This is a fun update for you all here, as it will show you the final colour I have chosen for my Spyder. I’m still many many hours away from actually painting the car but you have to plan this build and think stages and stages ahead of where you currently are in order to achieve a quality finish. So this update I have removed the front and rear bulkhead in preparation for painting and final finish. Removing these is an absolute ball ache of a job to be fair and one which does not get any easier with experience. Fingers crossed this is the last time it is removed now, as after the paint finish is on I want them fitted and sealing into place not to be removed again…. I hope.
In the last update I had finished all the trimming and cutting needed for the front bulkhead so once it was removed it was just a simple prep and prime with a bloody good clean first. The rear bulkhead also has been given a similar treatment and has just been brush painted with the textured black that I used for the chassis. The texture for this paint is achieved with the application gun but considering this will never be seen it can just be brushed on and left to cure in order to protect the metal. To be fair whilst the back side of this rear bulkhead is exposed to the elements it will take relatively no wash or road spray simply because the wheels are external to the body and thus wont throw hardly any road thrash onto the underside or engine bay. Whilst I was in between priming the front and painting the back I have to put a little final colour onto the body around where the front bulkhead fits. The front bulkhead once fitted again now is going to be bonded in with a polyurethane sealant so removing it again is not really possible. Because of this I need/want to paint round the body tub up against the front bulkhead flange and so when final paint gets applied then I don’t get any show through or joins of then grey gelcoat finish of the body tub as it stands now.
So the final colour as you can now see is going to be red, or Ferrari Rosso Corsa the shade from 1997 to 2021 to be more precise… many different red variants from Ferrari over the years. So as you can see I have quickly primed and painted the front flange as so when the bulkhead is up against it there will be no risk of any show through or edges that don’t match colour.
I am painting the bulkhead the same colour but I’m following the theme of the chassis and using the texture bed liner finish. I’m really trying to keep a standard of finish to this car, just like my Cobra I have a vision in my head what I want it to look like and I’m making the provisions to achieve this every step of the build. Attention to detail is what finishes any kit car build and it can make or break how the finished car can look.
I purchased another litre of the texture paint from work last week, but this time it was the tintable as opposed to black. I mixed this accordingly with my chosen base colour and started to coat all the panels that needed painting. I ran over the panels with two passes in order to get the coverage as I did not lay down a drop coat first like I did with the chassis, straight on with the texture from the start here and was surprised how much paint it actually consumed. I still had a good 3rd of a litre left after I had the coverage so I decanted the leftover into a pot and used it to brush onto the inner panels of the engine bay. I don’t want or need a glass smooth finish in the engine bay, just a uniform flat colour that matches the exterior so a brush finish is fine, but the nature of this paint will self level to the panel it’s applied to so all in all it looks fairly good and is child’s play to touch up and blend easily without showing edges or brush strokes.
I couldn’t resist refitting the bulkhead back in and pedal box brackets with master cylinders etc…. It really shows how the overall finish is going to look in the engine bay and the matching red callipers are going to look awesome. A real little red racing machine… it’s going to be great fun to kick about in. I have also decided that I no longer like the red rocker cover on the engine as I feel it is going to be red overload within the engine bay so I’ll upgrade that to a nice alloy cover at a later date.
I have another little surprise coming in the next week so will possibly do another little update next weekend. I still need to bond in the bulkheads front and back and make some final fixings to fit the body…. Then I can crack on with the next stage of the build.
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