So it has been a busy few weeks preparing the car for paint. There has been a lot of to and fro about the design and how to do it.
First of all its best to understand why I all of a sudden, decided to respray the car. I have always like the design but always had a few bug bears with it. Two friends said it was looking a bit ragged with a coat of paint could be a good way to add to its return to the circuit. I mentioned it to the same guy who painted the car in 2009 (11 years flew by..) who jumped at the prospect of fixing a few of his own bug bears so at that point, the call was made to 'throw a coat of paint on it'. The plan was to keep the same scheme but look at where the original design had gone since using it in 2009. The team that inspired my original paint made a few changes over a few years but then moved over to the Porsche GT3 ALMS GT2 Class which was still very close to their roots of their earlier cars but with a few changes which did not grab me. By chance, when searching google photos for different views I came across a colour scheme which was used by Porsche for LeMans 24 hour races (which I am a huge fan of). This was the point of change from the old to the new.
Once i had thrown around the concept it was decided to go with the new design. I was looking at wrapping the car but moved away from it after the pain involved in removing the old vinyl which was like tooth extraction for days on end along with contaminating the paint below it which ended up causing huge issues with paint fry. Was a right pain through the who job. Also do not like the low gloss finish and its low ability to manage UV. Cost too was not cheap to do what I planned on doing so paint was the way to go. The painter was also equally keen on the challenge. This was to be a four colour plus clear respray which was a challenge with the possibility for good or bad results.
Over the years the car has been butchered in most ways with endless holes, a few ding's, T tops were a issue along with alignments and more. With this project a lot of the old bits and pieces were now able to be tidied up. Was also a great opportunity to finally fit the fiberglass doors I bought off Rory (old MR2 owner from 2010 who was a track orientated guy). We tried something different with the T tops by giving it a very 'hardtop' look by filling over the sealer used to fix the fibreglass T tops with fibreglass body filler. As it was a bit of an afterthought and we were time poor, we did not remove the T tops then reset perfectly which can be seen once you get up close to the car but it is just a race car so cannot get too carried away. Another detail I was very happy to sort out were the rear wheel arches. When I was at the SMP in 2011, The wheels were bottoming out on the wheel arches so instead of lifting the car up ( who would have known..) We decided to roll the wheel arches at the track with a trolley jack handle. It worked, kind of..so it needed to be fixed so I cut out the inside of the wheel arches, did some panel beating to solve another old problem. There were a number of others but that's enough to get the idea of whats going on here.
We had these lofty idea's that we would have it prepped in a day, paint that afternoon. Nothing could be further from the truth. Four days, three tradesmen, three 10 hour days then a 20 hour day through a lot of water on that enthusiastic assumption..Even so we could have spent two 15 hour days just on paint and prep could have easily been a 40 hour week for all of us to get it right. As stated, time poor so make do with what you can. Once of the guys ran a powerdercoating workshop which has allowed us access to a great workshop to get the job done. Really do not believe it would have happened any other way. The old white was a disaster. IT fried up at every opportunity so it all had to go. That was a nightmare. Endless hours of rubbing paint off. I saved a lot of workshop time by taking panels home to prepare. Even so we ended up laying hi build over the whole car to remove any chance of it coming back to haunt us.
The actual laying of colours was very labour intensive and tedious. There was a lot of panel removal, panel install, blocking potential dust bowls, setting out tricky lines after already doing 12 hours with a 20 minute break. I guess that was the killer. Working the most challenging parts when were all exhausted and ready to go home. Still we managed to get it done so next week I just have assembly, add some decals then take it home.
Photo's added are the journey from old to new. The final assembly and photo's Will be up in a week or two.
