I just thought Id keep track of my progress here on honda-tech, hope you guys dont mind. To clarify, I have never touched a spray gun in my life, well once I painted a fender on a crx, but that was years ago. I have never worked with prep tools, or bondo, or primer ect..

A little bit of background: I purchased this car from a junk yard. Fortunately the car was left at a charity auction and no one bought it because it was ugly as Rosie Odonell and the car overheated within 5 minutes of driving her. I thought id give the little sucker a fighting chance. It only had 105k miles, 1 owner, clean title and fairly straight body. Unfortunately its an automatic and has a SOHC so a 5 speed swap and engine transplant are a must. I did buy a Silvia front end for the little guy as im not a big fan of pop-up lights. Heres the ugly little duckling:



First things first, I fixed the overheating problem obviously which was due to a clogged thermostat and torn lower radiator hose. Next, I purchased an American Turbine 3000 series spray compressor which came with a HVLP gun and got a quote for 07 BMW Titanium Medal paint which is a dark charcoal gray which I go to pick up tomorrow.

Compressor, spray gun, paint, clear coat, and all materials including tape, paper, primer, and bondo cost me a total of about $500.


Lets get started, I took the OEM wing off the car so I needed to shave the holes on the trunk:








Next its on to sanding down the entire car (dont mind the missing fender, I had to beat out a lot of the little dents in it with a body hammer, so I sanded this down separate):




Next I primered it







In a few days I'm going to block sand it and fill in all the dents and dings with bondo, so stay tuned, and before I forget, heres the color of paint I ordered and the overall general look I'm going for .





Modified by drewboy at 10:34 PM 8/24/2008

 

How did you weld the holes shut?

Also, do you mind posting your compressors specs? (size, cfm, etc) and was it brand new? Im in the same boat and i want to paint my car soon.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Joe-G &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">How did you weld the holes shut?

Also, do you mind posting your compressors specs? (size, cfm, etc) and was it brand new? Im in the same boat and i want to paint my car soon.</TD></TR></TABLE>i think hes using mig weld.. but id like to know too!

 

the welder I used was a mig:


The Compressor I bought was the AT3000 found here:
http://www.american-turbine.com/3000S.htm

I have a friend that had one new in the box, and he never used it so he sold it to me for 300$. It can be used for all kinds of tasks

 

nice choice of a car-

i love 240sx coupes/ silvia front conversions-

looks good so far for not being experienced