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Thursday, July 26, 2012

Lancer washover - budget mode

Everyone claims that after all the prep work - the painting part is going to be easy! Based on my experience (painting voxy and max) - painting is a bliss compared to prep work .. so I assumed that it will be the same for my lancer.. Boy was I wrong! :)


As I mentioned at the start of this project - I'm on a tight budget! As you can see - I only bought a couple of liters of cheap acrylic paint -primer, metallic and top coat since they are almost 1/3 the price of urethanes (Anzahl). Fortunately, I still have some leftover thinner so I was able to save some money there :)


Since I was not able to clean my "mixing spoon" - (watch the spoon in action here) - I had to be resourceful. I was able to find a broken hanger and used that for mixing :). Together with some old coke bottles - I'm all set!


Spraying on the primer is easy. Just spray away!


But keep in mind that several thin coats is better than 1 heavy coat (no drips and the paint dries better).


It's never good to rush things - the primer dries very quickly so spraying several light coats won't take too much time.


I make it a practice to sand down after every major coat - primer, base, top - For this project I used 800 grit sand paper to cut on costs (If my memory serves me right - I used varying grits for Voxy) Time to lay on the base coat.


See the improvement on the door - no more "map-like" patches.


The skirt looks great too! :)


Just when I thought everything was smooth sailing - I had problems painting the hood with metallic silver! 


I was not able to figure out what went wrong - why I kept on getting uneven tones/lines.


I tried adjusting my spray gun, became very mindful of my gun distance and my paint/thinner ratio. But I kept on getting those d@mn lines.


Out of frustration - I sanded away the base coat and applied another coat. I made sure it was as thin as can be and was mindful of all the tips and lessons I've read.


Suprisingly - with each coat - the hood began to look better.


and better!


This is good enough for me :) I had to stop painting here since I was afraid I might run out of paint - I don't want to buy more :) NOTE: If you know what caused the "lines" - kindly instruct me - I'll be grateful.


I thought that after my issues with the hood - everything was going to be okay - but lo and behold - I found out that painting just half the roof was not a good idea.


There were places where I was not able to feather in the paint :( As you can see - the tape left marks separating the newly painted area and the original paint. Since it looks horrible I have no choice but to paint the other half as well.


Had to sand down the roof a little to even it out.


Problem solved :)

RUNNING COST:
Paint - approx. 600 pesos
Sandpaper and Misc - 50 pesos

Lancer restoration to be continued...

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