JDM55

yeah no worrys as long as you paint it in ppg ,lol , don't worry i know ive spend those same hours on the end of blocks my self , but it shows in the finish ,its well worth taking the extra time to prep properly,

yeah the slow thinners will definatley help you , just have to be aware that the drying time between coats is considerably longer, i used to use the older model devilbiss,there there realy good! but they stoped making them and my one shit it self after 5 years of hard abuse, awesum gun tho , id say play around with your mixtures and gun settings too be for throwing your gun away, took me a fair while to get myne adjusted to exactly how i spray , some thing to think about any way

cheers there mate , yeah i have had a fair bit of time away from it and , realy time to get some stuff happening ,need this done this year soo have to go hard now and try an get some where! but its falling into place at the moment ,keep watching!

hahahha cheers man ,good to know people are appreciating the work going in :)

lol cheers dude, yeah realy happy with the colour ,its a very clean look, as for gear , the car was painted in ppg, deltron d800 clear, medium hardners and slow thinners, that mix gives a good flow out, but have to be careful of runs but you can push it pretty hard if you got gun skills, psi?? think its round 80 , but drops off a bit becasue we use air wash masks so between 65-80 ish pis id say , I use a devilviss pro with a 1.4 tip , i use that for base and clearing ,works very well ,but have to keep it very clean , cheers for the comments :)

also the gutter molds are back on ,tho i did stuff one up , got abit too excited and wanted it on there ,managed to damage it prety good haha not to worry just another part to grab off the daily lol fresh tail lights and the garnish make the ass look nice :)

cheers dude, its getting there, so many hours yet so many more to go haha , come along way in the past few years ... so with most of the painting done , i can start putting bits and pieces back on , heres a few pics of doing that, the garnish on the back panel was pretty faded and poorly looking so couldnt realy put it back on, i ended up first spraying it a dark metalic colour then once was dry i masked of the edges of the garnish and lightly sprayed in silver , then got a brush and hand brushed the corolla lettering, then cleared the whole thing , it turned out pretty good, and looks like a new piece :) also put the indicators back in ;;; door handles .... fuel cap and ring and 1/4 panel vents , which i also painted the same as the garnish,dark metalic in the middle and silver outside ,they look like a factory item and prety happy how they look on the 1/4s :) also started putting some of the rubbers back on,this boot rubber fitted realy good, also some of the door rubbers ive replaced fit realy well too,ebay ones from phils rotaries in queensland, i highly recommend there rubbers, excellent quaility and so far a great fit,

pow!!! turned out pretty good , took well over 5 hours of spraying time to paint , has one base coat ,3 coats of colour and 3 coats of clear, all in all I'm prety happy with it, theres a few small ripples here and there that i must have missed , but on the hole its a lot straighter than it was,and no more rust and the colour just looks awesum,

so to start the painting off , i wanted to put a base down to cover any rubbed thru areas ,and seal off the primer also doing this helps with the coverage of the actual colour....

and finally after 2 years and much much work its in the oven ready to paint!! , the next pictures are of the exstensive masking i had to do due to the insides all ready been painted,,,,

a few more then , here i started sanding the car down to get it ready for painting , how i sanded it was , all by hand using blocks, start grade was 240# on a block then followed up by going around the edges, next was 320# on the block same again around the edges with the 320 ,then finally was 600# wet and dry by hand , using water, for the final sanding , cleaning was in the way of just clean water to wash away all the excess guide coat(black stuff on the panels) and the air gun to blow all the water and dust from the cracks ,

cheers mate , detail becomes nessasary I'm most of the things I'm doing ,i try to go off the rule of you can't make one piece look all pretty and fancey and then leave the part next to it all rusty and old ... lol well thats the general idea , sometimes its not as easy as that lol , thanks for your comments

haha good things come to those who wait :P .......

yes lol its going matt black to match the cooler :)

haha cheers mate , yes I'm loving the cool it is lovely! haha :) and yeah it will be great to see it done, it has been a bit of a bump ride so far , hopefully not to far away now......

next lol , before i go to paint the outside i wanted to make sure the front panel parts actual cleared the intercooler ,something i hadnted checked when modding the rad support and making intercooler brackets ,so had to assemble that up to get a look at the clearances between the cooler and the front valance and front filler panel.............. not the bigest intercooller i know , but keeping it close to stock for the time being ,but it sure fits in there realy nice and by some kind of sheer miricle with the front panel on it clears !@@!!@!@@!@! 5 mm haha was happy about that one . yes the filler panel is orange!!!!!! i stole it off my daily 55 like many other parts hahah

front guard other side!!!!!!!! here can see the guard mod for the ba clear indicators,yes i know its been done a hundred times,this was one of the first mods i did to the car ,well over 2 years ago now, was interested to see how it would turn out....

bonnet hinges ... looking like a car again!!!!! rr door front right door!!!!!! this is a big deal right here, the car hasnt had panels on it for over 2 years and to see them finally gonig back on was great :wink:

so finally got all the insides painted up , next plan was to get all the panels back on and line up the whole thing ,which seem slike an easy task ,but gess it takes a long time , far to many movement options on the doors haha, any way to fit the doors i needed the catches and the latchs put back in ..... also bot rid of all the old bolts ,got all new stainless steel shiney ones :P there arnt cheap when you need a hell of alot of them :bash: door insides ..... wooo hinges back on,and catches and now the first door!!! its exciting stuff rite here lolol 2nd door!!!!!!! and boot lid :dance:

and shell unmasked....

after all that it was time to get the parts in and paint then also,,, 4 doors bonnet and boot and 8 door hinges afair bit of painting ,spec when your trying to do a good job lol, everything jamed in the oven..... again with the magic gleaming blue :happy: door with custom speaker thingos :P

after a bit of work ended up with some paint on the thing!! the colour has several pearls in it so getting a good picture is very hard as it looks differnt in differnt angles and lights but any way heres a few shot of the colour on the shell insides,..... all paint is ppg and the cost of this paint was quite abit of money ,put it this way the auctal paint far out wieghs the cost of the car ,hahaha ,how ever it is quality paint and lasts a long time , you get what you pay for i spose same shot looks differnt .... have to say i am loving this colour ,its very clean ,bright and dark sparkly but not too sparkley but not too much ,all in all its very nice I'm quite happy with it sexy :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:

after the panels were all sanded, thats all the insides 4 doors,bonnet ,boot lid , guards, turned my attention to the shell, sanded the door shuts and the boot insides, after the shell was all prepaired, and cleaned up, got the shell in to the oven !! woo exciting stuff ,first steps to geting some real colour on the thing,can see the exstentive masking up lolol , again over kill , but all part of it , removed the door hindges at the last moments i ummed and ahhed about it, but turned out the rite move , the masking in the boot was set up to allow the hindges to be pushed down and up with out disturbing the rest of it

and now for some fun stuff, but more importantly a big step in the progress, partly due to money restricitions and wanting to avoid the mechanical side for a while, i decide to start geting some paint on the car!! finally after 2 years looking very close to getting it painted, so as with everything on this build certain things relate to certain other things so had to set a bit of a plan out before diving in to just spraying the car and being done with it, first of all i couldnt paint the engine bay as i still have to have the engineer check over the car once its running and didnt feel like going thru all that work just to turn around and be told i have to cut something here,grind this,add a thing here do this, which these vic engineers seem to be coming famous for,well at least in my dealings with them, so no paint on engine bay, next had to decide about the order of painting paint out sides then the inside ,or paint insides then the out side,what about over spray from painting the outside going all over the painted insides stuff like that , wanted to do it once and do it right, well at least to the best of my ability ,lol decided to go with the logical way and paint the insides ,bolt together and hit the whole out side of the car, so then shes fairly well done,still this is a masive task and to do bymy self like everything on the car takes alot of time .... so heres the shell as it is at the moment, now I'm a car painter not a panel beater, so my panel skills are fairly average i spose , but for what ive done it should be ok for what i need, not going in shows and stuff like that i mean ,I'm build this to drive not sitt there, starting with the doors and panels , the fun job of sanding in great detail begins! using 320, dry then 600 wet then scotch bright, and alot of time , alot of cleaning and using airguns and water and prepsol , etc

thanks alot there mate yeah I'm glad too , realy want this finished this year so I'm going to be pushing a bit hard over the next few months , fingers crossed can hold it together,funds are still very tite (next to zero) haha but doing as much as i can on the cheap and by myself seems to save a fair bit of cash, cheers