one way to look at it!

alot of time!

I hope so. It's apparently only done 39000 miles. I had it running and it sounded fine.



It was on a galvanised one so it's rust free but I want to paint it. I also want to paint the axles and arms etc and make everything look shiny and new.



I'm a Lincolnshire lout. About halfway between Pete Abbott and Ken Hanna.



Interesting way of thinking about it. So that's three working weeks in less than three months as well as a more than full time job. No wonder I'm knackered.

i was gunna say, if your reasonably localish, im not techanically un employed now, as the job which i had last week, (which stopped me picking up that tow bar from Knightley,) was a waist of time, good pay, no hours! what a joke,

anyway more time to play with the 2cv until i run out of money again,

anyway if you find anything on ebay down this way feel free to give me a shout

You might find that as you get the hang of it the finish you will get straight from the gun will end up getting better with each panel that you do. I did all mine separately, and the last panels that I did took a lot less rubbing out to make perfect because I became more confident with the gun.

As I said I'm looking forward to seeing the results, if your spraying is half as good as your welding skills then you're on to a winner.

I don't want to speak too soon - 'cos I haven't started my own painting yet - but I remember back to when I spray-painted my very first car (a Dutton Melos kit ) many, many moons ago that the 'technique' I basically used was to look very, very carefully at the surface as I was applying the coats to judge how much was going and how it was being applied. Good lighting required!

It was finding the balance between applying it thick enough (eg: closer overlaps and/or slowing down the sideways movement) for the paint surface to 'flow' together evenly, but not too thick so's that runs would form! If it looked 'dusty' or orange-peely at the end of a 'pass', I'd immediately go over the same strip again to make it 'flow' - tho' perhaps a bit faster than before so's as not to over-load the coat! If it looked fine after this second pass, I'd then move a step down and apply the next strip. It was literally monitoring each 'pass' with the gun, and fixing it if it wasn't smooth.

After a while, you settled in to the optimum speed and spacing, so fewer double-passes were required!

(He says...)

Time for an update then I reckon.

It has to be said that I'm obviously not a natural when it comes to this painting lark.

It's taken me 5 weeks of spare time to get the bodyshell to a standard I'm happy with.

There are some sections that I've done over and over again to get them right and there was one particular section that I took right back to bare metal and started again from scratch but in all honesty I'm over the mood with the final result.

One of the best things I've done was to buy an airbrush a couple of weeks ago. With this I can blow in very small areas rather than having to redo the whole panel.
There was a bit above the offside rear quarter window that had reacted with something. It didn't look like silicone fisheyes, more of a bubbling sort of effect. I took it back to metal with my trusty Dremel and airbushed high build primer until it was level with the surrounding paintwork then blew it over with a few coats of blue. After a quick polish it was invisible.

So with the shell finally finished it's time to move on to the rest. A mate in the next village had an empty garage he was willing to donate to the cause for a bit, so with the aid of a borrowed trailer the shell was dragged into daylight and transported very carefully to its temporary home. Thankfully we managed it without a single scratch.





Which leaves me room to get the chassis in the garage ready for stripping and painting.



I'm intending to spray the chassis in the same grey as those lovely shiny new wheels in the background. All the suspension will be back to original black.

The mystery of a new oil leak that had developed over the last couple of weeks of the chassis sitting outside in the rain was solved when I drained the oil and found the engine was absolutely full of water (obviously with the oil floating on the top and leaking from anywhere it could).
I suppose it's come in through the air filter box and drained straight down to the sump. Thankfully it hasn't been like this for long so will hopefully not have caused any great problems. I should have the engine stripped down by the end of the week so I'll find out soon enough.

wow! i love the blue floors!!!!
looking amazing
you goingfor a new chassis or is it already a galvi? cant remeber

Yes it's already a galvo of some description so it's staying. Can't cope with it being dirty and dull though so it's going to have to have a coat of special metals primer followed by a bit of gloss.
Reckon I'll have it steam cleaned first. It's absolutely filthy. Don't reckon a bucket and sponge will touch it.
Did you mean the blue floors of the shell or the blue floor of the garage! I reckon colour coded garage floors might catch on.

both,

wel i meant blue shell floors, i think they look amazing!!

Lenny,
proper job you've done on that bodyshell...

As regards the make of chassis, think it's 'guilty as charged'.
Btw, when preparing the chassis for painting, I doubt that you'll need 'T Wash' or similar for priming it, because it's more than 6 months since it was galvanized, so now it's well weathered.

< http://www.galvanizing.org.uk/index.php ... 20Painting >

If you can find a number punched into the offside front of the handbrake cross member, I might even be able to tell you when the chassis was made.

ken