Budget Paint Job - The $375 Paintjob

With the initial sanding and bodywork complete, we masked the car in anticipation of a coat of urethane primer. Paradis suggested shooting primer only on the reworked areas, leaving the blue portions of the body alone. This would reduce the amount of time we would have to spend wet-sanding the primer. The plastic prevented overspray on areas we didn’t want to sand twice.

After the primer dried overnight, Paradis fogged a rattle-can flat-black guidecoat on the primer. Then it was just a matter of block-sanding the car until the guidecoat disappeared. This is where we would normally have spent weeks making the body straight, but instead we were relying on the satin finish to dampen the visual hiccups. We used a spray bottle of water and 400-grit wet/dry paper.

Next, we loaded the Chevelle up on our trailer and hauled it over to the West Valley Occupational Center, where the school was kind enough to allow us the use of a spray booth during an evening class. Once in the booth, Paradis spent an hour or so cleaning the booth and dusting the car.

The Hot Rod Flatz paint appears almost watery in the can, so we didn’t use the supplied reducer. The paint also calls for a 1.2 tip in the gun with a regulator setting of 28 psi using an HVLP gun.

Paradis laid out the color in two light coats—which covered very well—with roughly a quart of paint left over that we’d use to fill in details like the door jambs or any other small parts.

The beauty of any single-stage satin paint is that once the color is on, you’re done. We returned home that same evening and allowed the paint to cure overnight indoors. We noticed some streaks on the horizontal surfaces that we later learned were the result of not adding the reducer. At a later date we’ll reshoot the top of the car to eliminate the streaks.

With the satin body color, we only had time for a quick spray-can tune-up on all the trim. We painted the grille and all external trim, including the fiberglass front and steel rear bumpers, with VHT cast aluminum, which turned out fantastic.

Since the entire car now had a satin finish, we decided to do the same with the stainless window trim, using medium Scotch-Brite pads to produce a brushed finish. We also added new door and trunk weatherstripping, along with a new stainless steel hoodpin kit from our friends at Original Parts Group (OPG).

We bolted everything back on just in time to load the car on the trailer Sunday night and drive to Vegas on Monday morning. I was concerned about the paint adhering to our minimal prep work when we slapped the big Optima decals on the doors but they came off nicely after the race was over. Our quickie paint job was a great low-buck success.