The painting was about a nine month effort. I learned a lot along the way. I initially got a few books, but found them mostly inadequate. By far the best source of information was and is the Auto Body Store web site and discussion forum run by Len Stewart. Check it out!

  • The Auto Body Store Home Page
  • The Auto Body Store Discussion Forum

    I first stripped the entire "underbody" (everything not yellow) of the thick undercoating. Very messy and time consuming - to say the least! One of my objectives was to make the car as rust proof as possible. After much research, I decided to paint all the underbody areas with POR-15. This is pretty incredible stuff: it totally seals off the metal from moisture (and thus rust), is so tough you can hit it with a hammer and it will not chip, and it's impervious to most solvents (wipe it down with acetone). Brake fluid will get to it eventually - like after soaking in it for a few months!

    So, all the silver and gray you see hear and the other Paint page is POR-15 silver or gray. Originally I was going to overcoat it with the traditional black. But it looked so good I decided to leave it silver. Another motivation was that it would be easier to see possible problems (rusted chips etc.) before they became problems. Then I discovered that the UV coming through the north facing garage door was enough to change the color of the silver (POR-15 colors are sensitive to UV). So the more exposed areas (wheel wells, and radiator bay) were over sprayed with a silver polyurethane.

  • The POR-15 home page

  • "Classic Restorations" The largest POR-15 distributor

    The shiny silver you see in the front trunk is the Aluminum covering for the "Dynamat" sound deadening that's being applied to most surfaces.

    The paint is PPG's top of the line BC/CC. The base color is untinted "Light Chrome Yellow" #666 (Devil's yellow?). It is VERY yellow (as God, or at least DeTomaso intended)!










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