painting our irish green coupe

Miss April came to us from the dry Arizona city of Sedona.  She wore original paint on the hood and roof of the car.  Rest of the car had been repainted with a base coat with clear coat over, but over time the Arizona sun finally brought it all into poor condition.  A full paint job (inside and outside) is now complete! (whew).  

here are some photos of the starting condition

Below is a slide show of the car's condition when I bought her.  You may need to put your curser on the photo below and click on "play" in the upper left of the photo.

Easy to see the overall appearance was not so wonderful, and the bent hood just drove me nuts.  It was clearly in need of a restoration.  After getting the car to run well, I started taking it apart for paint.  Photo below shows the car when it was almost ready to load on the trailer and take to the painter...

The car even came with a dead mouse that had a nest on top of the transmission!

The body work and paint job took months to accomplish as it was very comprehensive.  All glass and bumpers removed, all possible components removed, including the instruments in the dash.  Correct body work was done to get everything back to original shape with nice gaps.  Full new PPG single stage paint to the entire inside and outside of the car- both sides of the hood and decklid.  ​Check out the Blog for additional photos of the restoration.

You can click on any of the photos below to enlarge them.

​Once the car was painted, the process began to do a full color (wet) sanding, followed by polish and wax.  Below are some shots of the color sanding, which I performed myself.  Grits used were 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 5000 and 7000.  This allowed me to remove any orange peel and small imperfections in the paint.  It took me about 75 hours for this portion of the project.  Top row middle photo shows how the sanding dulled the paint after the 1500 grit.  Finer and finer grades improved the finish and after the 7000 grit, it was finally ready for polishing and wax.

Here are some photos of sections of the car as the sand/polish/wax was completed.  

There is a short video of the car being painted .