The Finishing Touch

Today was one of those lazy days, Where I didn’t really have anything to do. So I sat around for some of it then thought to myself “Why not paint the A pillar ?”, So I got off my ass and headed out to the garage to get to work.

I masked up everything surrounding the A pillar, And started wet sanding. I used half a sheet of 600 grit, and finished it off with 800 grit.

I then removed all of the masking paper and reapplyed it. Masking took FOREVER! but better to be safe then sorry, Heck I still had some overspray on the car, Here’s a snap of the A pillar turning white.

Painting was the easiest and quickest part to do (As usual), There are a few little things I’ll need to touch up later but all in all, I think it came up pretty damn well. I only used half a can of paint too! Anyway, Enough blabber here are the finished pictures.

Tomorrow I should hopefully have the hardtop mounted, And my Barchetta shorty console isn’t too far away either. Stick around!

How To Paint A Hardtop – DIY Style

Yesterday, John and I got cracking on my hardtop. So it went a little like this, This hardtop started off in a glossy red.

We got to work masking the seals and window before wet sanding with 800 grit paper.

After we were happy with the finish, We cleaned the hard top with wax and grease remover thoroughly and stripped the masking tape. We then re-applied some fresh masking tape.

This is halfway through painting the hardtop, You can see John getting all the little dust particles off the wet paint with a toothpick.

A few coats later, This is the finished result.

Here’s what it looks like on the car.

It took us about 4 hours from start to finish, We used only one sheet of wet/dry 800 grit sand paper, And four cans of Dulux flat white exterior paint. We used other things like tarps and masks to avoid overspray and inhaling toxic fumes from the paint. I’m going to let the paint harden then  I’ll wax it to seal the paint. Take your time with masking and sanding, The finish is all in the prep work!

I’m still waiting on my hardtop bolts before I can rock it permanently. Once they arrive ( Or I find some locally) I’ll strip the soft top.

Sneak Peak

Well today I decided to take the cage and passenger seat out, ready for the upcoming Flyin Miata butterfly brace install. Whilst I was doing that, I placed the Superlites on the hubs of the RG MX-5 to get an idea of how they would look. Needless to say I rather like how they turned out, and brighten the rest of the car up. It’s wierd how the blue changes colour with different lighting though.

Wheel Painting – Part IV

Weather was good today, So I wasted no time, I drove to Repco to get more wax and grease remover and applied it to the lips of the wheels. Wiped it off a few minutes later and they were now ready to paint.

All primed up.

An hour later, the lips were painted and cleared, The result below.

And finally, All finished!

In total, I used one and a half cans of primer (3 coats on both lip and centre), One and a quarter can of white (3-4 coats on the centres), Just under one can of blue (3 coats on the lips), And half a can of clear coat (2 coats all round). I spent roughly eight hours sanding and prepping the wheels for paint (this includes masking), And roughly 3-4 hours priming, painting and clearing the centres/lips.

Obviously it would be a lot quicker if you were to paint the whole wheel one solid colour. If your really committed, you would be able to knock a set of wheels over within a weekend.

Thats all there is to it, A bit of hard work can really pay off, get cracking!

Wheel Painting – Part III

Today I decided to mask the centres. First up I needed to carefully remove the tape covering the lips of the wheels.

The white centre and platinum silver lip looks awesome.

I’m glad I took my sweet ass time masking the lip to paint the centres of the wheels, as the finish is mostly even all round (thankfully).

So onto masking the centres, This took me quite a while, roughly an hour on each. It was a little harder than masking the lips.

Hopefully if the weather holds out, I’ll be able to paint the lips tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Wheel Painting – Part II

Saturday afternoon, I wandered off into the garage to get cracking on the wheels. I start tapping up the lips and I marked the primer with my bracelet. I had a look and I tried again with my finger nail … from that moment I decided to strip the current primer and start again.

I didn’t use a wire brush and a coarse sand paper to begin with, So out came my wire brush and I got stuck into it. I spend a few hours on Saturday night, and half the Sunday getting these prepped right.

Whilst scrubbing the wheels, I decided to see what the colours would look like, I very roughly sprayed a lick of paint on one of the Superlites to get an idea.

The blue is a bit too light for my liking, I’ll be adding a black undercoat to darken it.

Anyway, I come along to stripping and sanding that shitty coated wheel, And boy was it a pain to get off. I think I could have gotten away with the current preparation, but better to be safe then sorry!

In total I spent roughly 1 hour on each wheel, scrubbing them with the wire brush and then giving them a sand with some 220 grit wet and dry sand paper.

Right, so all the wheels were ready for paint, So out came the sponge and bucket to give them a good clean.

Next step was to mask the lips of the wheels up before primer is applied, I needed to be very careful to have an even finish on all the wheels. Luckily there is a little indent on the wheels that I could follow with the masking tape. I spent roughly 20 minutes on each wheel.

The centers were now ready for paint! Out came the primer and I gave the wheels 4 light coats with it.

30 minutes after the final coat of primer was applied, the Flat white came out, and I started spraying. I did 3 light coats, and 2 medium coats of flat white. I wanted to ensure that all the primer was covered. After that, the Dupi-Colour clear coat was applied, 2 coats of it to be exact. This helps strengthen the paint from stone chips, UV etc.

The final result!

These wheels were a little difficult to paint due to the amount of spokes and curves, But I am extremely happy with the result. Hopefully I’ll be finishing the lips off this weekend, weather permitting of course. Keep an eye out for part III.

Wheel Painting

Last night, Adan came over to grab some parts and we had the usual car talk. Anyway he made a good point about the Superlights, He said “You should just paint them instead of powder coating them, The money you save could go to tyres”, and it made sense. So today I was off to my local Repco to grab some supplies.

I have had nothing but great results with VHT, so I chose to use their products on the wheels. So after the trip to Repco, I got straight into it, getting the wheels out of their boxes and giving them a clean before sanding.

Here is the first wheel scuffed and ready to be primed. I used 400 grit sandpaper and scuffed the cast finish that the Superlite GTR’s have. I could/should have used a wire brush to scuff the wheels better, but the method I have used with various parts (including wheels) have worked quite well in the past.

Here they are, all primed up with a can of VHT grey Prime Coat. Either tomorrow or Sunday I will be painting the centre section flat white and clearing it, followed by painting the lip a blue similar to my cam cover. As I thought, the colour I have purchased is too light.

The New Exhaust

This weekend, Adan and I started working on the custom exhaust.

The specs are as follows,

2.5 inch mid pipe with no cat, 2.25 axel back into the RSR muffler

We decided to make a flange for the De-cat pipe, like the early NA’s. This would be easier to placing a Cat in this section rather than chopping and rewelding the mid pipe.

Adan was rather surprised on the simplicity of the MX-5’s exhaust, And everything so far was gone rather smoothly.

Here is Adan getting to work on making  the De-cat pipe.

At this stage, we have tacked the whole exhaust, it’s now ready to be welded.
Here are a few pictures of where it sits on the car.

And finally, a comparison to stock, the new exhaust ended up being almost half a metre shorter!, you can see it’s also a lot straighter than factory.

Next weekend, it should be all welded and mounted on to the car.

Not too bad for a front yard job eh?