Painting clamshells and nose cone silver?

[mhsalem]

Hi all,

I am thinking of having my clamshells, rear wheel arches and nose cone painted silver (or aluminium ish) to compliment the rest of my bare aluminium bodied 1700 super sprint. 

Currently they are classic Lotus green with the yellow nose cone.  Has anyone else done something similar and if so is there a particular paint recommended that will be as close to the bare aluminium of the body.  I suppose I’m trying to achieve an all one colour look on a budget but want to keep the car looking more aluminium than painted. 

The alternative is to purchase new replacement (fibreglass)? bits but am not aware of any available in a silver colour as standard and not sure if they were if the cost would be greatly different?

thoughts and suggestions greatly appreciated....

 

[Jonathan Kay]

Would you consider vinyl wrap?

Jonathan

[mhsalem]

Funny I did - it would cost around £500, but I think quite hard to match colour wise. 

Also not sure how competent wrappers would be with a Caterham and how good the finish would be?

[Jim 123]

I'd say that the existing parts should be paintable, but you might struggle to get something that looks a good match to the existing ally.  As you will be looking to spray in a metallic effect you will need a layer of clearcoat on top.  I would suggest a matt clearcoat as gloss finish clear over silver will not look like ally.

[mhsalem]

Duly noted Jim,

many thanks for the advice. 

[elie boone]

McLaren their chrome paint was rather close to polished alloy but was expensive and unobtainable and also labour intensive. if you could find some alloy paint rather than a metallic paint and finish it with a satin clear coat. You can obtain a satin finish by mixing a clear coat with a mat clear coat. if you would use Sikkens clearcoat that would be 80% mat clear and 20% clear coat. If your alloy paint is white spirit solvable then it's possible to use a normal clear coat but you must be very care full on your first layer, you need to apply it very thin let it dry and build up tis way your the first layer the purpose is that the fine layer dry's so fast that it doesn't have the time to attack the alloy paint

[philwaters]

Another option could be to wet dip them (hydro-dipped). See if there is someone near you doing this as they often have sample swatches so you could see/compare it first.

For example

http://www.hydrodip.com/shop/water_transfer_printing_film_for_sale/metal/

[paul_w]

I'm amazed you've been quoted £500 for the vinyl wrap, aren't you tempted to just buy some of the material and have a crack yourself? I was thinking of trying it on mine until I can afford a full respray

 

 

(and so would much rather you tried it and reported back how hard it was before I put my hand in my pocket for the vinyl  )

[mhsalem]

I think there is more labour cost involved in removing and reattaching everything and we are talking “London” prices Paul. 

Its a firm I have used before who wrapped my 5 door Wrangler Jeep which took them 5 days as they had to unbolt practically every panel on it. 

Currently after more restart I’m leaning to good old fashioned painting them as the wrapping and dipping options I’m not feeling comfortable with. 

I will investigate further as to costs. 

[paul_w]

Not a lot of time unbolting if the car's not that old and nothing's seized - about five bolts per wing and four Dzus for the nose, plus unscrewing the various lights. Not more than an honest hour in that.

I might have a go at it just out of interest as much as anything else, my nose and wings are in temporary paint anyway so it doesn't really matter if I screw it up. The rear wings on mine are much curvier than on a Caterham though so could prove tricky mind you :-/

[mhsalem]

Mines 25 years old and I know they have never been removed. James Whiting has just removed the original tyres and it’s only done 7500 miles since new. 

[elie boone]

If you do go the paint route with satin finish it's advised to put a normal clear coat underneath the satin clear.

[mhsalem]

Duly noted cheers Elie 

[Jim 123]

With your budget in mind I felt it may be worth mentioning that there could be a few things to consider if you were to remove the rear wings, clamshells and nosecone yourself before painting.  I hope the following is helpful in your search for optimum price and quality regardless of how you go forward.

Bear in mind that you will have to build-up quite a thickness of primer, colour and cleacoat to cover the existing Green paint, plus get a flat aluminium-like appearance. This is esp. difficult on hard internal right angled edges where one surface has not to be painted, but the paintable surfaces will have to be sanded right into the edges to provide a key for the new paint without damaging your ally body. This is likely to be difficult where the fiberglass mates to the ally bodysides.  You could end up with an ugly / unsound finish at the interfaces along the body.  Even spending on labour cost to remove sanding residue, I'd bet that you will still end up with some remaining sanding particles finding themselves flying loose and embedding into the wet horizontal painted surface during application of various paint layers.

With the wings etc left in place, you will have also  to cop for non-value adding labour costs to mask between fiberglass and ally, and ditto to cover the rest of your 7 from overspray, and then de-mask.

You may find lower labour rates, and less chargeable time content, if you approach outfits that do motorbike customisation / jobbers handling specialist parts paintwork.  Many of these have clean-room spray facilities that are geared to handle your type work if customers deliver the parts.  Their spray booths are smaller, and they don't have the floorplan overheads needed to park up, prep, spray, and oven bake, a weeks worth of full sized cars.

[mhsalem]

Good shout Jim,

well worth thinking about. 

The more I’m thinking about it It May be cheaper and more sensible to re examine the wrapping route. 

No need to tell the DVLA, can be done cleanly and relatively simply. 

Hmmmm ......

 

[elie boone]

Can't see any difference with any other car or respray, nor in sanding nor in painting it's all straight forward.

[Jim 123]

Mhsalem, I'd suspect that your call to go the wrapping route might be sound.  That way you won't get clobbered with having to undo a well intentioned paint attempt that does not deliver. 

Metal-like finishes are not feasible in mainstream OEM painting because of their significant complexity; the need for special clean-room environments; and eye watteringly high reject rates.  Next time you do the school run, have a look at the other parents R Royce Phantoms with Stainless Steel Bonnets. You can then figure out how come the whole car is not painted the same. The attached link explains how to achieve this on your 7, and also keep your car looking OK.

https://www.glasurit.com/sites/glasurit.com/files/downloads/si_008_rolls_royce_repair_process_05_2011_uk.pdf

 

[mhsalem]

Hello again all, still at the research stage and at dinner last night a friend suggested I look into “Plasti dip”

from what I understand you can spray it in in thin coats and it can be peeled off like a wrap around the bits you don’t want it. Also cheaper apparently- anyone here had any experience with this?

i think you can also get it professionally sprayed too. 

[Jim 123]

An interesting dinner table topic. PlastiDip is one of these products that does not allow you to polish out any imperfections or remove air-borne contamination from the spraying process.  On something the size of clamshell wings etc I'd envisage it would be "challenging"  to get a constant spray pressure, spray fan pattern, and film build, with an aerosol.  This would undermine lay down and appearance esp. with an aluminium effect.  You will possibly need to get access to pressure fed spray equipment. However, it might be worth a DIY experiment, as this stuff is supposed to peel off easily.  Cleaning requires special products from what I recall.  If you tried PlastiDip on a test piece, you could stick that on the roof rack of a car for a few weeks and see how it performs against environmental pollutants and also how it cleans up.
 

[SLR No.77]

Unless your aim is to devalue the car, remove the 4 wings and nose and have them professionally painted, personally I think black works best with bare alluminium because it offers the greatest contrast. And whilst they're away being painted set to the alluminium with Mothers Mag and get it really shining.