Back in beige

[jamie]

It's an air-dry paint, so I'm not sure it would. Anyway, I had a bit of a setback this evening which I will explain once I've got the pictures sorted...

Mani - thanks so much for your kind offer. I'm not next door anymore, but I'm only 10 mins away, so I might take you up on that! Nice to hear from you.

[jjeffries]

My thought is that, assuming you can get this finish applied to a standard that's good enough for you, you'll forever be attracting attention you likely won't want...answering questions from inquisitive knaves and small children...why, how, what's next etc. I may well be too much of a conformist, but I'd think you'd be more satisfied with the car in something more "normal", and I don't necesarily mean "stock", although that would be fine, too, of course. I personally don't like the car's original beige...the Germans always seem to make their beiges too pink and fleshy, makes me think of shop-front mannequins, but I did like the grey-er, more putty-like "beige cava" my old Alfa GTV came ...that's just me. Sladey's point about a non-metallic for reasons of ease and touch-up-ability is a good one. I just think with this stuff, you'd be forever explaining yourself, which sounds to me like agony.

[jamie]

100% with you on this - I used to get it all the time when I had my (normal, orange) 72T. It drove me utterly mad. A stop at the petrol station would take quarter of an hour.

Then I discovered that if I wore overalls, I could fob people off with 'sorry, it's not mine I'm just moving it for someone'. So for the last six months I owned that car, I used to drive it in a pair of navy blue overalls, looking like some workshop apprentice. I expect I'll do the same in this one - whether an old Porsche is painted in Glasurit, or wrapped in feathers, people are going to try to talk to you.

Incidentally, the worst vehicle I've ever had for this was a Kawasaki W800 SE. That thing was a magnet for ocean-going c***s.

I agree about the colour choices, too. It's like Sand Beige was specifically colour-adjusted for California. With no sun-baked landscape here in the UK, the colour is one of grotty things like the NHS (not the optimistic 1950s one, which is definitely a poppy mid-blue, but the Thatcher-era one, which is a shade of damp flesh).

[jjeffries]

Jamie, since you mentioned Mrs. T., I will make one brief comment, non-car related, hopefully not annoying anyone in the process: I was in the U.K. last week, and the current election must surely be the most crazy one ever. The things the main protagonists are saying....no matter where one's allegiances, I cannot believe anyone's happy with the offerings.

That said, over here we have pols who with a solemn and straight face profess their certainty that the world was created in seven days and that Darwin was a fraud.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Sorry! John.

[haasad]

For me part of the pleasure of classic car ownership has always been the reception and questions one gets when out and about. I'm always the one with the doors open and kids big and small behind the wheel having photo taken. Its not a show of thing its about being inclusive and remembering being the little kid.

I think the elections crap too..

[jamie]

In order that I don't sound like a total arsehole, I should make it clear that I don't mind talking to people when I'm out and about in an unusual car or on a bike (non-motorcyclists reading this won't be aware that bike people always want to talk bikes whether the machine is unusual or not).

But it's nice to be enter a conversation on your terms. I've driven lots of new and unusual cars over the years, and I've talked to a lot of people in petrol stations. I'm pretty confident got this down now - it's always a pleasure dealing with kids, it's often a pleasure dealing with other car enthusiasts, it's tedious dealing with people who start with 'what it's worth', or how their mate's has a Bentley (every bloke in a tracksuit has a mate with a Bentley, for some reason).

Back when I had my 72T, I was driving through south London and had stopped at a shitty petrol station in Camberwell. Feeling massively out of place, I noticed I was being approached from across the forecourt by a really gnarly-looking rasta guy. f*** please no, not now. Don't look, don't look. But I was stuck mid-flow, so to speak. As this scary motherfucker got to the car, he looked down along the side and said 'oh my, a 72. I had a Viper Green 72'. I instantly felt total shame for pre-judging this dude, and for forgetting that there was a time when these cool old cars could be owned by anyone that had the passion for them, not just old, rich white guys. The dude was awesome, and we talked old Porsche stuff for a bit, two people who may as well have been from different planets, united in One Porsche Love, Marley-style.

So yes, it pays to be open-minded. But sometimes you just have somewhere you need to get to, and no time to talk about someone else's mates Bentley.

Whilst I'm on this subject, the funniest encounter I ever had was whilst shooting a Lotus-engined Anglia in the New Forest. We stopped at another fuel station and this ancient lady comes walking (slowly) over towards the car.

Doris: "What a lovely car!"

Me: "Thank you. It's not mine (standard response). The owner is in the shop"

Doris: "Oh lovely. I used to have one of these"

(Like Bentley-friend to tracksuit-man, everone of a certain age used to have an Anglia. My dad used to have an Anglia. His dad probably had one, and all his friends probably had them too. Because Anglias were given away free with rolls of chicken wire, and in tubs of Isopon P38).

Me: Not doing a great job at thinking of a reply... "That's nice, they are great cars"

Doris: "Yes. It was identical to this, except it was blue, and it was a Vauxhall".


Back to business. After getting home from work last night, I decided it would be wise to get the shell off the rotisserie and onto the wheeled dolly so I could check the paint outside in daylight. A friend gave me a hand with it.

A few days ago I wasn't feeling very positive about my choice of finish. It looked a bit wishy-washy and the paint was taking so long to dry that every speck of shite in my severely dusty garage (I've been blasting panels and sanding filler in here since December) had found a home on the car.

Getting it outside was a different story. Amazing. The paint was lighter than I wanted, but the effect was exactly what I had in mind, only better. The light
rolled over every curve, but the lightness of the metallic finish made it look almost ghostly. A ghost Porsche. Das Porsche Geisterfahrzeug, or something.



I really love the gaps, and how smooth the side of the car looks. Am happy with this job...











Ignoring the dirty great run on the corner, I like the way the light rolls along the rear arch:



And here, on the front wing:



My friend then noticed that I had scratched the paint. I didn't realise I had even touched it. So I rubbed it with my fingernail and it turned out I had created not really a Ghost Porsche, but more a...



What's particularly annoying here is that the rear panel I test-painted with the same stuff is almost completely un-scratchable. I'm not sure what had happened, but I was miffed-off enough that I just rolled that son of a bitch back into the garage and cleaned it down with a fistful of 120 grit.



Then I mixed-up some new Upol high-build surfacer and re-coated the car.



Unfortunately, in my haste to regain progress, I mixed double the amount of hardener required, and so the paint dried with a slight rubbery feel. The solution here is to sand it off, but being rubbery, it's just very difficult to sand. God F****** dammit.

After four months, I'm really bored with this now. I don't mind the work, but I don't really have the time for it. Instead I make fake time by working into the small hours of the morning and waking up the next day feeling knackered. And the car is still in primer. Rubbery, over-hardened primer, several weeks behind where it was two days ago.

On the upside, Plasti Dip appears to be available in a finish which is a close match: https://youtu.be/ZxU3tchXKgA

It'll be non-permanent, but at least it'll help me get the car a step closer to being on the road, and open up even more opportunity to overthink colour choices.

[Jimmy]

I do enjoy your postings and well done for taking such work on. The only advice I would offer is to step away from the car for a week. During the haste you are making minor and probably highly irritating mistakes. The break will result in the work being completed sooner (reduced rework).
Keep positive…..

------------
Jimmy

[Bootsy]

I do enjoy your postings and well done for taking such work on. The only advice I would offer is to step away from the car for a week. During the haste you are making minor and probably highly irritating mistakes. The break will result in the work being completed sooner (reduced rework).
Keep positive…..

------------
Jimmy

Wise words

I feel your pain Jamie but as Jimmy just said - your posts really do raise a smile.

[Midlifecrisis]

Jamie, thank you for your honesty you properly made me laugh with the scratch card thing. When I'm making a piece of jewellery at the bench and it's not quite turning out how I want the hardest thing is to know when to put it down and walk away from it as I just want to solve the problem. If it's going badly I can make the worst decisions as I'm desperate to get it back on track when the best thing is to stop and regroup. Lock the garage take your girlfriend away for the weekend or go fly your plane. The car is looking great and you are nearly there....

[Uk911]

Im with the walk away from it for a couple of days and take a rest, then come back to it fired up. This system works for me when things go wrong.. Remember it's all character building stuff, it's just it pisses you off at the time.........Mark

[jamie]

I walked away, the primer hardened, I sanded it to 400 grit on Sunday, whilst ill with some sort of food poisoning picked up whilst working in Spain on Saturday. Then I ran out of black primer. Today I went over to my local paint supplier but they didn't have any more black primer, so I re-shot the car in a beige shade of the same product. It'll need to be re-sanded to 400 again, which is a total arse, but what's another three hours when I'm god-knows-how-many into this already?

I'm back to where I started on paint choice. If I am going to Plasti Dip it, then it makes sense to get a coat of proper paint on now, before reassembly, otherwise I know I'll just never do it properly.

So with that in mind, I bought a 1/4 litre tester pot of PPG Deltron 2K in Sand Beige. Girlfriend really liked the car in beige primer, which to me was the green light for a Sand Beige topcoat.

This evening, after dinner, I cracked-open the tin to show her. A surprise, or something.

"Two years... Two years talking about the colour of that sodding thing, and you're going to paint it the same baby-shite brown it was before you took it to pieces?"

f*** my life.







The high-tech spray booth:

[jamie]

Another thing I discovered - when I started this adventure, I posted some shots of the filler work I had done to the hood.

I painted the hood in primer this evening. Now I am more practiced in this delicate art, it became immediately obvious that the thing needs more than the couple of mm I gingerly applied to the very front all those months ago. It's knacked - totally knacked - it looks like little people have been jumping on it. Perhaps more knacked than the roof. It needs a good skim and a whack with a big stick wrapped in 60-grit.

I also noticed this evening that the roof looks pretty nice. It didn't when I started, so I can fix the bonnet. All this just takes time...

[Bootsy]

Do you talk to yourself when working on your car Jamie? Please say you do as I have a vision in my head

[911hillclimber]

Talk to the car when working on it?

Cripes, don't we all do that?

This is torture for you, you are probably fit as a fiddle now after all this exercise..
I cellulose painted mine in a garage that small (narrow) and know the feelings you are going through.

Keep going!

[Darren65]

....that looks sharp