Jag Paint and Body Page
May, 2011
The paint and bodywork for the Jag could begin only after disassembly of the car and removal of all the components as well as the tar, grease, and dirt. This took many hours of scraping and washing with solvent. Finally I was able to start with the sanding and prepping.
As I stripped the tub of it's paint and filler I found some trouble spots. I know that some will feel that the only solution would be to replace entire panels but I really wasn't up to that great a task. Instead I cut out the bad places, as best I could, and replaced them with new metal.
The other place that I had was simply more of the same.
After that panel was welded in place I tended to another problem and that was what to do about the interior. It was pretty clean but still needed some additional attention. Every thing got bead blasted and all the captive nuts got chased.
Next I stripped and mounted the doors.
At this point I am about ready to begin the leading. In preparation for that I got out the lead pot and began making sticks out of some scrap that a neighbor had given me many years ago.
First the welded in panel was ground down.
Then the area was tinned.
And then loaded with lead.
And finally roughed in with a body file.
Similarly, other areas were dealt with. Decades prior some idiot backed into me in a parking lot. What remained were the holes that the body man used to pull the panels back into shape. These I welded, ground, tinned and loaded with lead.
After that came the filling. I am using a product called All Metal. While it is plastic it is quite strong and I have had good success with it in the past.
After I work my way around the car with filler I will eventually finish with a sanding primer.
Next the bonnet got stripped.
At this point I needed to mount the bonnet to the tub so that I could work on properly aligning the two. This necessitated placing the tub back on the cradle.
And remounting the front cage.
The gantry was used to hoist the bonnet into place. I was not very pleased with how this worked so will probably seek another method for removing/replacing the bonnet next time.
While the balance on the cradle was good, the addition of a bucket filled with chain in the boot provided a little ballast making me a lot more comfortable about the possibility of me tipping the car onto it's nose while horsing around up front.
Next I needed to attach the boot lid. But before that could be done I had to deal with the hinge springs which had broken years prior.
Replacing the springs was one of those annoying tasks that just has to be over come so that you can move on.
Click here to see about that
With the addition of the boot lid and gas cap lid the car is ready to be blended together to make a good fit.
March, 2012
After many months of filling and blocking and the delays resulting from family matters, I finally reached the point where I needed to begin the priming process.
The bonnet and front cage were removed and the tub remounted on the rotisserie. There the underneath of the car was thoroughly cleaned and sanded, washed down with soap and water, cleaned with PPG DX330, treated with Ospho, and all the seams sealed.
Prior to doing any painting I needed to address one additional issue with the paint booth. The discharge for the ventilation system has been blocked off at the end of the booth since completion. To have provided a permanent duct to the outside would have been expensive in terms of time and effort and would have constantly gotten in the way. So, a temporary duct was what I chose to use. I built a simple skeleton of PVC tubing that can be disassembled and reassembled as needed and wrapped it in plastic sheeting secured with clothes pins. This will exhaust the fumes to the outside when painting.
I can close the door and, when open, I will still have access to the doorway to move the tractors in and out as needed.
Next the discharge filters had to be fitted.
And the intake filters. The filters are treated with a tacky substance to increase their efficiency. If I leave these in place all the time they will get dirty just sitting there so must be installed just prior to using.
And finally the tub was rolled into place.
After masking I cut in with PPG DP40LF epoxy primer. I wanted to be sure that I got good coverage in all the cracks and crannies so using a brush was a way to do that better than the gun can do.
The fender wells present an even more difficult problem for the gun. Not only does the gun not fit in there well, the paint tends to just swirl around in there and come back out to hit you in your face. The brush insured that I got complete coverage.
As soon as I was done with the brush I shot it all with the gun and found that the brush marks melted in very well.
And after that everything got a couple of coats of PPG K38 high build sanding primer.
From there the tub got put back on the cradle and the whole process started over again.
And the doors and boot lid got done as well.
Next trip I hope to get the interior, boot, and bonnet done at which point the sanding and blocking will resume.
May, 2012
The trip in May began with me having to address a problem with the way the bonnet was mounted that I had been looking at for a while. Because of how the rear mount attached to the bonnet I could see that I was going to have trouble getting good coverage with the gun around the rear mount.
So, I cut in off and remade it like this.
This should allow me to cover this area well enough that I can brush it in under the mounts once the rear mount is removed.
After many hours of sanding and prepping in the same manner as the tub I arrived here.
Next came the cabin and boot of the tub.
It is difficult to express the mind numbing effort required to adequately prepare areas like these but it pretty much consumed the rest of my trip. Thankfully the cabin and boot are ready to be primed next trip.