Painting Your Fiero
Painting was a real experience. Since I did not want anyone to know that the car had ever been painted before, I elected to take all of the body panels off, repaint them and re-install them. This was more of a chore that I first thought. Here is the procedure I used to paint my Fiero after all of the body panels were stripped..
Step 1: All the existing paint was roughed up with 220 grit. This removed the cracked and weather clearcoat and gave me a smooth base. I then followed with 400 wet, 600 wet, and then 800 wet.
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Step 2: All panels were wiped down with DUPONT Plastic-Prep #2319. Any flexible parts that were sanded through the paint layers were coated with PROFORM Flexi-Grip to aid paint adhesion. I primed all surfaces with a primer/sealer. I tried to get a flex agent, but the there was none available locally. It nobody uses it much an more. I contacted many body shops and they were in agreement. It seems that any car painted without a flex agent added will eventually crack and nay car painted with a flex agent will eventually crack. There is enough flexibility in the modern paints to handle most situations. If you must have it, I did find a universal flex agent from MARHYDE. All parts were wet sanded again with 600 and 800 grit paper and wiped down with Plastic-Prep.
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Spraying requires a very clean environment. My first attempts were not all that successful. I took my practice pieces into a friendly body shop for advice. Paints need 'flash' time and in order to achieve this there has to be sufficient air exchange, something I didn't have. I also didn't want too much airflow through open doors or windows because of dust. I solved the problem by adding clean air into the garage as well as an exhaust fan. I used a very clean heavy-duty shop vac to force clean air into the spray area. The quality of the finish was very evident and so was the visibility.
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Step 3: I used DUPONT CHROMABASE in black. It's mixed with the basemaker 1:1. The type of basemaker depends on the temperature range you will be spraying. For my gun, I sprayed at about 40 p.s.i. This is a nice type of coat to spray and gives the car the colour base. All you need to do is to coat the part thoroughly with colour. It dries very quickly and evenly. Wipe down the car with a tack rag between each coat to keep the dust to a minimum. You usually apply 2 to 3 coats allowing a 10 minute flash between. Make sure you have very strong lighting to make sure you have complete coverage. Flaws will be seen in bright sunlight after the car is complete if you are careful!
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Step 4: The clearcoat is mixed with the activator and reducer at a ratio of 8:2:1. Spray two to three coats of clear. Wait 10 minutes between each coat.
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Step 5: To fix the inevitable flaws. Start with 1000 and move to 2000 grit wet sandpaper to remove the annoying drip or run. Be careful not to sand through the clearcoat or you will have to redo the panel. Buff out the part with 3M compound #05928 to a shine.
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This is an expensive way to paint a car. There is so much overspray from the individual parts that it gets hard to see when you are spraying. My advice is to do only a few panels at a time. I used 3 quarts of colour and 6 quarts of clear. This is way more than you would use spraying the entire car assembled.
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