Faded roof ? Faded hatch ? Respray it!

[tiksie]

Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself nor toyotagtturbo.com take any responsibility for the outcomes of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!

Please keep in mind that I am from Australia, so won't be able to assist in regards to the whereabouts of stores that supply paints and what not!

Please also keep in mind that there are reasons as to why I didn't use urethane...

1 - I don't have an oven to cure it!
2 - it's almost 3 times the price of acrylics
3 - It's not friendly to the environment, so you WON'T be able to spray it at home in the garage
4 - You'll need to invest in proper respirator equipment to use it (the hardeners are very nasty)
5 - It's definitely NOT amateur friendly
6 - If you stuff it up, it has to all come off and be re-applied, unlike acrylic where you can just rub it back and re-coat it

I'm sure there will be input from 'pro painters' out there in regards to things I can do in different ways for 'better' results, but this is the way I've done it for years and the way I'll always do it when working with acrylics.

This is purely for the hobbyist or the noob to have a crack at it themselves, the positives FAR outweigh the negatives when going against urethanes.


Figured I'd put up a DIY since I'm in the process of fixing my roof and hatch on my starlet since it's severely faded!

This isn't the first time I've resprayed a car but is still the same process just like any other time whether your new to it or not.

Things you'll need:



PREPARATION REQUIREMENTS

5 sheets of 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper
2 sheets of 800 grit wet/dry sandpaper
2 sheets of 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper
1 sheet 2000 grit wet/dry sandpaper
Sanding Block (optional)
Spray bottle with soapy water (can use bucket if you want)



PAINT

500ML of your colour matched paint in acrylic (if your car is old, chances are the paint is also going to be old! Fresh paint regardless of paint code will always look different to aged paint, so it's best to have your paint code handy and to get the color matched rather than getting a fresh batch of your code)



1L acrylic primer (optional)

1L acrylic clear

2L Acrylic Thinners

1L WAX & GREASE REMOVER


(clear not in picture)

OTHER MATERIALS

masking tape
drop sheets
newspaper
Strainers
Cups
Stirrers



Tools:

Flathead screwdriver
Phillips head screwdriver
Long nose pliers
Circlip Pliers (optional)
27MM Spanner OR ratchet
10MM ratchet with extension
Air Compressor with paint gun (even a cheap supercheap compressor kit will suffice!)


This is my roof:

This is my hatch after a quick rub back:

 

[tiksie]

First thing is first! If you're doing the hatch, you're going to want to remove the lock, rear wiper, rear spoiler and rear tail lights (the ones on the hatch for Mark 2's an 3's).

I'll start with the tail lights.

REAR LIGHTS

First you want to open your hatch and look at the back of it, there will be a plastic cover on it:

All you want to do is get a very thin flathead screwdriver and pop it off the clips (there's 10 clips in total). Make sure you get close to the clips when popping them off as you don't want to crack or break the plastic.

After you do that, you will be greeted with this:

Next you want to locate the 2 10MM nuts holding the tail lights in, there's one on each side:

Once you remove them, you will notice the lights are still intact and staying in, this is because of the 2 plastic clips (per light) that is still holding them in:

There are 2 ways you can remove them, one is by getting a circlip plier or a longnose plier and squeezing them, they will naturally push up once you do that:

The other method is using the flathead screwdriver and just pushing one of the tabs through the hole, the other tab will follow:

Be very careful as they're pretty fragile!

At this point your lights attached to your hatch should come off.

 

[tiksie]

REAR LOCK

Next to get the lock out, there's a pretty big clip behind it that holds the barrel in place:

All you need to do is push on the edges of the clip until it just slides right off:

And now you're left with this:

Push the lock towards the outside until it gets to this point:

You now have space and access to the circlip that's holding the lock in to the latch, just push it off with a flathead screwdriver or any other flat tool that you have lying around:

And it's off!

Make sure not to lose that washer/seal that sits around the lock!

 

[tiksie]

REAR WIPER


Now you want to take the rear wiper off.

First fold the cap that covers the bolt that holds the wiper arm:

Undo the nut, (10mm) then retract the arm until it's pointing straight then just turn it clockwise/anticlockwise until it comes off:

Once it's off, put the washer and nut back on so you don't lose it.

At this point, you can grab your 27mm spanner or socket and remove the big clip that holds it from the outside:

Next you want to get behind it and locate the wiper motor (square box with 3 10MM bolts holding it up)

Once you unbolt them and pull the plug off, you will be left with this:

Note that I put the 27mm clip back on so I don't lose it.

 

[tiksie]

REAR SPOILER


Finally comes your spoiler (I did this step first but since it's so easy, left it till last).


You got 2 black circle caps on each edge of the spoiler (from inside the hatch). Once you pull the caps off, you can locate the 2 10mm nuts. Once you take those ones off, you got the final 10mm nut that's hiding where the wiring loom is fed through the hatch into the spoiler: (on the right)

Also, don't forget to take the toyota badge off!

You'll be left with this in the end:

I've already sanded the roof and hatch back with 600grit, haven't gone through the 800/1000/2000 steps yet though, will continue this tomorow when I primer it.

To be continued..

 

[tiksie]

SANDING

So onto the sanding!

What I personally did was use 600grit WET, which means have a spray bottle handy or a bucket and sand back whatever part your spraying, I think almost everyone on this site would already know how to sand a part. Just make sure the area you're sanding is thoroughly wet and don't overdo it (don't rub it back all the way through to bare metal, which will be hard anyway with 600grit).

In the following picture, you can see that there is still a bit of shine around the original primer of the car:

Just remember, you don't want ANY shine left from the previous paint!

When you get to this point:

You're pretty much ready to applying your primer. Just make sure you go over any blotchy bits, stroke it with your finger to feel if there are any bumps or jagged bits, if there is, keep sanding that area until it's uniform and smooth like the rest of the panel.

That picture is 600grit wet followed with a 800grit wet to get rid of all the old clear/colour 'roughed up' ready to 'abosrb' the primer.

Think of a painted surface like your skin, you have tiny pores which get blocked with oils and what not, using a scrub in the shower opens up your pores again. Same thing applies to painting! You need to open up the 'pores' and get it ready to put paint in them!


Also remember, the finer grit you go, the smoother the finish will be which means the smoother the paint will go on! If it's roughed up with say 200grit and has lines everywhere, than all of that will show in your final result! Seeing as primer is thick, it's not so important to get a super smooth finish, but it's EXTREMELY important that everything is perfectly smooth before putting on your colour!



MASKING



Masking once again, is very simple. Just mask off wherever you don't want paint to be applied.

Make sure you use some decent masking tape (the cheap stuff usually leaves a sticky residue when you remove it after spraying, and some even lift off whilst spraying which you DON'T want).

I was having trouble with the rear windscreen seal and I thought of another way of doing it as I didn't want to remove it (I don't have a fresh seal for it, and as you know, once you remove a 20 year old seal, IT'S NOT GOING BACK ON!).

So I thought of this method:

Apply tape over the whole seal

Get a stanley knife or blade and slide it under the seal, being careful not to actually slit the seal, but getting under it instead:

Once you slide along the seal, you will be left with a clean cut which is usually impossible for corners as tape doesn't like to bend and flex:

And you're done!

I ended up removing the other tape and re-doing the whole thing like the method above.

 

[tiksie]

So your car sanded, taped up and ready for primer!

PRIMER

BEFORE APPLYING ANY SORT OF PRIMER/PAINT/CLEAR ETC, REMEMBER TO GIVE IT A WIPE DOWN WITH WAX & GREASE REMOVER AND MAKE SURE IT'S COMPLETELY DRY!

First thing is first, you want to setup your spray gun, here's a video from the guys I buy my paint from, it's explained much better than I could explain it in words:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn1WNis5m8k[/video]

After you setup your air pressure and spray pattern, you're ready to throw on your coats of primer.

Make sure you always strain your paint after mixing it with thinners and putting it into your gun!

One of the 'tricks' I use regarding paint thinning is by using a wooden stirrer. After thinning out your paint, if the paint is transparent and running off the stick, than you have too much thinners and will require more paint.

When it's at the point that the colour of the paint covers the stirrer and is just dripping off it like normal (not like honey) then it's good to go, like so:

I don't have any pictures of spraying since I documented this all by myself, but if you have a look at the video above, it shows you how to weave the gun with the 50% overlap which I also do.

This is the result of that:

When you spray a coat too thick or weave the gun too slowly or have incorrect air pressure, this is what happens:

I've always found that spraying the roof is the hardest since you have gravity against you at the same time, so you need to adjust and basically figure out your own formula regarding how to get that perfect coat.

But that's all good, because we're using acrylic and it can easily be rubbed back to have a nice matte and smooth finish anyway!

I personally done 3 coats of primer, but you can get away with 2 or even 1 if the coat is heavy enough for you to rub back and get it ready for colour!

For reference, I personally sprayed the primer at 45psi since it was a pretty hot and humid day.

 

[tiksie]

Can a mod please move this to the tech section ? I put it in the wrong section!

 

[Phil]

Super stuff Tiksie

Looking foward to seeing reserved and reserved 2 filled

Phil

 

[dac69er]

only bit I would do differently is removing the lock, I would just unclip the lock actuation rod rather than removing that circlip

will save people a lot of money doing it themselves. I had my roof repainted last year and it wasn't cheap

 

[tiksie]

Updated sanding and masking

IF you have access to a brand new rear seal, or want to risk reapplying your rear seal once removing it (which will nearly be impossible if it's in old brittle shape, just remove the old seal and take up the side of the glass which will get you a better and cleaner line).

I strongly recommend getting a new seal if you want to remove it, since you won't be able to put the old one back on properly unless it's nice and soft/fresh.

 

[dac69er]

Updated sanding and masking

IF you have access to a brand new rear seal, or want to risk reapplying your rear seal once removing it (which will nearly be impossible if it's in old brittle shape, just remove the old seal and take up the side of the glass which will get you a better and cleaner line).

I strongly recommend getting a new seal if you want to remove it, since you won't be able to put the old one back on properly unless it's nice and soft/fresh.

Toyota don't sell the rear seal anymore when I enquired about a year or so ago you can get a universal one that will fit, but they never look quite the same

 

[tiksie]

Toyota don't sell the rear seal anymore when I enquired about a year or so ago you can get a universal one that will fit, but they never look quite the same

Well damn! I thought Toyota would have had a few in stock. I know there's one here in Sydney that has some weird old stock haha, might send them an email and ask but I'm guessing it would cost arm and a leg either way.

Have you ever used a universal seal ? What does it look like compared to OEM ? I gotta say though, my Daihatsu's rear windscreen seal is very similar if not exactly the same as the starlets one, it looks pretty universal!!

 

[dac69er]

ive only ever had a front screen done and i had a universal seal fitted. it looks ok but doesnt do as good a job as the stock one for diverting the water away from the windscreen wipers and it tends to make it come through the drivers window if its open!!!

the one i have is similar to this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21+PVTwV9mL._SL500_SL160_.jpg

 

[tiksie]

ive only ever had a front screen done and i had a universal seal fitted. it looks ok but doesnt do as good a job as the stock one for diverting the water away from the windscreen wipers and it tends to make it come through the drivers window if its open!!!

the one i have is similar to this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21+PVTwV9mL._SL500_SL160_.jpg

Thanks for that! Will probably help others tackling this same issue.

I'll continue writing tonight, but for now:

Don't mind the the water drips, it's just very very dirty from wetsanding

 

[tiksie]

Added primering stage.

 

[tiksie]

I applied the same methods to my front and rear bar and my spoiler sine they were seeing signs of aging aswell!

Before:

AFTER:

Good match!

The metallic pigments in Toyota paint far outweighs those of other makes from the same era (I'm looking at you Honda & Nissan)

ROOF BEFORE:

ROOF AFTER:


And this is the roof straight off the gun which still requires a cut back and polish:

I've rubbed it back with 2000 grit (sore arm!!!) which revealed the orange peel and 'bumps' on the paint surface:

After a bit more of sanding with the 2000 grit, I eventually got a nice smooth flat finish ready for the polish:

Had some time today to get some polishing done.

I didn't have a polishing product on me and the shops were closed already so I used what I thought would also do the trick, Swirl X by Meguiars:

Just put a blob like so:

Distribute it over the section you're going to polish:

BEFORE & AFTER:

I think another application of polish will bring out an even greater shine! The 2000 grit strokes have definitely diminished by using the Swirl X though, I guess it kind of works in the same way.

It's just exciting to have a reflection in the roof again!! :d

 

[goldenvtr]

awesome, good job