Under Construction

After the initial coat of rust preventative primer was applied a second sealer coat primer was sprayed. This is an epoxy sealer coat that is used prior to putting on your top coat (color). It's sort of a greenish gray color and provides a solid base for the top coat to adhere to. See the top picture at the left. Did you check out the engine stand pulling double duty in the pics? For those who have painted cars, different paints have specific characteristics about them and one of them is surface capatibilities. This means that while you can paint almost anything, you have to make sure that one paint can be sprayed upon another. If you do not, then the risk of "lifting" of the lower coat will occur when wet or "peeling" later when the material dries. You have about 12 hours to put on the "top coat" after a primer sealer is applied. Any longer than that, you will have to prep the surface again with a mid-grit scotch bright pad. Generally this primer is ready within a few hours after application to spray a top coat. We will cover this in more detail when we get to the body painting of this restoration project. For those of you who are wondering why go through all this trouble with just painting the frame? Why don't you just brush on some black and be done with it. Well that's all fine and dandy for the "TR's" but for the Spitfire (and GT6) to be "proper", it has to have the frame color match the body color or is it the body color match the frame color. Anything other than that is not 100% correct to original. The next installment should see much of the suspension restored and installed on the frame. It is starting to look very cool! Stay tuned 'til next month in Part 4 -Suspension in Springtime!

Project Totals

	   Current Phase      Totals to Date
Hours:		12.7		32.7
Costs: 		$228 *		$584

* Carmine Red Paint and Reducer (same for body)

By Joe "Stagmeister" Pawlak

Copyright © 2003 Illinois Sports Owners Association