Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Corcoran
Any stories of the first time you (anyone) painted your car at home? I'm not talking about a pro but an amateur with no autobody/painting experience
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Junior and senior year in high school co-op I worked at a Ford dealer as a painters helper. With a little knowledge my buddy and I decided after graduation we would paint cars in my dad's garage. I had a '64 442 at the time and I decided to do a wild paint job with all the latest techniques that were shown in the latest issue of Dupont News (1970). This car would sell some paint jobs if it turned out. Dad had a compressor, we had sander, but no polisher, so we had to wet sand and hand rub all the cars. Everything we did was lacquer. In 1970 a gallon of the best Dupont lacquer was about $25 and all the supplies to do an entire car were less than $100. We could do a full job like below in one week. This style was popular back then.
We cruised Woodward Ave. almost every night of the week so with that exposure and word of mouth we had steady summer jobs for 2 years doing custom paint. We made mistakes and thought we screwed up peoples cars really bad sometimes, like painting lacquer over enamel, but you learn how to fix what goes wrong. Then the neighbors killed it, too many noisy cars or maybe the paint fumes. My buddy went to California to do it full time, and I went to College.
The light blue portion of the stripes and the panel painting was Metalflake. The blue faded to Plum Crazy with added flake. The side panel had Imagineering (the thin stripes) and Cob Webbing both done in Plum Crazy. '68 Camaro hood scoops mounted to sheet metal risers. It took 24 double coats of clear lacquer to bury the flake and cob webbing. I sold the car 2 years later for $650 and it hadn't started to crack yet. I still dabble with car builds and paint.
