Now this brings me current to last week.
My son and I tackled the paint on his 2002 Duramax 2500HD. The clear coat started peeling a few years ago and although he had done a great job keeping the truck looking good, the fact was that we needed to repaint the roof. Well we were going to try and get it done last fall but time got away from me with side jobs so I thought I would tackle it immediately after my wife and I returned from our Swell trip in April. Well, that went to shit when I got sick so I finally feel about 93.7% better so we started on it last week.
I used to do quite a bit of paint & body work from street rods, muscle cars, snowmobiles, ATV's and even some insurance and spot jobs when I ran my speed shop. I am 100% self taught and although I feel I do a decent job, I am to the point in my life where I HATE doing paint work. It is messy and a pain in the ass. I have refused to paint in my home shops so when I had my last shop at our previous home I would get all of the fabrication and prep work completed, then load the vehicle on my flatbed car hauler and bring it to my "dirty shop" that was on my parent's farm. This was where I did all of the body work, finish work and painting. I had a smallish 25'x30' two bay section of my dad's shop set up as a paint booth that allowed me to turn out some pretty nice paint jobs. A couple of my cars have been featured in magazines and our 1940 Chev coupe even won best paint at a couple of shows as well as people's choice in the Boise Roadster show many, many years ago.
These days however, I still refuse to paint in my home shop due to what it does to the overall feel and cleanliness of having that dust and overspray inside. This results in my getting things setup and then juggling the task on nice days when the weather cooperates so I can spray it outdoors.
Here is my paint prep area with protective paper thrown down to protect my workbenches from nasty drips and spills.
My son prepping the edges while I run a DA over the roof removing the failed clear and even the damaged base color. The OEM primer was in fact in excellent condition so a good sanding to give the new epoxy primer/sealer a good tooth to bite into.
Roof sanded and ready to start masking.
Masked and bagged in preparation for a full treatment of SPI's epoxy primer in which I slightly reduced it to allow it to flow out nicely as a sealer. I could have used a general sealer but the epoxy does such a better job of providing a finish that will last for many, many years and seeing as how my son has no plans of getting rid of his truck we opted for the epoxy vs. the standard sealer.
Roof sealed with epoxy primer. It actually laid down quite nice.
As I pulled the mixing cups out of my boxes of supplies my son joked that our primer mixing cup has seen a few years of use. This mixing cup for primer is only about 30 years old and has seen it's fare share of projects. The smaller plastic cup is my cleaning cup where I use clean-up lacquer thinner to clean measuring sticks and paint guns when I tear them apart for cleaning.
My paint and clear mixing cups from half gallon to gallon sizes that have also seen a few year's use.
The GM Victory Red laid down excellent.
Being painted outside on even the nicest of days still netted me a few bugs and a little trash that needs to be addressed. A little cutting and buffing is all that is needed.
More pictures to follow.....
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