Paintwork part 2 – engine bay, underbody and interior painting

OK, I need to start this one with a confession. Way back in my first post after restarting this site, I swore that I was going to pay a professional to paint JBY this time round. Well it turns out I haven’t learned my lesson after all, and here I am on the brink of respraying the car myself again.

In my defence however, a few things have changed. I now a have a slightly bigger, and much better insulated garage, so my environment for painting is somewhat improved. I’ve also spent a lot of time researching and learning about spray painting in the many long months since I started the project, so am much better prepared than my teenage self who did such a bad job of painting it all those years ago. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve worked through so many unexpected jobs and challenges with this car over last couple of years, it would almost seem like a cop out to now hand it off to someone else to paint it. Plus, I’ve spent all my money on Heritage body panels now, so couldn’t afford to even if I wanted to 😀

That out of the way, there is one big decision I am definitely sticking to – it’s still going to be Bracken. Here it is in all its glory. I’m using cellulose paint as it’s still the safest option for home spraying (I’d love to use 2K, but I’m not interested in either poisoning myself, or investing in an air-fed respirator), and it’s what this car would have left the factory in, so it’s good enough for me.

I didn’t really get a lot of action shots of the process, so what follows is a gallery of ‘after’ shots. Inside the car, I just rubbed down the epoxy mastic and top-coated right over it. None of it will be seen once the carpet and trim are fitted, so wasn’t worth any time high-build priming and worrying too much about the finish – I just wanted to be satisfied that it was all the right colour, and it gave me lots of practice to work on my spraying technique for the later stages that will be seen. That said, I was pretty pleased with the results.

It was very tricky to paint the dashboard/bulkhead area, a full-size gravity-fed spray gun is not easy to get into tight spaces, but after 3 passes with varying fan patterns I was able to get it all covered nicely.

In the engine bay I was more careful in rubbing down the primer, and I did also apply a couple of coats of high-build, which were then flatted back before applying the top coat. This is one area which might find itself ‘on show’ in the future, so worth spending a bit more time on it.

The really interesting thing about this colour is how totally different it looks under different lighting, as you can see from these pictures. Sometimes it’s orange, sometimes more yellow, and under certain light it’s close to brown. I love it.

I had stripped and painted the bonnet hinges separately, but here they are back in place. These are officially the very first components bolted back onto the restored shell, which I like to think is an important milestone in itself.