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So the next day we went ahead and shot the hood and the body. Came out pretty good for just shooting out in the driveway

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Put some restored bits and pieces back on the car and also shaved the rear marker lights.

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Next up, prepping and etch priming various accessories...then a quick wet sand on them.

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I wanted to shoot surfacer on the accessories, trunk, and bumpers at the same time, so we prepped those next.

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Surfacer then guidecoat

Also some trim I restored with SEM 39143 'Trim Black'

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Wet sanded and sprayed accessories and bottom of trunk...

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Tried out my fancy ricer bolts and shot the black portion of the front bumper cover

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Here's the rest of the large body parts blocked and ready for paint...

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Guess what comes next?

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Test fit! First time I had seen the car shiny in 12 years or so

thehatchninja

Great work on the restoration. I really like that color, and have always liked that body style prelude.

toyomatt84

iTrader: (1)

Wow... another great turnaround!

Looks fantastic, once again.

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Thanks, I have to agree with both of those, haha.

Thanks Matt! More to come, it's not even cleared yet

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Started doing whatever assembly I could before shooting clear just to try to shrink the parts pile in the house...

Oh, and I did actually go back later and cover the red areas on the trunk.

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Now time to CAREFULLY block sand the OMNI paint in prep for clear. This is pretty much the last critical stage before the final clear goes on....so no beer for this

I think I used about a 220 grit mesh-type paper on a block for this. Very light pressure, just making scratches with the block to find any high/low spots.

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Roof came out very good..probably did 3-4 filler cycles and blocking though (all with the glass-Kevlar filler of course).

The picture of the hood shows the difference between the exact same paint, just glossy vs sanded with fine paper. Pretty crazy I thought...

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Masked for clear, and pulled the car out of the garage to prep the floor and walls.

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Pulled the car and time for clear!

Used Southern Polyurethanes' 2.1 VOC Production Clear. Affordable and supposedly has very good UV resistance and clarity.

My 'booth' is a positive pressure design, where there is a hole in the wall and a squirrel cage fan pressurizes the booth from inside the house. Air escapes from the gap below the garage door, which is lifted about 10 inches. This way I get more room in the booth and I'm using the home's HVAC to filter the air, not booth filters. That's not to say there isn't dust in the paint, but it can be easily buffed out later.

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More cleared pics....

I try to pull the plastic and tape off before anything can harden, as it gives you a nice cut line and there's no risk of anything peeling.

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The mirrors and door handles also got cleared (not in the pics I guess), and I started to assemble them while the clear was hardening/curing.

SEM Trim Black on the mirror bases.

New key cylinders for the doors

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Started doing trim using all new clips from Honda, and put the driver side door together.

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Oh, also coated the door bars with POR15, as they can get pretty corroded over time.

Many people don't realize, but water is allowed to pass the lower outer window trim and run through the door and out the bottom.

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Then got a chance to finally clear the rest of the parts.

All of these were also lightly blocked, then wet sanded like everything else before clear.

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Another load of new OEM Honda parts

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The next big thing was finding an affordable way to get a new windshield put in, and getting the other windows put in also. I was lucky enough to see a guy doing my neighbors windshield so I talked with him a bit and we came to an agreement for all my glass work.

The OEM Prelude windshield trim from Honda is a very complicated system of different types of clips with a very expensive and delicate one-piece molding. He was able to use a standard rubber molding that attaches to the glass itself and i think it actually looks a lot like the silly OEM molding. Not sure where he was able to source the glass, but it's pretty good...