Finally Started My 84 corvette.

Well, I finally started the process of roller painting my 84 corvette. I haven't actually started the car itself yet, but I have started painting the headlight covers and bezels. I figured I needed to practice and starting with a small easy to repaint part sounded goog to me.

I used Canadian tire branded armor coat rust paint, in Zesty Orange, 100 percent mineral spirits etc.


Mixed my Paint at aprx 50/50 not exact but close enough; sanded my headlight covers and put on the first coat of paint. I am truely impressed lots of bubbles on the first pass, swipe over it with the rollers own weight and voila... couple of minutes later no bubbles. I think I may have put the first coat on a little thick but I didn't see any major orange peel so everything should be okay. The only thing I'm going to do is make sure I wipe the car itself down with a degreaser( I have some fish eyes in my test panel which will show in the picture) and use a tack cloth between coats ( some dust in my test panels as well). Ove the next few days I'm going to finish the test panels; I have some body work to do on the car, I'll take some pics of the before and hopefull next weekend I'll be painting.. This is going to be a color change so I'll have to think about door jambs and window edges etc...

This is the headlight door as it came off the car.


Here is the headlight door after a sanding with 400 grit paper.


Here is the first coat of paint on the headlight door; if you look carefully you can see some of the fish eyes/puckering.


Here is the headlight bucket spray painted with the matching color.



Here's a pic of the car as it is right now.... the paint is majorly weathered even though it doesn't look like it in this photo. I'll be going from the "bronze" to orange including the belt line molding...

Looking good. I really like the iroc rims on the car as well.

Thanks, I like the wheels too. They look a lot better than the stockers; in the perfect world I would have the cash to buy some new wheels but not right now ( hence the cheap paint job). I may however paint the original wheels with duplicolor graphite wheel paint and put them back on the car once the paint is done.

Yeah that duplicolor graphite is a nice color. I have it on my grille, headlight bezels and some rims on my s10 and it has held up real good and looks good.

That color will look great on your Vette..

I really like corvettes. Is that the first year of that body style? Can't say that I've ever seen irocs on one, they look good on there. It's going to look really good orange. Keep us posted

Yep its the first year of that body style... with the "infamous crossfire injection" which in all honesty works fine, no issue at all, 160000 miles and except for oil burn on startup it runs fantastic.

I hope the orange looks good, if not I'll probably end up doing a red or black, its just that I'm sick of red, black, white etc. Want to be different.

Yeah you don't see many older vehicles wearing bright colors. My CJ7 is metallic brown which works for a Jeep but I thought it would be cool orange or yellow or something eye catching. That orange will definately catch peoples attention on your vette.

From your pictures looks like the orange will work great.

Are the corvettes and camaros that era on the same platform? Just wondering if you had to run spacers or anything to have the irocs fit right.

Nope totally different platforms. Corvettes from 84 thru 87 I believe had wheels with 38mm offsets, 8.5 or 9.5 inches wide (depending on model of vette). Iroc wheels of that era are the same bolt pattern but have 0 and 18mm of offset at a width of 8 inches. To get the wheels to work on my car with 255/50 16 tires I actually mounted the rear Iroc wheels on the front of the Vette, the rears are the ones with the 18mm offset and its needed to make clearence for the tires at full lock turn. The front zero offset wheels actually stick out about 1/4 inch past the fender lip.

I'm probably going to put the original wheels back on with a duplicolor graphite wheel paint scheme. If I can afford it I will probably buy some 17inch wheels next year.

Quickie Photoshops

zr1's is what i was leaning towards.

Think after seeing this pic, that I'm going to paint the door handles orange and get polished wheels when the funds arrive.

looks great, thanks.

That will look Great.It really shows the shape and lines of your Vette.

No offense, Matt. But I think the original wheels look better. Awesome job on the photoshopping, though.

hmmm crappy tire rust paint? good good. im getting somewhere now

Bob
I have a 73 Corvette in 953 Yellow metallic with one repaint BC/CC . It looks pretty good currently but getting chips and cracks here and there. I am thinking about Brightside 4237 "Sundown Buff" which seems to be the closest I have found to my original color (we'll see) and since my wife won't let me change to black like Darrin's Vette on the Mopar site. But I gotta say that color will look good... like the C6 Orange Metallic! With the Graphite Color wheels it looks like a z06! Where did you get that paint? It looks great!
Do you have spyder cracks in your paint b4 you started ? Did the 400 grit take them out? see my post in "exterior"... Might be asking you more dumb questions... Thanks Bob

after wrote:hmmm crappy tire rust paint? good good. im getting somewhere now

you lost me?

sorry, Crappy tire is the nickname for Canadian tire, along the lines of pep boys.

Dave Gunggoll wrote:Bob
I have a 73 Corvette in 953 Yellow metallic with one repaint BC/CC . It looks pretty good currently but getting chips and cracks here and there. I am thinking about Brightside 4237 "Sundown Buff" which seems to be the closest I have found to my original color (we'll see) and since my wife won't let me change to black like Darrin's Vette on the Mopar site. But I gotta say that color will look good... like the C6 Orange Metallic! With the Graphite Color wheels it looks like a z06! Where did you get that paint? It looks great!
Do you have spyder cracks in your paint b4 you started ? Did the 400 grit take them out? see my post in "exterior"... Might be asking you more dumb questions... Thanks Bob

THe color is actually going to be a bit less like the orange metallic than it looks in the photo shop, I think its actually going to be closer to a hugger orange. I wanted to do the orange metallic, but honestly I'll never pay anyone multiple thousands of dollars to paint my car, i don't think a cheap paint job at a cheap place is worth it either. I was going to spray my car myself, get the proper paint, reducers, clear etc. but you know what I really don't have any interest in masking my garage walls, my floor, any of the stuff on the car that I don't want over spray on.. and I'd still need to wet sand the clear coat to get rid of any orange peel when I'm done.

One reason I'm saying this is that I don't have to get my car done in any set period of time, as of next week I plan on painting a coat a night for the next 2 weeks or so. Sanding every third night, worst thing is that I think its going to take close to 8 coats to fully cover the bronze, and I'll probably do 2 or 3 extra after full coverage. I was actually going to paint the car a tremclad color that was very close to the stock color, but decided its my car, I want an orange vette... so I'm making it orange.

It's going to look good orange Bob. If you want to cut back on the number of coats, you could always use a tinted primer with 50% or higher the orange pigment. That's what I plan to do next time. It won't hurt anything to have more coats but it makes it easier and allows the paint to remain uniform if it's covering the same hue.

I don't think tinted primer will be an issue. I have six coats on my headlight covers and probably 2 more and it will be full covered. I think I'm going to throw 2 or 3 extra coats on after full coverage. I started fixing the cracks etc in the body today. I should have that completed tomorrow. Probably start the painting on Tuesday evening after work.

Good deal, keep us posted

dats gonna be a SEXY BEAST!!!!!! looking good, i like the color!!