Video Transcript
Hi guys, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate. We're getting ready for paint—see how it turns out.
What are you doing, Nathan? Sanding. Why? Because I don't want the car to be rough when we paint it. Oh, fair enough. All right, it's a good plan.
Now that we have primer on the car, it's a lot easier to go through and find our high spots and low spots. It's just much easier when the car is one color instead of like five different colors.
The bulk of our bodywork is done. We're just finding some small sanding scratches we missed, a couple of small low spots we missed. We'll come back in, give those a quick coat of some glazing putty, and then another couple of coats of primer, one more light sanding, and then we'll be spraying some paint.
We're just dry sanding with 320-grit sandpaper. Wet sanding is nice if you have proper drainage and cleaning and all that stuff, but if I was to do it here, I’d have a great stripe of primer running down my street. I don't want that. We're going to keep on with this, and we'll bring you along for the next few steps before paint.
All right, it is Friday, February 21st. It's 5:00. We have our body sanded down to 320 grit. Yep.
So everything's sanded down. We found a couple of spots that you can't see, but there's a low spot. I can feel a low spot. You can kind of see, kind of feel. So we're going to use some glazing putty—only the fanciest from Flowable Glaze. We're just going to use that to go through and fill out those couple last small spots, and then, Nathan, we sand and primer and then more sanding and then paint. There we go. So hopefully, by maybe this time tomorrow, this bug will be orange.
Hopefully. Hopefully. We'll see. But that's the plan, 'cause then we might have a chance to go with Kyle.
This is like gravy—almost slightly runnier than toothpaste. Yeah, say about 2% of the content since we got so much of the stuff. That’s that. Let me see how well I can do on the car.
Okay, while the glazing putty is setting—it's actually set by now—but I just decided to start working on this front bulkhead. I went through and punched in a whole bunch of holes, and once everything's spot welded in place across left and right, this will be solidified in the front end.
Back underneath, I welded in a brace right there to give some more structure for our front pieces. Those will be welded along the sides to hold everything tight—just a couple of spot welds. But now this whole front end is much more solid.
Something stinky. Something stinky? It's called welding, buddy.
But we got a bulkhead mostly welded in. Now it's time for sanding. I just want to get that tacked in place so we can work on that. This should be pretty strong 'cause as soon as that's bolted into the beam, that'll hold that. Gonna be, like, solid. Yeah, not bad at all, huh? Mhm. All right, let's get to sanding, buddy.
All right, it is Saturday, the 22nd. We got some self-etching primer on the car last night. We're just wiping down the body right now. Nate's got a tack rag to get any dust off of here before we go through and spray as much primer as we have left—which isn't much—just to get a nice even coat on the body. Then we'll knock that down with some 400-grit sandpaper, and then, hopefully, we'll be spraying some paint later today.
Now that the car has been shot in primer and we're out of primer, from here forward, we're going to get undercoating—paintable undercoating—since we're going to paint this section orange. And we're painting this orange right now as well—get it all done at once.
Yeah, so we've got paint mixed and catalyzing. The car is ready for paint. And yes, I am just painting this on the side of the house. I’ve got a tarp down to keep my rocks from getting too orange. Luckily, they're just rocks. We've got our undercoating. Honestly, the only part I really care about getting orange is right here, but I'll probably end up spraying this whole quarter—not into the wheel well. I've never painted a car before, so we're going to see how this goes.
At this point, wax and grease remover over the whole car, get it all cleaned up, any oils or whatnot from our hands off the car. Tack cloth it, make sure there's no dust. Then I'm going to open the doors, I'm going to start inside the doors, get inside the door sprayed, underneath the dash. Then I'm probably going to come out and try and get the roof and the front cowl. Probably I'll do it at the same time as I do the inside—I'll probably come from there into there into the dash.
One thing I really don't know how people do, as far as painters, is how you paint inside the rear vents. We'll see how this goes. It's probably not going to come out great. We'll see how this goes.
So we've got some proper respirators because we don't want to be cooked—'cause we don't want to be dead. Our mixed-up paint—8 oz of paint, a cap full of hardener, and about 8 oz of acetone. So 1:1 to 1/32, basically, is kind of the ratio. This has been sitting about 30 minutes. Pour that through a strainer into our cup. And at this point, whatever the car is, it's going to be orange.
Finally. I don't know how well you guys can hear me with this respirator on, but yeah, it's been a long time coming.
All right, it might not be perfect, but it's going to be orange.
That's coat one. Basically just a tack coat—a little heavier in some areas, a little lighter in others. But all in all, she's pretty much orange.
That's four cups. That's all I got mixed up for now. So we're going to let this tack off and I'll come back. I got to get that side with the next batch, but we'll get there.
Oh, here's a bug. There's a bug. And it's orange. That's awesome looking.
Wow. My car is orange.
Is it as good as I'd like it to be? No, but it is orange.
I'm going to try maybe lowering the air pressure a little bit and increasing the volume—hopefully try to get more paint to lay on. I don't know—this is the first time I've ever painted a Bug. But it's orange.
So the bug is orange. Very, very, very, very orange.
Yeah. We're going to let this cure for a little bit. It's actually not too bad. It's the nice part about adding that hardener—magic hardener—to this Rustoleum paint. It cures and it stacks up really quick, and it actually dries hard. So we can actually come back and wet sand this thing if we wanted to wet sand and polish. We have one run right here on the other side, so I have to do that side. Maybe after it's assembled, we'll go through and we'll just do some of the bigger areas. But at the end of the day, it's just a Baja Bug. And at least it's a one-color Baja Bug now.
Yeah, not blue and white, rust and gray, and other random colors.
Well, I learned a lot. Yeah, I learned that this paint wants to be extra heavy when it's being sprayed. I was shooting it too light, and it looks like it on the finish.
It's not perfect. Yeah. But it's orange. It's very orange. And at least it's all one color.
Is it going to be a perfectly flat mirror finish? No. It's a good ten-footer. It's all one color, and it's going to be relatively durable. It's going to be easy to touch up, and I can't wait to get it on that chassis.
We got the chassis sitting over there, and it's so tempting.
Now we have to go back and finish all up finish up the under coating and all the black paint because once we get on the chassis it's going to be really hard to do. Yeah, so once this is all cured, we can go through and mask it off. I think we'll paint the bottom rail here.
Well actually actually kind of like it being orange just in case you know when you put the bar in. You like it? Yeah I think it looks okay. All right well let do a hard tape line right here or something rather. And same thing back here. So we can get all the bottom sides of this painted and then this can go on the chassis, and we can get to work on the front end. Mhm.
And the rear fenders. Yep. And we can get those painted. But that's for another day. Possibly. We might start on that tomorrow after we go out and hang out with Kyle and his new 1216 car.
How was that Nate? Awesome. You approve? Yeah. All right.
So with that, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate. Thank you for watching, and life’s full of good people. If you can't find one, be one. Later, guys.