little blisters in the OEM paint, finding out the little blister was caused by a bigger patch of rust, finding out that rust was a hole right through the sill, taking a short 5 minute cry break, welding in some patches, crying a little more when you find out the next 2mm blister is the same thing...
Took the liberty of putting some underseal on the bottom of the car at the same time - because it hides all the bits that make me cry inside.
Aaaaaaanyway, here's some pics to make this thread a little less boring:
This was her day one:
This is what I did to her in the first couple of weeks - ROTA Cup deep dish wheels, wee eyelid things, chrome slapped on the wing mirrors, offset number plate. Nothing radical.
But anyway, those days are gone - I'd let her go a bit and after having to get the exhaust replaced (with a twin exhaust) - she needed some TLC.
So here's the first look under the car:
Rust on the front wings I had purposely let go because a year or two ago a painter said they'd just replace them anyway - so I never bothered trying to address it. The replacement was easy enough but ended up with wings with no holes for side markers... soo eh... having to fix that somehow
The three bits we sanded/ground back here started out as the same size blisters...
Welding like a boss:
Finished weld and the first layer of fibreglass:
Can you have too much filler??
Sanding to the rescue!
This is on the other side but the principle is the same - MX5's have a line in the sill where the stone guard goes up to, so we recreated that:
Checking my pics I'm annoyed I don't have a picture of the finished spot that required such as weld, but it was buttery smooth in the end and ended up looking as good as the other side (which was ground and filled, just not quite as big a whole)
For the paint, I'm using Plastidip.
It's meant to be much more forgiving that regular car paint and (with enough coats) creates a vynl kind of finish that can be peeled off. The more coats the merrier but we were going for 5.
For that, I got 10L (mixed 1:1 with 5L colour, 5L thinners)
All in, £80 for the paint, £25 for the spraying for my friend's compressor.
With everything taped off, it was time to start painting!
The first couple of coats go on very thin to create a base for the paint to attach to:
Building up the layers we start to see the matt finish I'm going for:
Side panel starting to match the wing (which is also obviously getting painted at the same time)
You'll notice here we covered the a-frame. Part of the reason for this was that we tried reaching over to it and notice we couldn't really do it without touching the car. In retrospect it might have made sense to do it first... but who wants to do the little bits first when you can just get stuck in! (this is probably going to turn out to be an awful idea...)
Oh my god... she's beautiful!
So yeah, for first timers we think it turned out well!
Still plenty of tidying up to do, we need to do the front pillars, tidy up an edge on the door - but the paint is so forgiving that it should be fine to do the whole panel and expect it to colour match the rest of the side of the car.
Anyway, bed time! Worked until midnight most night so need some sleep... oh wait... real work... ugggggh!
EDIT: Oh, I should also say that I got my wheels refurbed and powder coated (hit the curb one too many times)
But that was done profesionally:
We set aside two days... 4 days in and we're on the final stretch
The biggest problem we found is that it's been hard to ignore all the little things wrong with the car. I can imagine a garage has an easy time not touching anything that looks a little... suspect... but for me, once we got the car on the two post lift I was breaking everything I could!
"That break-line looks a little flimsy... if I caught on something like THIS!... yup, look, came right off!"
Until last night most of the work was cosmetic. Sanding out little blisters in the OEM paint, finding out the little blister was caused by a bigger patch of rust, finding out that rust was a hole right through the sill, taking a short 5 minute cry break, welding in some patches, crying a little more when you find out the next 2mm blister is the same thing...
Took the liberty of putting some underseal on the bottom of the car at the same time - because it hides all the bits that make me cry inside.
Aaaaaaanyway, here's some pics to make this thread a little less boring:
This was her day one:
This is what I did to her in the first couple of weeks - ROTA Cup deep dish wheels, wee eyelid things, chrome slapped on the wing mirrors, offset number plate. Nothing radical.
But anyway, those days are gone - I'd let her go a bit and after having to get the exhaust replaced (with a twin exhaust) - she needed some TLC.
So here's the first look under the car:
Rust on the front wings I had purposely let go because a year or two ago a painter said they'd just replace them anyway - so I never bothered trying to address it. The replacement was easy enough but ended up with wings with no holes for side markers... soo eh... having to fix that somehow
The three bits we sanded/ground back here started out as the same size blisters...
Welding like a boss:
Finished weld and the first layer of fibreglass:
Can you have too much filler??
Sanding to the rescue!
This is on the other side but the principle is the same - MX5's have a line in the sill where the stone guard goes up to, so we recreated that:
Checking my pics I'm annoyed I don't have a picture of the finished spot that required such as weld, but it was buttery smooth in the end and ended up looking as good as the other side (which was ground and filled, just not quite as big a whole)
For the paint, I'm using Plastidip.
It's meant to be much more forgiving that regular car paint and (with enough coats) creates a vynl kind of finish that can be peeled off. The more coats the merrier but we were going for 5.
For that, I got 10L (mixed 1:1 with 5L colour, 5L thinners)
All in, £80 for the paint, £25 for the spraying for my friend's compressor.
With everything taped off, it was time to start painting!
The first couple of coats go on very thin to create a base for the paint to attach to:
Building up the layers we start to see the matt finish I'm going for:
Side panel starting to match the wing (which is also obviously getting painted at the same time)
You'll notice here we covered the a-frame. Part of the reason for this was that we tried reaching over to it and notice we couldn't really do it without touching the car. In retrospect it might have made sense to do it first... but who wants to do the little bits first when you can just get stuck in! (this is probably going to turn out to be an awful idea...)
Oh my god... she's beautiful!
So yeah, for first timers we think it turned out well!
Still plenty of tidying up to do, we need to do the front pillars, tidy up an edge on the door - but the paint is so forgiving that it should be fine to do the whole panel and expect it to colour match the rest of the side of the car.
Anyway, bed time! Worked until midnight most night so need some sleep... oh wait... real work... ugggggh!
EDIT: Oh, I should also say that I got my wheels refurbed and powder coated (hit the curb one too many times)
But that was done profesionally:
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