Painting project

[Don Bradner]

Our ongoing lengthy project list since we acquired Blue Thunder in January
includes replacement of old operational equipment such as batteries, shocks,
tires, and alternators; physical changes to agree with our wants, such as
washer/dryer, bookcase/desk/office chair, and bay slideout trays; and cosmetic
items.

The latter is/was primarily paint. Several years in the Arizona sun had baked
much of the clear coat off on both sides and the back. The front cap is fine,
but has likely been repainted at some point. I did the worst single spot (blue
on the back cap) before we left for a month of travels in early May, and the
rest has been my most time-consuming project since we got back.

I'm pretty much a neophyte when it comes to spray-painting, so this has been a
learning experience with a lot of picking the brains at the local Dupont shop,
where most of the guys have body-shop experience. The bulk of the labor, of
course, is in surface prep and masking.

I looked through the pictures I have on hand to find a couple that were
illustrative of the problem and tried to take similar "after" pictures. The
first one, http://tinyurl.com/2w53e2 was taken in February in Casa Grande. It is
part of a telephoto shot, so there's quite a bit of fore-shortening, and the
lighting was very flat which reduced contrast, but you can see the missing clear
coat pretty well.

Since the blue heats up more, it is much more affected than the stripes; in fact
the side stripes below the bend are fine and were left alone. The area below the
stripes (what do you call that piece, anyway? Looks designed to direct water
flow from the roof outward) was a particular problem. It is a compound curve,
making sanding with a block difficult. It was missing clear coat in oval
patterns, with the areas over ribs still holding the coat. Trying to feather the
edges didn't work well, as clearcoat kept peeling away, so it was essentially
necessary to sand it all.

The upper part of the gold and red stripes weren't as bad looking, but still had
bad peeling. This picture: http://tinyurl.com/2w6ukx was taken in Phoenix by the
inspector we hired pre-purchase.

Here are the after links for roughly the same two views:
http://tinyurl.com/2kjvqo
http://tinyurl.com/2jv2lf

I'm pretty happy with the results, although I did get a small, unpredicted, rain
shower about an hour after I finished the other side late last week, and there
are some pock marks in the paint on three panels. You can't really tell from the
ground, so I'm waiting until it is cured a bit more to see what a bit of
1500-grit sanding and polishing does.


Don Bradner
90 PT40 "Blue Thunder"
Eureka, CA