06-30-10 Got Paint!

Got Paint?

My painter got to shoot some color finally this last weekend, but before doing so he called me down to the shop to take a look at an issue common to a lot of FFR's...the infamous crooked hood scoop. I had read about it in the past but had forgotten to bring it up. With single color cars and even with the 'traditional' lemans stripes most people don't even notice it. It was going to be a bit more noticeable with the color scheme I decided on....something I had only seen done a few times on originals or replicas. Of course, the originals never were completely straight either, or so I'm told.

My painted started to lay out the stripes be establishing the centerline. For the most part things line up nicely in the back...the trunk latch hold is off just a bit. Primer's all blocked out with 600 grit and ready to shoot.

But the front scoop sits a little crooked. The leading edge of the scoop is not too bad...

But here you can see the scoop trails off toward the driver side a bit. I debated going with different strip dimensions to hopefully make the total stripe width more narrow, or wider. In the end I took a couple of 200mg Fukitols and stuck with my original game plan - three 3-inch wide stripes.

In, of course, red, white and blue, to mark my original planned completion date, and be something 'other' than the usual two-striped lemans pattern. The colors, more precisely, are Toyota Metallic Red (3Q3), White Clearcoat (056), and Metallic Blue (8Q0).

And viewed from the front...

And after the stripes had dried enough they masked them off and shot my base color, Lexus Breakwater Blue (8R6).

And viewed from the other side...

And the doors with a layer of clear, mounted on the contraption I made for my first FFR build....I knew it would come in handy again someday.

And what's a good clear without some wet sanding?

To help bring out some shiny shine...I tried to lighten up these shots with Pshop so simulate outside light a bit more...the stripe colors look darker than the cars I had seen them on out on the road.

And the view most people will get of the car...

Nice shiny hood. Can't really tell about the crooked scoop from the sides.

And the trunk door. Latch will be a bit off, but the license plate light looks pretty close.

The painter still wants to do some final polishing this weekend before I get it back, so it should get even shinier. Can't wait to get some shots of it out in the sun. I couldn't find a picture of the particular original car that first gave me the idea for this color scheme, but did find this 289 on a race course. I decided to put the red on the driver's side instead.

And just to prove I haven't been completely sitting on my hands while the painter made all the progress, notice that wires aren't still strewn all over the top of the firewall, they're being loomed up and routed properly bit by bit.

The FFMetal firewall foward piece creates a nice ledge under which you can route wiring and plumbing for a cleaner engine bay.