mx5cartalk.com

This is just a little project I've got going at the moment.

The car is a one-owner 1991 Mazda 121 bubble. It's low Ks and fully serviced. It drives pretty much like a new car but ...



It's barely been dríven in the past 10 years. The owner's sight impairment progressed and the car ended up parked under a scribbly gum in the street, getting used just a few times a year and never washed.

We've taken it on loan for a short while. At the end of the loan it's being gifted to a 17 year old who's had a faced a few challenges in her life. She has been getting driving lessons in this car and she's doing very well but it's basically way too much of an embarassment to let her drive it into the school carpark with something as trashy as this. We're going to fix that.

The plan is a retro Kei car look using brushes, rollers and killrust.

Before we even got started we had a small issue with wheels. The spare was just a little dodgy:

and the rest of the wheels weren't far behind. I drove it from Sydney down to the Sth Coast and back on the old steelies fitted with Michelin Energy XMS tyres which are without doubt the worst tyres ever devised by man. It was simply horrible to drive.

A free set of daisies coutesy of mk on this forum and the car's ride and handling was transformed.

Once back at home we took out a few bucketfuls of compost from the air box and then got started on the paint.

It was down to the metal on a lot of the bonnet and down to the primer on all the roof and the top of the boot.

All the peeling clear coat was scraped off and then dry sanded to a feather edge with 180 adalox. Then the whole car got a rub back with 400 wet.





Cleaning, dry sand with orbital sander and wet sand by hand took about 3 hours.

At that stage we finally settled the colour scheme. It would be based on the mighty Nissan Figaro.



It's a real shame we don't have Kei cars here. There are beautiful little roadsters all over Tokyo.

Since every panel had parking dents we decided to forget about any panelbeating or anything like that. It was just going to be pretty colour over whatever was there. Thanks to Mazda gal dipping the whole car there was absolutely no rust, except of course the wheels.

Primed with Killrust Heavy Duty Primer with a 4" short nap roller.



It took about an hour to mask it and then 45 minutes to paint the whole car. I wouldn't use short nap again, as the paint gets sticky pieces of lint rip off it and stick to the body. Otherwise the 4' roller is amazing for getting in and around everything. The level of effort is about the same as spraying except you don't have mixing, fumes, blockages, compressor noise, etc, etc. It's quite peaceful. Coverage and quality of finish is pretty comparable to a first or second sprayed prime coat. I'm getting to like this. FInish is all pretty flat, just a few shallow brush marks around the fiddly bits and barely perceptable orange peel on some of the inside curves.

Masking is dead easy too when you don't need to worry about overspray.

Primer rubbed back with 400 wet by hand again. 45 minutes then 30 minutes re-masking.



Smooth as a baby's bum.

looking forward to seeing the end result

Bill of materials:
Consumables
1 1L Killrust Heavy Duty Primer
3 1L Killrust White Gloss Epoxy Enamel
Assorted rolls of masking tape (as it turns out, 12mm is as wide as you need because the little rolller is so accurate)
6 sheets of 400 wet/dry
4 sheets of 600 wet/dry
2 sheets of 180 adalox
Mineral turps
Metho
CT18 detergent
Paint prep solvent
1 pack of 12 high density foam 4" paint rollers
Cling wrap
3M Organic Vapour A1 breather cartridges

Tools
Orbital sander
Very sharp scraper
4" paint roller
2 little paint roller trays
Scalpel blade
3M dual canister mask

It felt a bit odd going to a hardware store to buy white paint and select colours from the Dulux pastels collection. At least if she scrape the car all she'll have to do is visit her local Mitre 10 and ask a painter to brush it on.

All up we're looking at about $150 plus 10-20 hours labour.

First colour coat is now on. Thinned about 10% with turps. 99% of it rolled on with brushes used only in a few really tight spots under the mirrors and betrween the bars and the fenders.



This took a bit over an hour. Coverage, finish and gloss levels are all a lot better than I expected for a first coat. The paint takes forever to dry though at this time of year, so keeping the layer thin enough to avoid runs is tricky.

I think it's going to be girly enough.

If I'd known you were doing this I could have given you a 4 litre can of that colour !

Looks good though, the roller method does a decent job if you're up for the hours of sanding afterwards.

Thanks, it's not going to be a concours shine though. I've read the blogs by people who put down 10 or 15 coats with sanding after each coat to get a mirror finish. I think this car will get just 3 base coats of colour, then a single wet sand followed by 1 or 2 thin finish coats. Hopefully I'm only looking at another hour max of sanding.

Awesome job...! I learn something new everyday..!

awesome.

This is simply amazing and well done for doing this for the young girl. Does she know your doing this or is it a surprise?

Remarkably good finish - well done Phil !

What a great job, and a good deed!

If you need anything for this job, please list it and I'm sure we will be able to contribute where we can.