looks real good. you must be in good shape with all the work you did. my arms hurt just thinking all the work. i think you are the man

I'm about 5'9 and 230 so I'm bit on the heavy side. My arms were killing me the night after I did all the wetsanding to the body. KILLING! After the first coat of paint though the wet-sanding is pretty easy. Just glide over the top of the paint to knock off the peaks and rough it up a bit for the next layer. No digging or reshaping or removing oxidation like on the first layer!

I worked at a body shop a couple of summers ago so I kinda got the hang of the constant sanding. Since I was the low man on the totem pole I did a LOT of sanding that summer

How's the paint job coming along? Have any pics?

I just noticed you said you did a 2:1 paint/thinner ratio. How did that work out? It seems like many of the $50 paint job sites suggest 1:1 paint/thinner. It would seem kind of watery to me.

Any problems with the paint not leveling, air bubbles, orange peel, etc?

thanks for posting this thread!! I'm getting ready to do the roll-on too!
brian

[This message has been edited by Brians86SE (edited 08-17-2010).]

I see a can of penetrol in one of the pics....how much did you use and did it help?

I don't have any updated pictures but I'll post some once I finally get my lower trim painted black. I've got a few spots to touch up but otherwise its done.

The 2:1 ratio worked well for me but your results may vary. The key is to get it to the consistency of milk as water consistency is too thin. I didn't have any leveling problems or major orange peel after the first couple of coats, but the trick is to keep your coats very thin! Yes its more work, but it pays in the end

The penetol isn't a must, but it helps some. I didn't actually use any on this car but the last one I did. Some people use penetol only instead of mineral spirits but others just use a splash of it in with the mineral spirits. The point of it is to increase the time it takes for the paint to flash so that it has more time to level. I didn't really have any problems anyway though because I put it on really thin.

[This message has been edited by Alibi (edited 08-19-2010).]

I have a question as to why you do a roll paint job. Is it substantially cheaper than spraypaint? It seems like spraypaint would be much much easier. When I get my Fiero in a while, I plan to spray it flat black, to make it cheap and easy.
Greg

I would think using a bunch of rattle cans vs. rolling could be cheaper, but it depends on the brand/quality of the paint you're using.

Anyway, time to bump this thread with some updated pictures. I FINALLY got around to painting the lower trim a few weeks back. Kris Antuzzi has some pictures of the process on his camera and I'll upload those after I get them from him. All we did was wet-sand the lower trim to get rid of the drips and rough up the surface with 400 grit paper, then washed off the car at the local car-wash, masked off the trim with newspaper, and rattle-canned it with Rustoleum Gloss Black.

As you can see, we also did the area behind where the quarter panels would be as it was still the ugly gold and I don't have replacement panels yet. I'm still debating over what panels to get, but for now I think it looks pretty awesome as-is so I may leave it this way for a while.

The paint is holding up well for the most part. There are a few chips on the body that I need to address (rough up area with sandpaper, rattle-can spot, then blend with 1000 grit) and I still haven't polished the paint on the whole car. I'll probably do that this spring after doing paint touch-ups. The worst of the damage is to the nose where rock chips have knocked off a fair amount of paint. Part of the problem is that the nose only recieved 4-5 coats whereas the rest of the body got closer to 10, so the paint is just thinner. Also, prep work to the urethane front bumper was difficult and hurried more than it should have been so that may be a factor as well. Oh well, nothing a rattle can can't fix

Onto pictures:

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[This message has been edited by Alibi (edited 11-04-2010).]

awesome man glad to see you got the trim painted now to bad i didn't get to see it all done at the meet

Yeah, I'm sure you'll see it again eventually though. It looks tons better with the trim painted. Now I just need to get some springs and re-hang the exhaust, touch up the rock chips, and put on a nose emblem. I've got a plastic base and an OEM sticker, but the plastic base has a broken stud on it. Didn't the earlier emblems have a metal base? Maybe I'll go that route instead.

It should be a pretty sweet 5-10 foot paint job by the time I get around to polishing it. Overall I really like the black on white look though, its a nice contrast.

Aibi,
I am QUITE impressed! Even as you said it's not going to win any contests, but it still looks great in the pictures. I'll admit I scoffed when I first read the first few posts but you actually pulled off a good looking paint job. Well done