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Before you start painting make sure you remove or cover up all the glass in the car. We had already removed our front windshield to weld in the A-pillar/firewall gussets and it made painting that part of the car much easier. Most folks end up going with Lexan windshields sooner than later anyways, so you may as well plan to remove it before you stock up on spray paint. Especially since we all know spray paint cans spontaneously explode hours after leaving the store and must be used immediately! Don’t forget to also cover up the wiring harness, pedals, ignition switch, door handles and other parts that normally don’t work well when painted.
To save our fingers from blisters, we bought a couple of spray paint can trigger handles from Home Depot for $2 each, worth every penny! Start by spraying primer on the entire interior, roll cage included. Paint vertical surfaces and the roof of the car first, working your way down. Paint the floor of the car and the sides of the roll cage facing the outside of the car last. These can easily be reached from outside the car where you can stand on the ground instead of the fresh paint. We allowed a full 24 hours between primer and color. When painting the inside of the car wear some old socks instead of shoes. Shoes track in too much dirt and can scratch the still soft primer pretty easily.
The majority of the interior is already painted from the factory, minus the spots we took the grinder to, so we didn’t bother with a second primer coat and redirected our efforts to the color coat. Repeat the color coat as needed until everything has an even layer of paint. We ended up using about 12 cans of light gray primer and 16 cans of smoke gray from Rustoleum. Spray paint never seems to last as long as you think it would, and while that seems like a lot of paint, it was just enough to cover everything with a nice even coat. We chose this non-offensive color because white gets dirty too easily, black is way too hot, silver reflects too much sun and brown is just too ugly.
We didn’t think to pick up respirators or even the cheap SARS masks when we bought the spray paint and were dangerously close to spray paint combustion time so we had no choice but to man up and start spraying. That was a bad idea. PLEASE PLEASE do as we say and not as we did or you will be blowing colored boogers for days. So to ensure you don’t give your face, hair, nose hairs or eyes an even coat of “smoke gray” pick up a particulate mask, close fitting or sealed eyewear and a hat or bouffant cap of some sort.
Once finished, put everything down, stand back and stare at the fruits of your labor. If the outside of your car looks anything like ours did, try to be look beyond that and concentrate on its potential. In our next installment we will cover what we are doing to ensure our car stops quickly every time we ask it to.
Fabrication by:
