Tag Archives: tie-coat primer

Paint

January 2004 – Body shell spray priming

Body shell spray priming

Over the entire New Year’s holiday and, for that matter, for the entire Christmas holiday break the weather has been absolutely wonderful. We took advantage of exceptionally warm temperatures to open up the garage and spray the body shell with primer. The temperatures reached the mid-70s (Fahrenheit, 20+ Celsius), and so short sleeves did it, as you can see from the picture of Aaron spraying the right rear quarter panel. As everything was open and the fan was blowing, we didn’t use face masks, which probably weren’t necessary in this case. But we did wear ear protection because the compressor is so loud. In retrospect, I believe we should have worn our respirators, too.

Aaron isn’t too interested in doing the sanding, but he was ready to do spraying since it involved a new tool to play with and didn’t require tedious motion.

This was the first primer coat that was sprayed on, as opposed to brushed, and it went very quickly. Using a paint brush is a bit easier in preparation, but the real work comes with the block-sanding. It was very nice to see the coating go on without so much as a brush line anywhere, though Aaron was a bit too liberal with paint on the quarter panel since he left a few drip marks. These were easily removed with the blocking, though. You can see from the light lines at the top of the quarter panel that the blocking I’d done before has paid off in nice clear and predictable reflections. The quarter panels actually have been quite easy to do, perhaps because they are not large and flat surfaces. Flat surfaces and ones that require a long straight light line have been the troublesome ones for me.

As a matter of fact, two such surfaces make it impossible for this spray of primer to be the last. The outer sills (or rocker panels) are curved, of course, but the light line extends their whole length and it ought to be arrow straight. The outer sills are really shaped like quarter round moulding — quarter cylinders rounding out the connection of the side panels (and the doors) to the floor pans. Part of the problem (though not all of it) is due to the fact that I fabricated the left outer sill and it has a few irregularities that I need to work out. But I still am having some trouble getting the light lines on both sides arrow straight — it isn’t purely a matter of my fabrication methods (which were, I’ll admit, a bit crude). I think most of the issue is that the area is simply harder to work on because it’s lower and I don’t have a rotisserie to swing the area into easy access. The lower halves of the outer sills had at best a single brush coat of primer, and the sanding was difficult.

They’ll both need at least another spray of primer and blocking. The rest of the body shell is in pretty good shape, and I think that one more spray of primer will do the trick before we can spray color. The interior and the front bulkhead (firewall) will get no more primer. They’re ready for paint, after I sand the bulkhead a bit.

Spraying and blocking the body shell without the doors took two days. I did not spray the underside or the inside of the trunk (boot) nor did I block the front bulkhead or the interior. The bulk of the work was in the blocking the exterior sections of the car, and that was greatly simplified by spraying, as I said. The nice thing about using the brush in the first stages of priming was that it was easy to do small areas (like the detail section on the door that I did). If you manage to do all the prep, spraying the entire car is probably easier, despite the mess of spraying. Blocking sure is easier without brush marks.

Temperatures are expected to drop down to normal levels this next week, so I don’t think I’ll be spraying any more primer for a while. I also got a hold of some rock guard, though I decided against the 3M “Rocker Schutz” that has gotten a fair amount of exposure among the Jag restorers. The brand was recommended by a body fellow, and it has the added bonus of being a bit less expensive than the 3M product. I asked for “Rocker Schutz” by name, and we shuffled off through the shelves of stock to get it. He asked what I was going to use it on, and I told him. He said, “Let me show you something else” and we went off into the depths of the place. “I sell twenty times more of this stuff than the 3M,” he said. Now, I’m sure that “Rocker Schutz” is great stuff, but I figured I’d give this a try. The nice thing was that I didn’t have to shell out $60 USD to get the special 3M spray gun for this product. It uses a more generic aluminum low pressure gun, and the bottles of the product attach directly to the gun. I’ll provide more information later when I have a chance to use it on the underside of the car.

The body shell is virtually complete and ready for paint, so we’ll have to turn our attention to other things. That is a bit of a relief, to tell the truth. I am thinking that I will begin to study the IRS, and perhaps make some room in the garage to begin working on it. (The garage is a huge mess, I’m afraid.)

To close things up, a couple more photos:

Paint

October/November 2003 – Primer, block-sanding, coat two

Update: November 12 — It hardly seems worth an additional web page, so I didn’t add yet more pictures of the same old blocking. The focus was on the left door, and I was committed to conquering its waves. The blocking took all of the working weekend, amounting, I would imagine to a good ten-to-twelve hours. I noticed on Bill McKenna’s website that he spent 25 hours on his left door, so I figure that my work is about in line with his. There’s still another coat of primer to go on it, and I don’t know how many hours I spent working on it before this past weekend. As Bill says somewhere on his web site, it’s a wonder that people can actually make money doing a decent restoration. The hours required — and from skilled people, too — are formidable.

Speaking of Bill, I bought a replacement left frame from him. It was good to see his paint job in real life, at least a small portion of it. I’ve not done anything with the frame yet. I figure that can wait until I have the car body primed.

Second Coat of Primer

The car was turned into a pumpkin for Halloween. After the second coat of Tie-Coat Primer was good and dry, I put on another guide coat of flat spray paint. This time I found a half-can of hideous orange. It made the car look like a well ripened pumpkin — appropriate for the season. I took this picture after I happened to see where we were about a year ago. It turns out that we had just applied some POR-15 over the same area of the car after having removed paint. We were still pretty much in a tear-down and clean-up mode back in October-November 2002. It is good to see those old web pages, since it at least gives the impression of progress. Block-sanding tends to throttle that feeling, except of course when you tear into a bright orange marker coat!

It’s probably worth remembering that the point of doing multiple coats of high-build primer isn’t so much to coat the surface evenly with a thick coat. It’s really intended to allow you to even out low areas and obscure high areas, though of these two, I think that high areas are problematic. So in effect, you end up sanding most of the high-build primer off of the car. You leave a reasonable amount of primer on to assure a good bond of the topcoat to the surface. The temptation is to block the car a bit too little, leaving more than is needed to prepare the surface.

I get the feeling that this is really an art. And I also realize that good body work is worth the money people spend for it. It is labor-intensive and experience does count. (Too bad I have so very little experience!)

The second coat pretty clearly tells me that you really can’t spray the final primer coat and expect things to turn out all right. Despite my care while brushing the second primer coat, blocking it was complicated by the fact of the brush strokes. I found myself reblocking sections that had slight ripples from brush strokes, and I believe those areas would have been flat and ready for paint without the brushing. As a matter of fact, I think first coats are fine to brush, but probably not second coats.

For this priming of the car body, I will complete a second coat and second round of blocking the parts of the body that appear “from the curb” — the external sections of the body shell and the bonnet. The internal sections of these parts will get a single brushed primer coat and blocking. This includes the trunk (or boot), the firewall (or front bulkhead), the interior of the car, and the inside of the bonnet. I will probably spray color in the trunk, the interior, and the inside of the bonnet at that point. After all of this is done, I will spray a final coat of Tie-Coat Primer as smoothly as possible over sections of the car that are not already sprayed with color, followed by final blocking of those surfaces.

Of course, I could spray color on everything at once, though I am thinking that I’ll still have to spray color on the bonnet in at least two sessions, since I want to coat the inside of the bonnet thoroughly. This really means that the inside shell without the internal panels will need a separate spray session. The inside panels and the front valance (the lower “mouth” section) can also be painted separately. Once everything is together, another coat of color is in order.

Once again, the bonnet seems the complication.

I avoided doing the doors until I feel confident that I have a few more blocking tricks in my repertoire. I applied a bit more primer to a couple of low areas on the rear wings, and blocked them nicely into shape. Perhaps that tactic might help should I run into some irregularlities on the doors. I think that the doors are challenging because they don’t have the curves of the wings and the rest of the body. They are almost a pure tubular shape, and it seems difficult to get them just right. I also primed the trunk lid.

A couple of closing shots show where the blocking stands at the end of the weekend.

Paint

October 2003 – Paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis tested

Paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis tested

I mentioned at the close of the last entry that I was going to test out whether “high-build” primer could be painted on with a brush and still have it serve its purpose. Well, I didn’t use a typical sprayed “high-build” primer, though I used a “sandable/buildable primer.” The coating is “Tie-Coat Primer” that I needed to use to bond coatings to POR-15. POR-15 is very tough, and it has properties that make it tough to get regular primers to bond to it. Basically, you have to sand the surface rough in order to get primers or paints to stick to it. Or, you use Tie-Coat Primer.

I applied the Tie-Coat to the bonnet nose, which needed some smoothing in any case. I put on two coats, and after they had set I sprayed a thin coat of regular old flat black paint. The black paint was the “guide” coat that would mark where I had sanded and would highlight low areas on the surface. if the test worked the sanding after this initial primer would leave a perfectly smooth surface, leaving slightly rough and darker patches where low areas would be. High areas would become the color of the underlying POR-15, since the primer would be entirely removed with sanding. Only block sanding is allowed at this point. Taking some wet sandpaper in hand and trying it out with your fingertips just leaves grooves and usually frustrates the purpose of the marker paint coat, since your fingertips just follow the surface, however rough, and take off the paint.

The picture of the bonnet nose shows the light black marker paint over the buildable primer and the block-sanded surface. The bonnet, you might recall, has been a real challenge, and the marks show it. These marks are mostly well defined notches where body filler wasn’t adequately applied. Most low areas end up looking like shadows where wider, less detectable, depressions lurk.

I’m happy to report that the paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis tested out just fine. However, I do think there is a bit more waste of primer, and perhaps coats need to be applied a bit more thickly. This is because you have to sand through the brush marks, which appear quite clearly after the first swipes of the block over the surface. There also may be a bit of a tendency to remove too much primer in certain areas in order to remove brush marks. My suggestion is to remember to use reasonably long swipes of the block and avoid concentrating effort in any area. If you are using anything shorter than a 20-30 centimeter (about a foot) stroke with the block, you are probably going too hard at an area. If you use a small block to get at tighter areas or corners, be extra careful.

Because of the brush marks, I’m a little suspicious about applying final primer coats with a brush. It might be counter-productive, though I am going to see whether it’s possible by watching this project. I do think that brushing at least an initial coat makes good sense, and it probably can allow people to avoid a mess with sprayers.

A footnote: I was originally thinking that I would use Tie-Coat to prepare the surface to accept another high-build primer, but I learned from the POR-15 people that they don’t recommend mixing primers like that. They told me in response to an email question that Tie-Coat is a buildable primer and using another primer over it might have unexpected results. They responded quickly, too, I’m happy to report. I don’t know about the response, though, since it might have been designed to drum up more sales of Tie-Coat Primer. I’m not taking any chances, however. I’ll be using Tie-Coat as the one-and-only primer for this project.

Initial brush priming the body shell

After the bonnet experiment tested well, I went ahead and brush primed the body shell first with a thin coat of Tie-Coat Primer and then after it had set overnight a thicker coat — at least a coat that ended up with some drips here and there. After that coat set, I sprayed a dusting of the flat black paint as a marker coating. I made sure that the primer itself had set before I did any block-sanding. (Tie-Coat is supposed to accept topcoats after no less than 24 hours after application.) Since temperatures had been below 60 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 Celsius), I gave the primer about 48 hours before I tried blocking.

I used 320 grit wet sanding on two different block sizes, a four-incher and a nine-incher. The smaller of the two worked very well on the rear upper quarter panels (the “humps” to each side of the trunk space over the rear wheels). The larger block worked merely acceptably on the larger flat areas on the sides and forward on the body shell. I say acceptably, since the right door gave me a fair amount of trouble. I had built up the rear lower section of the door so that it met the door frame, and I expected that there would be irregularlities that would come through in the marker paint. Oddly enough, the door blocked to a light blue, practically without a bit of marking paint appearing, even though irregularlities were quite easy to feel, and pretty easy to see when the piece was cleaned and shiny with water.

I should add that the “Carolina Blue” color of the primer was not my choice. That’s apparently the only color Tie-Coat comes in, or I would have chosen something else! This is the only time this car will appear light blue, at least as long as I own it.

But, back to the block issue. I didn’t want to use the longer home-made block, since it lacks the soft covering behind the sandpaper, and I didn’t want to gouge the surface with a slip. I do think that either I need to get better with the nine-inch block, or I need to find a much longer block to do the sides. I’ve noticed that the body folks at Classic Jaguar have a huge block with two handles on it to do the side panel and door work. The flat surface of that block must be about a meter long, since it easily straddles the length of the door and overlaps well over the ends of the door frame. A good long block would come in handy when you block up the body shell, the outer sills and the bonnet, I suppose.

Block sanding is not very interesting, though it does have some rules. First, keep the block parallel to the line of contact. In other words, if you are block-sanding a curved surface, the contact points of the surface should be a consistent line from the front to the back of the block. Second, move the block diagonally across the surface, first in one diagonal and then after you cover the surface, along the opposite diagonal. In effect, you make an “X” shape with the directions of your sanding over the surface. Third, thoroughly block the surface, but don’t dwell on any one place too long. With “high-build” primers, it’s pretty easy to oversand an area. And, fourth, use the block, not your hands. You can’t believe how many times you’ll be tempted to “touch” up an area with your fingertips. You can’t believe how many times you’ll screw it up. If you can’t resist the urge, use very, very, very light pressure with your fingertips, and don’t dwell on a specific area. I’ve found that even trying to rub down drips of the brushed primer with fingertips is counterproductive. The block is much better. You’ll need to keep the block quite wet, too. The primer soon turns into a gooey lubricant if you don’t rinse it off. I used warm water with just a few drops of dishwashing soap. The soap seemed to help keep the sandpaper clear, and yet there wasn’t so much in the water that soapy film became a problem. An old cake pan worked great as a container. Wipe the blocked surface with a wet cloth to get the sanded primer out of the way.

I got the entire external section of the upper body shell completely block-sanded in about seven hours, I would guess, after subtracting interruptions and breaks. Like I said, this is not very engaging work. It’s repetitive without a doubt.

I checked the surface by wiping it with some low-concentrate soapy water and then looking at the reflection of flood lights along the surface. The lines should be predictable, and you shouldn’t see small wavers (except where you’d be expecting them). The dark picture shows the floods reflecting against the right side of the car. There are some pit-like reflections that come from small soap bubbles. You can see a wavering of the reflection in the door, where irregularities widen the reflection. I usually get a good long reflection in view and then move up and down to see the reflected line travel across the surface. In the case of this side of the car, I should see a consistent line. I didn’t because of irregularities in the door panel. It still needs work. But the rear quarter panel is in pretty good shape.

I also used a little bit of Evercoat “Easy Sand” body filler to bring up a couple of areas on the left side — one flatness over the rear wheel well that I mentioned before and flatness where I repaired the “fillet” some time ago. Very little of the body filler was required. That Evercoat product, by the way, was good to use and seemed to set well. I now wish I had used the Evercoat body fillers from the beginning.

Second coat of primer

I decided to try brushing the second coat of primer. (I’m planning on three coats for external sections of the car.) Instead of applying a coat that would drip, I applied two fairly thin coats, and I’ve applied a third thin coat to areas I think need a little more coverage. I’ll let the primer dry well and apply a marker coat of paint sometime this week. Then it’s back to blocking again. I’m debating what to do about the nine-inch block. Do I try to use it again? Do I look for a longer block? Do I try to make a long block myself?

Body work, Paint

October 2003 – Color choice, subframe & “boot” primer

Color? It’s going to be British Racing Green

Ah! to fix dents is easy. You see them, you fix them. You know when it’s right. Not so with color. I know that I have driven my family crazy with this decision, and I can’t but help think that even this decision is, well, provisional — at least until the paint sits in a can in the garage.

I know I have felt as committed to

  • Opalescent Silver Blue — too much like Carolina Blue, and I’m a Duke man,
  • Opalescent Dark Blue — Duke blue on a car, but my wife’s truck is the color already and red or dark blue interiors are recommended, and
  • Opalescent Dark Green — great in theory, but the car recently sprayed the color in the Classic Jaguar workshop just didn’t appeal to me.

And British Racing Green is a color with roots. The earliest surviving E-type roadster, if I’m not mistaken, is BRG. It was (and still is) known as 77 RW, restored in 2001. British Racing Green is a good traditional color for British sports cars. So why not have one in rural North Carolina, too?

Centering the bonnet subframe

When we stuck the bonnet on the frames, just to see what the old thing looked like, we noticed that the bonnet was cockeyed. The trouble is in the bonnet frame, which probably sustained some accident damage. (My initial observations, including a description of the way the damage was “repaired” or at least hidden, appear in a previous entry.) What we needed to do was more systematically and geometrically characterize the damage: What was pitched? How much was it off center? Where is the pivot for the pitch to the left side of the car?

The exploration really began with some crude drawings that I made back in August, when we could measure the effect that the frame damage was having on the fit of the bonnet. Those measurements showed that the bonnet was set too far back on the left side — in fact the bonnet was butted against the firewall (front bulkhead) on that side. On the right side of the car, the bonnet was too far forward by about 3 centimeters or so. Drawing out the general structure of the frame identified a couple of places where the pitch to the left could have pivoted. The entire frame structure could be pitched, meaning that the side frames (the “A” shaped structures that make up the engine compartment) could be bent. This would mean that the pivot would be at the center of the firewall. Or, the front frame piece that holds the bonnet and the radiator could be pitched. This would mean that the pivot would be at the center of the so-called “picture frame,” the front of the engine compartment that attaches to the side frames. Clearly, the pivot from the center of the picture frame would be preferable, since a pivot off of the firewall would be virtually irreparable.

I doubted that the damage was off the firewall, since there was no other evidence of damage there. But the side frames themselves could bear the damage in some not-too-apparent way, I thought. The left side frame already concerns me because of the rust damage I discovered on it.

Another thing that helped was a schematic of the body shell and the front frame structure that appears in the Terry’s Jaguar catalogue (“Body Dimensions,” Terry’s Jaguar Parts, 11th ed. [Benton, Illinois, 2001], p. 6-3). The drawing and measurements help to situate the frame structure especially in relation to easily figured out points on the body. The information is for “checking points for accidental damage on [the] XKE body and front frame.” The only thing that might be a bit misleading is the accuracy of the measurements. They are, I believe, too precise, sometimes going to the 32nd of an inch. That kind of accuracy usually isn’t necessary for the body, since fitting sections together often includes bolts and holes that are designed and intended to be used to make minor adjustments to the fit. But this catalogue is a good reference to have on the shelf. Terry’s Jaguar Parts has a good reputation as a parts supplier. They’ll send you a catalogue if you ask.

Using TJP’s “Body Dimensions” as a guide, we strung some string along the center line of the body shell, extending it out into the front frame area. We found that the picture frame hit dead center as it should, but the bonnet frame was off about 2 centimeters to the left. We marked the point where the center line of the car crossed the bonnet frame hinge tube (the forwardmost pipe) and the radiator mount. We measured these points against the centers of the hinge tube and the mount. Then we tied the string to the center of the picture frame and ran the string to the true center of the bonnet frame hinge tube and checked to see where the string crossed the radiator mount. It crossed at the center point of the mount.

That process of string measuring might seem a bit complicated, but it established that the problem with the fitting of the bonnet was entirely in front of the picture frame. The pivot of the bending was at the center of the picture frame. The picture of the frame from the top plainly shows the bend, and now that I see the frame in a photograph I see how rough it looks. So, now I’m wondering about having even this frame repaired. But that brings up another topic….

On not repairing the subframes

A kind email message from fellow E-type restorer Bill McKenna urged me not to have the damaged left frame repaired. The steel (Reynolds 351) was brazed from the factory and is a fairly touchy metal to work with if you don’t want to lose the temper or otherwise weaken the metal. As Bill put it: “To me those frames are all that’s between a nice drive in the country and a major disaster, so not a good thing to skimp on.” Now, I don’t think that the bonnet frame has quite the stress that the other frame parts have to bear. Nor does the bonnet frame quite have as much riding on it in terms of safety. So, I think I could have the bonnet frame repaired.

About the same time that Bill sent his note, a thread on jag-lovers.org brought up the welding issue, and hammered the point home about “repairing” frames. It just doesn’t seem wise, and even if you would have the repairs done following all of the steel manufacturer’s guidelines, you’d probably end up spending about what a new frame would cost. And, having “repaired” it properly, you’d still have a 40-year-old frame at the end.

I think that my left frame will need to be replaced, not repaired. I’m going to have to look around.

Tie-Coat primer in the “boot”

“Tie-Coat Primer” is designed to bond well even to cured POR-15 coatings, and so I’m using Tie-Coat as a base for the topcoat in internal sections of the body and as a base for high-build primer on external sections. I’m trying something out. I read on jag-lovers.org that someone brush paints high-build primer, since the stuff is supposed to be sanded smooth in any case, so why mess with the mess of shooting the paint out a sprayer? When I first read that, I dismissed it, but after a while it did make some sense to me. And so I’m testing it, not with a high-build primer, but with the Tie-Coat, which is billed as a “sandable primer.” I painted the inside of the trunk (aka: “boot”) with Tie-Coat, and I put two coats on the trunk floor, since I’ll need to smooth it very well, especially in the area around the spare tire. I do not plan to spray this area, or any other inside section of the car, with high-build primer. That’s for the outside.

In addition to the inside of the trunk, I brush painted the upper nose section of the bonnet, which still needs attention. I figured that the paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis could be better tested on the nose, too. It certainly could stand some smoothing. I’ll be treating the nose as though it has high-build on it, so I’ll be using a guide coat of some sort of paint to mark where I’ve block-sanded. If brush painting works, I’ll put all of the Tie-Coat on with a brush. I still think that the final primer needs to be applied with a spray gun.

Pictures below show the “boot” before and after the primer went on.