Le Mans Mini Marcos: preparing for paint (2)

So... I spent much of December in dust (click here). But after that it was time for some actual painting. Joost and I drove over to Ghent in Belgium one afternoon where we had primer mixed in colour by a real paint guru. The only original paint left was (and still is) to be found behind the car’s door locks, which is excellently conserved and thus perfect for colour matching. Oh, I have changed the colour on the pictures shown below, as I do not want to give too much away by the people who are building replicas of the car. Sorry for that but I'm sure you'll understand!

Christmas came and was spent back home and after Boxing Day I drove over to the spray booth again (eventually clocking up over 2,500 kms in a week’s time). All the holes and open spaces on the smoothed shell were now covered with adhesive tape in order to protect them against spray mist and Joost took the spray gun. It was like magic to see the car’s rather messy patchwork outfit change into one smooth suit of blue. Pretty much how it will look like when the actual paint is applied. It wasn’t for long though. Joost taught me to fill in all the tiny little pinholes with filler and sand these down first before applying spray filler. So that’s what we did the next day. Three layers of spray filler were applied to the shell next and that’s the condition it is in right now. The advice is to wait for some six months to have the layers harden out and then we’ll have to lock ourselves in for another week or so, and sand most away once again. I look forwards to it already!