Friday, a bit after noon: I got a call from my neighbor... she's a teacher
at the local high school, and the faculty has an entry in the CSU (Colorado
State) homecoming parade. But, plans for their lead vehicle have fallen
through... and since their school colors are purple and yellow... she knows
it isn't done yet... and, by the way, is my truck running this week?...
I told her I'd think about it, and let her know. Then I learn that the
parade is Saturday morning (about 18 hours).
My wife hears of the request, and decides that our 2 kids would have a great
time riding in the truck... and soon there's no time to think, the decision
has been made for me.
I'd taken the afternoon off work anyway, and decided maybe there was
something I could to for the truck that was approximately 1/2 covered in
mottled grey primer, flaking off of metallic lime green. Off to the paint
store, to see what the cheapest, fastest drying paint I could find was, that
would color match reasonably well with the yellow that was on the parts of
the truck I'd done.
Back home, the truck got a quick bath, and the flaking paint got hit with
50grit paper- just to rip it back to something that was sticking to the
metal. No time for finish sanding, I'm in Earl Scheib mode. Rolled it
into the garage, and started the masking. After a bit under 2 hours, the
primer was flowing out the gun, covering back up (most of) the spots that
had been sanded back to bare metal. Things were going pretty well.
On with the yellow: one coat, two coats, three coats, four. The acrylic
enamel proved to be just as transparent as the good paint. And, it was
running. No time to sand, at least not this night. Eventually, the new
pigment started to win it's battle with the primer(s), and a fairly monotone
hue started to cover the truck... thankfully hiding most of the earlier
runs. By midnight, I had the paint done; well at least as done as it was
going to get. By 12:30 the masking was off, and I was headed for bed.
Opening the garage early this morning showed a few... we'll call them sags.
Probably a bit too cold for proper paint setting, but still not too bad- all
things considered. And, we were off to the parade.
Everybody seemed impressed with the truck, and those who noticed the pretty
lousy paint job were at least kind enough not to mention it. Good portions
were covered up with signs, streamers, and assorted parade goodies anyway.
Paint was still a bit tacky; there's a scrap of sign semi-permanently
attached to the top of one bed-side. Joan was right, the kids had a great
time riding in the truck bed, tossing candy out to folks lining the parade
route.
It will probably be a couple years before (if) I think it's really ready for
such duties, but I must say, everyone involved had a lot of fun with my
ole-truck today.
20ft paint job == digital camera paint-job ;-)
So, here's a pic of the beast sporting it's new duds-
800X600 320K high-resolution:
http://www.geocities.com/ryan_border/0010rfq.jpg
350X233 37K lower res:
http://www.geocities.com/ryan_border/ryan552cd.jpg
Ryan Border
55 2nd; the wannabe rod.
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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