I've gutted my interior and I'm painting all of the plastic trim, changing the gray carpet and seat belts to black etc. Well, 1st I had to rework the rear speaker trim to fit around the Polk speakers, that took 6 hours yesterday, then I spent the next 3 hours gutting the interior. The last hour yesterday was spent on the lower portion of the door panel.

All of the trim will be painted with House of Kolor Cobalt Blue (Kandy) to achieve a medium to dark candy blue two-tone accent. I already have some custom Lloyd mats in dark blue with black trim and logos. And to do something a little different, Instead of re-dyeing the vinyl on the door panels, glove compartment and knee bolster, I'm going to paint the lower door panel plastic. So, today I spent 9 hours stripping the vinyl off the bottom of the door panels and cleaning, scraping and removing the adhesive . . . what a pain in the a s s this job has turned out to be.

The lower plastic has several 1/32" diameter holes too (go figure), so tomorrow I get to fiberglass those holes closed and sand it all smooth to get them ready for paint.

Any tips for sanding the typical plastic pieces (console, radio trim, handle trim etc.) smooth for painting would be appreciated.

Sorry, since the forum homepages are still down, I can't post any pics.

 

I've sanded down 4 of the eight large pieces and after 3 days of this, I'm beat.

In order to sand down your plastic parts for painting, I used 80 grit wet sand paper (hard to find in 80 grit) and sanded off the texture then went to 220 grit to smoth the surface some.

I just picked up a bunch of pvc parts and plastic to build a 15' x 10' paint booth. I still need to buy some wood to build an angled paint table to have a place to set everything for the actual painting. Even with tomorrow off and most if not all of Tuesday, I don't think I'll be able to paint until Friday or Saturday.

Oh well, luckily I have another Vette I can drive.

 

I definately want to see pics when you are done!

 

Me too, I want pics. antvette@hotmail.com

 

sounds great, need pics!

 

Good luck with your project. Show us some pics when finished.

 

Give us an update Glenn, hopefully the 3 day weekend allowed you to get a lot done. Take a break next Saturday and come do the Hwy 4 cruise with us!

Roy

 

Looking forward to pics...sounds like a cool project

 

Me Too...

 

I had Friday off too. Over the past 4 days, I put in 34 hours of work . . . still not ready to paint. I have a ton of pics, if someone can host them since the forum homepage is down, I'll e:mail some of the better ones. Thanks for the invite Roy, but I don't think it'll be back together until Sunday.

I solicited some quality opinions and decided to do away with the red reflector on the lower door panel. One, I think it'll look better without the reflector, two, I'm going to have some subtle graphics in that area and the reflector would have interfered. Right now, I still have 3 more large parts to sand smooth for paint and a handful of small items. One of the door panels is almost ready for paint and the other one is still ~3 hours behind.

I'm going to take some time off work this week and hope to be ready to paint on Saturday and put her back together on Sunday. So much for pulling this off over a 4 day weekend.

I'm going to build a pvc frame paint booth ~10'x15'. Since I'm painting with candy paint, dust is an absolute no-no. I also have to build something to hold everything for painting. And I have to clean out, pressure wash the garage before I paint.

Saturday I was wondering, why did I start this project? Now, I'm pumped again, this will be very cool when it's all done!!!!

 

Congrats and good luck!