Silver-Blue Track Car – $9 Paint Job

Last Sunday was unseasonably warm here in NC and the rain stopped, for the first day in a week. I had been doing Christmas duty with visiting family but everyone split on Sunday to visit friends. I had a shop day to myself! I had already started on a major weight loss program, which I’m not finished with yet. I had planned on painting the car in the spring, as the 3 year old orange paint job was getting pretty tatty. The track life is tough on paint jobs.

The previous job was done with regular Dupont 2K urethane paint. That stuff is getting really expensive, like $300 to $500 a gallon. This time I went for the budget job. Let me introduce: Rustoleum oil based enamel. $9 a quart. I bought 2 quarts just to make sure. And $18 of acetone to thin it with.

At 10 in the morning I started. Pulled the car out of the shop. Thorough wash down with Dawn detergent. One of the harder jobs was peeling off all the decals and advertising signage. Then I scuffed the entire area to be painted with 220 grit paper on a random orbital sander. Followed with a pass of 400 grit with water, i.e. wet sanding. Then another soapy wash, followed by a clean up pass with Dupont pre-prep, which removes sanding sludge. It was around 2 o’clock. The skies were getting cloudy again so I pulled the car back into the shop and raised it a few feet on my lift. My son and I spent about 2 hours masking. Newspaper is not recommended for a nice job. It throws off too much clag. But good enough for my $9 job. By 4 o’clock I was shooting paint, using my small touch up gun. The nozzle was just a tad small for enamel, even reduced with acetone. It was about the same as shooting from a rattle can. It took me well over an hour to shoot the car. Done by dinner time! One quart did the job. $9 in paint. Just don’t ask my wife about the compressor, the spray gun, the acetone, the lift, the shop

It is by no means a perfect job. The coverage is very good but there is a lot of orange peel, dust, and the occasional bug. Unlike urethane, enamel cannot be sanded and buffed after the paint is applied. But it will look very good from 10 feet away and that is good enough for me and my track car. Note: the orange hood in the photos is going to be replaced as part of my weight loss program.