Alright, I quickly got sick of the roller method, just because it takes alot of work. I got lazy, plus spending time with my 300ZX, and just working on things on my 280ZX took away from the painting. I decided to stick with the rustoleum, because I like the paint. It's durable, cheap, and the red is sweet. Anyway I purchased an HVLP or whatever type of gun from home depot it was about $70. I loaded up my gun with rustoleum stops rust sunrise red and thinned it with mineral spirits.



I'm incredibly happy with how it's turning out.

 

i would NEVER paint a car outside i wont be surprised if you find imprints from leaves or bugs now or if theres weird coloration in certain places from dirt blowing on it

 

I know that, that's why it's going to get wetsanded. I didn't set out for this to be a spectacular perfect paint job. The body is rusty, and isn't exactly in the best shape. I just wanted my car to look a little bit nicer. The car is truly a definition of a daily driver. So it helped to get rid of alot of the paint chips, make the color even overall, etc. If this was a car that wasn't going to eventually become an engine donor, then yeah I'd be taking alot more care as far as dust/bugs go.

Plus I've never really painted before. So this also becomes a test car so I can practice techniques. If I can get satisfying results from painting it outside with bugs, dirt, a breeze, etc. I should be able to get a really good result in a garage set up like a booth.

 

Looks good man..just one question. Why didn't you take the lights off..and cover the door handles and such?

 

Oh, I did cover the door handle. I just really carefully masking taped over the side markers and I pulled out the door handle and put masking tape over it, I also balled up some masking tape and put it into the key lock hole. Not sure why I didn't take the sidemarkers off, but they're under the tape in tact. I opted to go for a two-tone. Everything will be red, all the above where it's all taped off and everything will be black. I saw a picture of a Z31 with that color scheme and I thought it looked really cool. Especially the way the T-Tops end up blending in with the black due to the tinting almost gives it a slicktop look.

 

Oh okay..gotcha man. Just would be easier to me..to take off the markers. Keep up the good work...and looking forward to the end result.

 

i was going to do the same thing but blue instead of red.

 

I did that.... I have a gnat stuck in my clear coat right next to my headlight. lol its a good conversation starter when people say my paints looks really good. lol I'm like pshhh. I painted it in my driveway...look

 

do you put clear over top?

 

i doubt it its rustoleum not a 2 stage paint setup. its stuff you paint garbage cans with and **** lol. well you done yet or what i can finish a REAL paint job in this time

 

rustoleum makes clear coat too

 

I'm debating a clear coat or not. I know it'd really make it look purdy, but at the same time without a clear coat it makes it alot easier to go over and touch-up nicks, scratches, etc. With the roller method it was always just recommended to just paint it with the stops rust rustoleum, then 1000 or higher grit wet sand then just polish it to a good shine. I may just go with that. I'm trying to keep this cheap anyway. Like I said it's a daily driver so I'm not too worried about the full result.

 

Interesting, how may miles on it?

 

You should take the plate off the front bumper. We drive without them here in Cincinnati. Ohio's defines what a ugly and tacky plate looks like. If you took the plate off first maybe you wouldn't have to paint it LOL

 

I don't drive my Z31 with a front plate. I just have it up on the dash in the windshield. I was debating removing the front plate on my 280ZX and doing the same thing. It does look alot nicer without the plate.

 

My plan is to make a custom bracket to mount to the bottom of the bumper off-set to the driver's side so it doesn't get in the way of air flow to the intercooler.

 

I think that's how LWW painted his white 280ZX! lol

j/k

 

I'm not sure which post Bleach is replying to here... but that's nothing new...

 

It's not the mount that blocks the air flow, it's the plate itself. When mounted in the center of the bumper at the front of the car, it just looks like crap. I hate when people just screw their front plate through the bumper on the 280ZX. It looks like azz...

So, in order to make it look better, I planned to fabricate a small L-bracket to mount to the bottom of the bumper, but if you mount it in the center, the plate will interfere with the air flow to the IC so I figured I'd just mount it all the way to the driver's side so it'll be mostly "out of the way". Simple and easy.

 

It was coming along, then I think I let the paint thicken too much, so now I have a whole bunch of orange peel. So I'm wetsanding it and one to two coats should be good to have a nice finish. It keeps raining, so I really haven't been able to paint much.

 

It's hard to tell from the pics, but the red is orange peely and needs work. I just got lazy, it's decent enough for now. At least it's all one solid red. Anyway I stopped being lazy and started painting the upper half today. Here's after one coat. I decided to go back to the roller/brush method since I don't have to do all kinds of taping off and you have far less dust that way. The rustoleum gloss black is really really glossy.





With a few more coats, sanding and polishing, if the result comes out as good as I hope it'll look really good as the black does do what I wanted and blend in with the T-Tops for a cool almost slicktop look. Granted you can still see them. Oh and I'm going to paint the chrome trim black so it flows better together. It originally was painted black, and I started removing the paint when I was going to redo the car in all red. Then after getting the two-tone idea. I liked the black and decided it'll look better with the blacked out trim.

 

not bad.... you should paitn that vented/louver section right behind the hood red though imho

 

It needs to be repainted anyway, so I was debating whether to paint it red or black, but you make a good point. Having that painted red would flow better. I'll probably do that. Then it would just literally leave the upper half black, where as it kind of does throw off the balance.

 

Man their is a lot of orange peel in the red portion of the car, but I tried just going to town with 1000 grit sandpaper. It takes a long time, but when I was done I get the surface super smooth, and then by hand polished the crap out of it and it really brought the color back, and gave it a nice reflective surface. I imagine the surface would look way better if I was using clear, but as is. Tomorrow I'm just going to go to town sanding down the red and polishing it, I think I need to get myself a real buffer rather than my cheapo auto parts store one.

 

Ya, The cowl should be red but everything else looks good(or will once the orange peel is fixed )