Project:  1976 Ford Ranchero
March 1, 2008 to current

    This is a 1976 Ford Ranchero that used to belong to a good friend of The Boxwrench Garage team.  Shawnie had this car for several years, and somehow we managed to never get stuck working on it.  I don't know why Shawnie gave up on the project, or what the details of the transaction were, but I think it was donated to Jeff's father's church, and now we are stuck working on it.  It needs some minor mechanical work, all new upholstery, and paint.  Shawn had plans to paint the car himself, so he had, (mostly) sanded it.  The body was already perfectly straight.

    This is Jeff's project and he is calling the shots.  The first thing that he wanted to do was paint it.  So once again, we are doing the famous, (or maybe infamous) $50 paint job.  This is the second time we have used this technique.  The first was on our 2007 race entry for the 24 Hours Of LeMons.  On the race car, we only made a half hearted attempt at a paint job because it only needed to look good from a distance.  On this car we will be putting much more effort into it.  The idea of the $50 paint job is to use very thin coats of paint, (originally RustOleum diluted by half with mineral spirits) and roll it on with paint rollers, color sanding between coats.  For the Ranchero we will be using boat paint instead.

March 1
     The car was mostly sanded when we started.  Unfortunately, there were no pictures taken before we began, and to make matters worse, the pictures we do have were taken with a cell phone.  Sorry for the poor image quality.  Just in case you don't believe that someone is dumb enough to paint a car with paint rollers, here is proof.
     Day one saw the completion of the prep and sanding, and the first coat of paint.  The whole car was hand sanded with 600 grit, just enough to knock down the gloss.  No primer is needed with this paint, (nor with RustOleum, if you are thinking of doing this yourself), and very little masking is needed as there is no over spray.




March 1
     At the end of day one the car is wearing the first coat.  It took a few minutes to get used to the paint and the hood, left fender and driver's door came out really bad.  The rest of the first coat turned out pretty good, mostly.  Thankfully, this will all be fixed with color sanding.  With only one coat you can still see the old paint underneath.




March 9
     On the second day we color sanded and laid down the second coat.  Much of the paint on the hood, driver's door and left fender ended up being sanded very thin in order to remove all the imperfections in the first coat.  In this set of pictures the car is all color sanded and ready for the second coat.




March 9
     This is the end of day two.  After color sanding, we washed the car, wiped it down with mineral spirits, then applied coat number two.  The second coat went on well, but coverage is still pretty thin.


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