Fresh out of the paint booth

Here’s the Healey, fresh out of the paint booth. It looks pretty good, but after the wet sand and polish, it will look even better.

A Healey in red

The Healey has it’s new coat of red paint on. It’s not very shiny in the first picture because the clear coat hasn’t been sprayed yet.

In the the second picture I’m spraying the clear … used to bring up the shine and protect the color layer underneath.

The nice thing about a small car is that it doesn’t take long to spray one. Which is a good thing because it’s not fun laying on the ground so you can get low enough to spray the bottom edge. And yes, I really am on my knees so I can get low enough to spray the top.

More than a bed-liner

Here’s the Healey with the Raptor bed-liner sprayed in the cockpit and boot. More and more people are having their classic cars and rods coated with this to help protect their investment.

In this case, the owner was trying to prevent the pans from rusting out if the carpet happens to get wet. Certainly a possiblity in a car with no top, or as the British would say, no hood.

Healey goes to paint

After much research by both myself and the owner, I was finally able to find the correct PPG paint code for the Healey. It’s hard sometimes when you need to go back to the original color to figure out exactly what that original color is. Especially when the car is nearly 50 years old … and English.

These are the doors, hood and trunk … or as the English say, the doors, bonnet and boot … receiving their coat of color. They look slightly flat now, but clear will be added later and that will really make them pop.

Prime time

The Healey is finally primed, and after another couple of rounds of sanding, it will be ready for paint.

This series of pictures show how the car is sanded to reveal any imperfections in the paint and to give the primer something to bite into. The light yellow or tan you see on the car is body filler used to fill imperfections in the body to make a perfectly smooth and flat base for the color layers to follow.

You will also notice that the owner asked for the wing (fender) mirrors to be removed. We welded in a bit of metal to fill the hole, smoothed it over with body filler, and after paint, you will never know they were there.