Week #114

Now that the car is back up in the air it's time to get the under side painted.  Before even thinking about spraying any wet paint particles into the air I have to mask the entire car leaving only the under side exposed.  It was recommended to get a roll of that thin plastic mask that body shops are using these days to mask large areas... this was going to be about as large of an area as you could get.

I have gone back and forth with what I would do with the under side.  I had decided to go with the factory look... factory colored "primer" with over spray from the sides and front to mimic the original process.  This would not only look cool but would be much easier for me to handle, meaning I wouldn't need a lot of skill to pull it off.

The masking took be two or three evenings and a lot of tape to get done.  There was some planning involved up near the engine compartment as to where I thought the good paint would end and the "over spray" would begin.  After staring at it for a while I made the taping choices and got it done.  My only setback was the fact that I had overlooked the "Paint This Side" note on the plastic on the main sheet that covered the bulk of the car and had taped it down up side down.  I called Tim the body man to see if this was really a problem.  He told me that the paint does not stick to the "wrong" side of the plastic and that it can bead up, blow off and creates a huge mess on a full fledged paint job.  Just to be safe I ran another short width of plastic, "Paint This Side" up, along the rocker panels.

Not much point in going with a factory look if you have no clue as to what color the factory under body primer was.  I had seen a mix for sale years ago that was supposed to be the correct color.  Unfortunately the outfit that carried the mix stopped selling it.  I made a few calls and learned that the correct mix was mentioned in an article in Mopar Muscle Magazine in the late '90s.  Fortunately for me I don't think I have ever thrown away any issue of any Mopar magazine I have ever owned.  I found the boxes that held most of the issues from that time and started looking.  My search no only netted me the information I was looking for but I found several detailed articles on under side, suspension, engine and rear end concours detailing.  I will be referring to these sources regularly.

Anyhoo, the correct mix called for in the article was 7 parts PPG's DP-40(grey) to 1 part DP-90(black).  This mixture created a slightly darker than normal grey color. The article went on to say that this was correct for the particular car they were working on ('70 A body) and that one should visually match your car... yea, right.  Since my factory under body coatings were long gone I will go with what was right for article... close enough. A trip to the paint store secured me the epoxy primers I needed along with a quart of B5 acrylic enamel for the color portion of the job.

The epoxy primer portion of job went without a hitch.  I really like using my HVLP gun.  It's real easy to adjust with primers and the like being the easiest to apply.  Even though the tech sheet for the paint says it can be top coated after 30 minutes, I kinda ran out of time and held off on painting the color until the next day. The next day came quickly and things went great.  The color mixed quickly and sprayed with out incident.

All in all I was very happy with the way it came out... I was that much closer to having the car off the rotisserie for the last time.  However, I still wanted to install the fuel and brake lines, gas tank and the coat the wheel wells with a correct appearing undercoat while the under side was still accessible.  If all goes as planned, these things will be done within the next 2 weeks.