Car has about 175 miles on it already. Took everything apart last winter to address some minor issues and started scuffing gel coat. Weather has been somewhat nice the past couple of weeks, so got it primered, painted and shot the flames today. Tomorrow, close to 80 degrees, I will scuff everything up and shoot clear. Wait about another week then cut and buff and then start putting everything back together. Hope to be done by around April 23th or 24th.
Just barely visible in the sun ... guess that is why they call them ghost flames. Man, shooting clear coat is the hardest part of this painting thing. Difficult to see what you are doing, where you've been and where to go. Have several runs ... more than when I did primer and color combined.
Naa ... I cheated and got a template. The cost of the template was the same as the plastic tape and masking paper from English Color ... and then you have the labor of doing it freehand. The templates just stick right on.
Here is how I did it ... after the color was on and allowed to sit for one week, I scuffed up the entire body with gray Scotch pads ... not red, gray. Then I laid out the flame pattern over then scuffed up area. I used pre-made flame templates from Hotrodworks. You can find them at http://www.hotrodworks.net/decal/maskkit.html ... saves a ton of time and one side is an exact mirror of the other side. They are also cheaper than the material you have to purchase to make your own flame lay out and it takes about 10 minutes to apply them. Then I mixed about 2oz of clear coat with harder and added just a "pinch" of bright white pearl ... just until the clear coat in the mixing cup had a slight milky look to it. I picked bright white pearl because the base color is metallic green. Then I made just three quick passes over the flame templates on each side. Waited about 15 minutes, pulled the template mask off and shot the rest of the entire car with 5 coats of clear ... this time without any pearl added ... just plain clear coat. Waited another week and started wet sanding with 1000 grit, moved to 1500 grit and finished it with 2000 grit. Then I used three stages of buffing compounds, coarse, medium, and finally a polishing compound. The first two compounds were done with a buffer and the final one was applied by hand.
