Painting Our Project AMC Rambler

We stood in the faint outline of blue that surrounded the Rambler like an upside-down halo greeting the unusually high number of gawkers that came to see the art. "This paint on the decklid looks a little iffy" was the first comment to break the silence.

We understand that right after you paint a car, you are going to get attention. So we were prepared for everyone to look down the body and make mental notes of each warble of paint and each unworked paint chip just so they could point them out. Since the price of a good paint job has easily crested $5,000, the expectation of perfection has become absurd. But right after you tell people you did it yourself, for around $1,000, in the garage, they usually stop complaining and you get a little credit.

For the CC/Rambler, we chose a dual-stage metallic called Barbados Blue. Because it's a dual-stage, a flat base-color coat is applied followed by a clearcoat. There were some mistakes in the Rambler's basecoat we laid down in last month's issue, and since we hadn't applied the clear, it wasn't too late to fix them. We were also going to use the secret weapon often called the cut-and-buff that from the days before the advent of catalyzed and single- and dual-stage urethanes. Since old-school lacquer used to go down dull, shops would use a pasty compound to knock down high spots and remove imperfections. When that was covered with a huge coat of wax, the job looked great. That same technique can be used on the clearcoat on a two-stage urethane job for the same effect. Here's how to do it.

Last month, we sprayed the basecoat. John McGann might have breathed too many fumes, and Glad has burned himself with the shop light one too many times.	1. We waited a couple of days for the paint to cure before we attempted any repairs. The first thing we noticed was a huge dent we completely missed. The basecoat can be treated just like the original paint, so we scuffed it with 320-grit paper and prepared the area for Evercoat Metal Glaze filler.	2. The glaze works just like it would if we were applying it to the original paint or to primer. We let it dry for about 20 minutes, sanded it flat with a long board with 120 to smooth it out, then sanded it with 320 to eliminate scratches.
3. Since we were going to add another basecoat after we made repairs, we used SEM high-build primer to fill in any nicks and scratches we missed the first time. We sanded every repair with 320 on a long board.	4. We had made some major crack repairs in the rear quarter-panel, and it showed after the base was applied. We tackled the remaining waves with a long board and 320 followed by a coat of high-build primer, then more sanding, until we could not feel any waves.	5. The cheaper way to do this is to primer the entire car, wet block-sand, then repeat until you are happy. Since we only had a few mistakes we weren't willing to live with, we applied color, then blocked, then added more color. The wet-sanding process at this stage will reveal every flaw on the car, so be patient.