Not a "$50 paint job" but... (1 Viewer)

[ashooter]

Before:

After:

I did all the prep work myself - Pulled the roof rack/ribs & flares, patched all the holes with Devcon Plastic Steel putty, then sanded the whole truck with 220 & 400 grit to get the old oxidized clearcoat and base coat down to something paintable. I then masked it and sprayed 3M "rocker panel spray" over the lower part of the sides to cover up my flare hole patch jobs, similar to what a lot of guys have done with Line-X or Rhino.

When I took it to the paint shop, I just had them mask the windows, lights, etc and spray it with DuPont single stage urethane "464 Beige". I didn't want to spend a LOT of money on it, so when you open the doors, hood, tailgate, etc, you still see the old paint underneath. I can always touch that up by hand later if I decide it bothers me.

Cost breakdown was roughly as follows:

$100+/- Sandpaper, sanding block, masking tape, etc
$ 95+/- three cans of 3M Rocker Panel Spray
$ 25+/- for the 40+ hours of sweat I put into the prep work
$350 Paint and body shop

When I first called the body shop, he guesstimated $1500-$2000 if he did ALL the work and did it 100%.

My under $600 job is close enough for me!

I do still have some buffing to do to make the final finish "new car smooth", but I have to let the paint cure for 3-4 weeks first. Also, I probably should have been a little more liberal with the rocker panel spray - 4 cans would have been about right. I can still see my flare-hole patch jobs pretty easily if I'm looking for them. She looks a WHOLE lot better than she did though!

 

[cruiserdan]

Looks pretty damn good for 600 bucks...

 

[bhmmapping]

nice work, It looks great. I am curious about the 3m rocker panel spray. Is it a textured coating or is it smooth? it looks smooth in the pictures. Can you take a close up pic of one of the repaired flare holes?

 

[ashooter]

nice work, It looks great. I am curious about the 3m rocker panel spray. Is it a textured coating or is it smooth? it looks smooth in the pictures. Can you take a close up pic of one of the repaired flare holes?

The 3M rocker panel spray is very textured. It's almost like a heavy glue sputtering out of the can, and hardens up pretty damned tough. I tried to sort of feather the edges with some sandpaper to make it a little more subtle and it's tough to sand.

I thought about using the new Line-X "extra" that can be color matched, but that stuff is really expensive so I thought I'd try this first. It's pretty subtle, which I like.

A close-up.

Here's the worst of the worst of the patches - I was on can #3 and ran out of goop on my 2nd coat here. Sometimes a couple of patches are very noticeable and sometimes not noticeable at all - depends on how the light is hitting it.

And here's the truck that gave me the idea to do this in the first place - credit where credit is due, so to speak.

 

[Pinion]

Looks good. Have you thought about running a white roof?

 

[ashooter]

Looks good. Have you thought about running a white roof?

I thought about it, but decided against it. I think it looks kinda weird on an 80... or anything other than a 40 or maybe a 55. I fell in love with the first tan FJ60 I saw when I was about 14 (1982ish), so that's sort of the look I was after.

 

[SWCruiser]

Looks great!!! I like the color a lot but I think you need black on the window frames and pillars to balance out the black out rims and bumpers..

 

[24HOURSOFNEVADA]

Wow. That's a hell of a $600.00 paint job. I dig it. I really do. The 3M stuff looks good and subtle. I'm trying to Figure out if I should stick to my plan of finding a body and painting that then switching them or just suck it up and paint the exterior like you did. Honestly, up until yours, I was looking for a second 80 body to gut and paint for a factory like finish. Yours looks great.

 

[cruiserdan]

It looks A LOT like those UN trucks in Africa and the Middle East. The only difference is the lack of bullet holes......

 

[ashooter]

Wow. That's a hell of a $600.00 paint job. I dig it. I really do. The 3M stuff looks good and subtle. I'm trying to Figure out if I should stick to my plan of finding a body and painting that then switching them or just suck it up and paint the exterior like you did. Honestly, up until yours, I was looking for a second 80 body to gut and paint for a factory like finish. Yours looks great.

If you really want it to look 100% factory, why not just spend the extra time and/or money to have the old body painted 100%? I just had them spray the exterior, but if I wasn't such a cheapskate I could have had them open up the doors and mask all the way up to the interior trim. I saw them doing that with a truck while I was there - they hung plastic in the "door holes" and masked around that, so the finished product looks just like a factory new paint job.

Even if they removed all the doors, hood, etc so they were painted inside and out, I can't imagine that would cost more than buying a whole new body AND having it painted & swapped! Even if you go the full-bore $2000+ paint job route, seems like it would have to be cheaper than doing the whole body-swap deal.

One other thing: I could have bought 2-3 more cans of the 3M goop and sprayed the roof to cover up the roof rack and rib holes, but I figured nobody was going to be looking at the roof besides me, so screw it. My first plan was to do the LineX "Extra" color matched stuff on the roof and front pillars (on each side of the windshield) all the way down to the hood, and also on the lower part of the fenders and sides where I sprayed the 3M goop. BUT, when I found out how much that stuff was going to cost ($1000+/-), I decided to just go with the 3M on the sides and to hell with the roof. I figured if it went sour and something didn't work, I could always sand it and do the LineX stuff later.

 

[Finally Mine]

Can you tell me how the Devcon Plastic Steel putty was to work with? How big were the holes that you were filling with it? Was there a lot of prep work before and after to the area before sanding? I'm just looking for something that is stronger than regular bondo, I don't know how to weld and don't want to pay an arm and leg for the equipment.
Thanks, Steve

 

[ashooter]

The Devcon worked pretty well, but make sure you get the PUTTY so it's thick enough to not run too much. I know from using it to bed rifles etc that it is TOUGH. The only thing I know of that would be tougher is welding.

I had sanded the entire truck with 220 grit wet/dry paper before I started patching the holes. Then I used fiberglass "mesh" drywall repair tape on the backs of all the holes I could get to, just to give the Devcon something to hold on to. Most of the holes from the flares and all of the holes on the roof did not get any tape, though.

The 2 tricks with this stuff is to mix it EXACTLY in the proportions they say, and then mix it until starts to set up just a little bit. Then you can spread it over the holes with a smallish flexible putty knife and it will stay where you put it - no runs.

Also, I couldn't figure out a way to spread it or sand it so that it was flush with the surface without feeling like I wasn't giving the material enough truck to hold on to. I didn't want to leave a gob of the epoxy in the hole that was ONLY stuck to the edges of the sheet metal, so I spread it over the the holes so I ended up with "patches" roughly 1 square inch covering/filling a roughly 1/4 inch hole. That's why I went with the rocker panel spray, so those patches wouldn't be noticeable.

Turned out pretty good I think, but if I was doing it again, I would be more careful to sand the Devcon so it was smoother and then I would have used a little more of the 3M spray to cover them up. ALL of the patches on the fenders looked fine before painting, but the glossy paint made a couple of the patches more visible under the thin layer of 3M goop. Only reason I didn't run out and buy another can when I ran out is because the auto parts store is 110 miles from my house. :whoops:

 

[1loudLX]

looks great...2-3 more years and my 100s going to need something like this.