Got My Lightweight!! Stay Tuned for Project Updates and Plenty of Questions!

[jac04]

^^ Yeah, I'll take care of those when I fill in all the spot welds.

[Eric W S]

Looks like the dash might need a skim coat of bondo to smooth over the rivets and other dents.

Why? You're supposed to see those.

[jac04]

Paint stripping continues........all I have left is the rear tub and tailgate. My CARC substitute Desert Tan paint arrived today and I can't wait to get rolling...or brushing or spraying.....

Here are the door skins after sitting overnight with a layer of Citristrip on them:

[JayGoss]

Please spray the car!!!! It's so beautiful a brushed on paint job just won't match the quality of the rest of the Rover. Guess it would be in keeping with what the MOD would have done but they could never eat dinner off of their transmissions! Thanks for letting us live vicariously through you- and keep those pics coming!!!

[jac04]

Well, the radiator support, lower bulkhead and upper bulkhead have been sprayed. What a fiasco.

I purchased several Spra-Tools from Eastwood along with a bunch of extra propellant packs. Each of these things is supposed to be able to spray enough paint to cover about 10 square feet. I initially figured that I would use them on my wheels, but then decided to use them to spray the entire vehicle. Well, that plan has changed.

I thinned the paint (Gillespie 686 Tan CARC substitute), loaded it into the cup, and test-sprayed some cardboard. The spray pattern was a little smaller than I expected - they say it is supposed to spray like a real paint gun, but the pattern is smaller than a regular spray can in reality. However, it seemed to work great, so I started sparying the radiator support. After about 30 seconds of spraying, the Spra-Tool basically stopped working because the temperature of the propellant can dropped significantly.

So, I set up an "oven" made out of a cardboard box and a small ceramic heater, into which I put a bunch of the propellant cans. I had to swap them out every minute or two of spraying. I finally got through the parts I needed to get painted, but I will either be rolling the rest of the vehicle or purchasing a HVLP set-up for the remainder of my painting. I'm probably just going to go the HVLP route since I still need to paint all 5 of my wheels, which would be almost impossible to do with a roller.

Here are the best pictures I could get. The flash with the flat tan color produces lots of glare, but you can't see much without the flash. The parts came out very nice:
Radiator Support




Bulkhead (lower):


Bulkhead (upper):


I also sandblasted the door frames and sprayed them with multiple coats of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator paint:

[jac04]

So it's been about a year now. I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Every part of the vehicle is now ready for final paint. I thoroughly cleaned the under side of the rear tub, coated it with several layers of 3M rubberized undercoating, then installed new tub supports.
I test fit the rear body and...............everything lined up perfectly. Things are good.

New supports:


Rear body test-fit. The springs seem to make the vehicle sit very high. I never noticed it until the body was put on. I hope it settles down a little, otherwise I may be looking at military front shackles to even everything out:




The badge is back on, so it's officially a Land Rover again:

[gphiver]

This is fantastic!

Thanks for sharing... so much to look forward to.

[xsbowes]

Mine rides that high also with the parabolics. Even with the Tropical Roof (not on in this picture) that I have now.

[jac04]

^^Stacy-
What parabolics are you running, and how many leaf rears?

[xsbowes]

2 front and rear. Not sure of the brand, RM by the looks with Emu shocks.

[jac04]

Painting is Done!

I took yesterday off from work and painted the vehicle entirely in pieces along with all 5 wheels. It was a lot more work than I thought. It took me from 10am until 8pm to paint everything. Every piece was masked and painted. I used a Campbell Hausfeld HVLP system and it worked GREAT! If you are painting with a flat or satin paint, and you are looking for an economic painting system - definitely check it out at:

http://www.gleempaint.com/ch-hv1001-hvlp-system.html

Here are the finished pieces:

[NickDawson]

great work jac04 - really enjoying watching your truck come together

[Nium]

Nice paint

Those panels and wheel look good. Damn fine looking work. Minimum to no craters? I hope.

Love the spray both very MacGiverish! The garage door opening change color?

[jac04]

I'm not sure what you mean by craters - do you mean fish-eyes? Either way, the paint went on very well and covered excellent. I didn't have any significant issues or problems at all with laying on the paint. I did get some runs on one door, but sanded them out and hit the door with another coat and everything was OK. I used about 1.25 gallons to paint everything.
For spray booths - I actually had 2 set up like you see in 2 of my 3 garage bays. I made sure to cover the closed garage doors in plastic as well. I made the mistake of not covering the floor completely on the 2nd spray booth, which is the one I did most of the spraying in. The result is a floor covered in paint, but what the heck, people go through a lot of trouble to paint their garage floors, right?

[LaneRover]

The result is a floor covered in paint, but what the heck, people go through a lot of trouble to paint their garage floors, right?

Sounds to me like that is a good 'ecological' way to paint your garage floor too! Otherwise the paint would just be wasted!