Project: Antec 900 Revamp

So Mongoose is well under way - I'm just waiting on a free weekend to take it to a friends paintshop and get the colour on it. Lobo is on hold until I get the money together to buy some much needed parts. K-9 is on LONG term hold because my son lost interest in it, ("I like using your PC dad, there's no real point to me having my own in my room") as well as some serious fabrication cost issues.

So I wanted to scratch the itch.....

A while back I did a review the Thermaltake Frio. After this review I ended up taking my main rig out of my Antec 900 and putting it into the Thermaltake Element-T I also reviewed. There is nothing wrong with the Element-T but I kinda want to get the PC back into the Antec. Before I do though, I thought I'd throw some paint at it.... I can't think of a clever name for it yet - so for now, I'm keeping it simple heh - suggestions welcome and no, "Another half done job by Slavey" doesn't have the ring I'm looking for. This is going to be a quick one - should be done within the week....

I'm thinking Orange and Dark Grey with bits of the original Black....

Please accept my apologies for the awful concept image below lol - I threw this together in a few minutes just to make sure it wouldn't look bloody horrible.....

The plan is to go from this...

To something which looks a lot better than this lol...

Basically, I plan to paint the sides and mesh in the lid in a dark grey metallic colour, and the front surround, top plastic, and side mesh in a custom orange pearl colour. I'm going to leave the front black mesh alone as it'll make it a lot easier in the long run when it comes to DVD drives etc (they're a pita to paint). I'm also going to leave the top metal panel black - you can only just see the edges of it between the plastic top and the side panels (or I might repaint it but still in black) to provide a small break between the grey and orange, and also carry the black from the front into the sides. Finally, the entire interior will be going black - something Antec didn't do on the 900 but has since started to do on the 902 (I think).

I'm also going to THINK about making a couple of minor mods to the case itself. The three things that spring to mind initially are a CPU access hole in the motherboard tray, an air intake in the floor of the case under the PSU, and some other mods to try to improve the cable management. If I do go ahead with the PSU intake, I'm also going to have to somehow lift the PC as there is very little clearance underneath the case. I'm not sure yet if I'll bother as the case works damned well as it stands, but the lack of cable management has always been a minor bugbear to me.

Oh I also got to get a new 120mm exhaust fan too - I shoved my finger into it when it was spinning and got a nice spurt of blood along with a broken off fin, so it's no longer balanced - made such a racket I disconnected it....

Time to grab a screwdriver and drill and rip this case (carefully of course) apart....

should be neat!

Ok so, it's sunday, and here in the UK the world tends to grind to a halt on sundays after 4pm, so I ran to my local computer store to replace that fan and ended up buying three!

I think these Xigmatek fans are going to fit in perfectly with the orange/black/grey theme....

This is the paint I think I'll end up using - saves buying more if I find something in my little stash....

So, to begin, let me present.... The Victim....

Side panels removed

And 13 screws later the window is out, along with the grille which will get orange paint, and the perspex backing which I wanted to "forget" to put back in to improve ventilation - from the look of it, it's only purpose is to add another 120mm fan to the side which I don't think I need with the three 120mm (four if you count the PSU fan) and the 200mm already installed. Problem is those little tabs you can see. They hold the grille in place so it may have to go back in...

Next we have everything from the 9 5.25" bays in the front of the Case

Further deconstruction of the single external 3.5" bay adapter

And the same again for the 3x3.5" internal bays. There are two of these but it seems kinda silly to show the same thing twice :p

And then you see what happens when you have pets, a smoking habit, and a PC kept on a carpeted floor....

So got them cleaned up with the help of some compressed air...

And in go two of the three new Xigmatek fans...

Next to come away from the chassis is the front surrounding bezel...

Which comes into parts which will make it easier for paint. Again these parts will be painted Orange...

Top plastic cover removed and disassembled. The main part will be orange, and the grille will be the same metallic grey as the side panels...

Trying to remove the buttons as I don't really want to paint them. They'll get too much contact and the paint will end up rubbing off in time. Unfortunately Antec have chosen to melt them into place so removal may be a bit awkward, although by no means impossible...

12 rivets drilled out later, and the top panel is free from the main chassis. Although this part will be staying black, I may re-paint it anyway so the finish matches the gloss I'll end up with on the sides and top of the case.

And the remaining bare metal chassis. This will be getting a coat or two of black although there may be no clear used as the inside doesn't need to be super glossy. There are a LOT of rivets in this, but I think I will completely disassemble it to make sure every surface gets the right amount of paint, and it'll give me the chance to replace the rivets with some of the black ones I bought for Lobo.

And finally, the small collection of screws which hold (or rather held) the 900 together in the first place....

Next step - sanding and surface preparation.... cyas in a bit...

wow, this is going to be awesome! +sub

Woot - well it wasn't the inspiration for the mod, but this little pic here has kinda eased my concerns about how the colours will match. The orange and grey will both be a little different but the idea seems sound....

for a minute there I thought this was the top ugliest production cars thread :facepalm: lol

lol touche :P But then again, when you have 200hp in a car that small and light, it isn't like you'd be looking at it very long anyway....

I have a really REALLY annoying habit of being sidetracked or otherwise derailed on my projects. General Lee, for example, took almost 3 years from start to finish and that was a paintjob and a few stickers :s

For this reason I have decided that, no matter what else I do, I WILL do SOMETHING on this case every day until it is finished. Tonight was one of those nights when I had next to no time (work - pick up wife - shopping - dinner - virus removal - it's 9pm already!) so.... Ok - minor update....

I'm lucky enough to have access to all of the tools and materials required to really go to town and get this 100% right, so tonight I spent about an hour at most, starting the prep on the plastics. I used a scotchbrite pad to roughen up and clean all of the plastic which will be visible and therefore painted. In the past I've painted a little too much and ended up not being able to get things back together again because the various coatings have added up to make a substantial increase (or decrease in the case of gaps) in size. I spent a little time working out exactly what plastic will be visible, and what won't be, and throughly scratched a key into all of the visible surfaces. After this, I gave them a quick wipe down with a tak-cloth to remove all of the plastic dust I generated, and a wipe over with a lint-free cloth and some panel wipe (degreaser). Tomorrow night, I'm hoping to get those parts plastic primed and then properly primed...

Hopefully by this time tomorrow, they'll be grey instead of black... well in part anyway... Toodleoo!!

And silverdemon, here's where you get to find out if I'm capable of actually following my own advice lol - after everything I posted in your worklog, lets see if I actually DO it or end up cutting corners myself heh....

Should be good. I like the choice of colors.

I just noticed that the orange I have is pretty transparent. I'm either going to have to base it up with something else, or hope like hell it doesn't take too many coats to cover properly. It was originally a paint for a customer at work who wanted something semi-transparent but ended up deciding on something else.....

use something like a metallic white as a base, it'll make the orange light up

27th July was the last post and today is 29th August. So much for doing something on this every day until it's finished. I really can't believe it's been over a month - it felt like a week or two, three at the absolute outside!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway....

Decided to get on with the internals first, mainly because I still need the practice and IF it goes wrong, it'll be less noticable (hopefully) although yeah, I know the pedant in me will do it over n over till it's right. As it happens I have a full litre of black basecoat sitting here which is more than enough to paint a dozen or more cases - the colours I have for the outside are in slightly lower quantities....

We start with this...

And a whole lot of rivet removal later we end up with...

...and...

...and...

All set up in the garden shed (it's a small shed but it was shelter from the wind - I was determined to get some of this case done today). Applying etch primer to the lightly scuffed bare metal...

...ditto...

... and we end up with this ...

Thirteen parts to this chassis, and that doesn't include the plastics. I have to get the black on tomorrow or all of the priming needs to be done again. I don't know if this is the case with all etch primers, but with this particular one, you have to recoat the primer with something (more primer, paint etc) after at least one hour and within 24 hours or it goes too hard to actually allow the next coat to take a grip properly and you end up back at the start. Hopefully, tomorrow will see, at the very least, all of the interior going black (probably matt or satin black - haven't 100% decided yet - definitely NOT gloss) and being riveted back together....

Again, my apologies for abjectly failing to maintain the "every day" progress but life, and all that eh....

Hahaha, yeah, I think we all start out thinking "I'll work on this every day". ...unfortunately, life all too often gets in the way. :P

It's good to see this back on its feet though! Make sure you don't put too many coats on the overlapping edges. I made that mistake with mightyMite and ended up ruining the paint job at a lot of the seams because several layers scraped off in the process of fitting them together. :(

So I got everything primed yesterday, and got it all painted today. No action shots of the painting unfortunately, but some results...

The first of the rivets going in. I was lucky to have black rivets lying around from a previous project so I went with those. First I connected the I/O and PCI bracket to the rear panel.

Then reassembled the drive bays..

And then connected the base and motherboard tray.

Looks pretty good I think. There are minor bits I'm going to rub down and hit again, but those little repairs will be done with the case intact. No way I'm taking it apart again for a couple of minor scratches.

The matt finish looks really good - exactly what I wanted, but it seems really easy to scratch. I might look into getting hold of some matt clearcoat to give it a little more protection before I throw my system back into this.

Finally for today - it's Pop Quiz time.... How many rivets are there in an Antec 900, not including the drive bays?

Loads!!!

First up, apologies for the sub-par photo quality. I was in a hurry as light was fading so the pics here are all taken with my phone. I will get some better ones tomorrow when hopefully, this'll all be nice and dry and ready for sanding and then colour.

Plastics time....

A little over a month ago, I got all the plastics removed and rubbed down to give the paint something to grip on to. Tonight I gave them a clean down with a tack-cloth but I skipped using a degreaser (we'll see tomorrow if I end up regretting this or not) and then masked off the parts which aren't going to be getting paint.

Here we have the main front frame...

The top of the front frame or front of the top plastic - whichever you prefer lol...

A couple of wires hung for the frame side parts - they're going to need paint on 3 of 4 sides plus the edges on the 4th side so hanging them up was the only way to get it all in one hit...

And a quick couple of coats of primer later we have...

The top of the case...

The frame...

One of the side sections...

And finally that front of top/top of sides part.

There were more pics but rushing and decent photographs don't seem to go hand in hand very well :s

With a little luck I will be able to get these sanded down and maybe re-primed tomorrow night, then it'll be time for some Orange!!

As promised, a couple of close-ups of the finished priming, this time with a better camera! I am REALLY happy with the way this looks. I expect to put a second coat on after I flat this down, but it depends on how high-build the primer turns out to be....

I got a text message when I was at work the other day. It was from my wife and the entire message was "Sorry...". Needless to say I was curious so I called her and she told me she had accidentally managed to scratch one of the drive bay boxes for this project...

Scratched Drive Bay Cage

Nothing a little sanding and repainting won't fix though so nothing major...

Yesterday I got the plastic parts of the case in primer, and I'm really happy with the way they turned out.

Bottom of the front frame - Antec still nice and sharp

The Front/Top corner part

The two side strips for the front panel

So today I decided to try to get the metal parts, specifically the two side panels, to the same stage. Time for some power tools I think (well air-powered anyway...

Cranked up the compressor to 120psi

Attached a sponge interface pad and a 320 grit sanding disk to my mini sander/polisher

And set to work - before....

And after a pretty short sanding session. The case (like most cases) had a bit of a texture to it so I figured a light sanding will give the primer a little less to cover. And after...

Used a blow gun to clean off the heavy dust, the gave both panels a good clean down with a cloth soaked in Panel Wipe (degreaser). Glad I did too - look at the state of the cloth afterwards!!!

Then I set the panels up in the shed, using a couple snapped off table legs to make sure none of the edges touched the masking paper in the background.

And gave them both several light coats of 5:1 high build primer...

If the weather and the light holds out, I might try to get some colour on these today but chances are, it'll be tomorrow. I'd prefer to give the panels a little extra time for the primer to fully cure anyway. The stuff I'm using is usually good to go within an hour, but longer is usually better so chances are, that's about it for today...

Onwards and upwards we go!!!

So I got those panels into primer yesterday - it's a hi-build automotive primer which is designed to go on really thick so you can sand it down a LOT to get a really smooth finish...

First step in doing that is to lay down a guidecoat for sanding....

Basically you just dust some black (or any colour really) paint over the surface, then start wet sanding. When all the black is gone, in theory you have a smooth surface as the black goes into the dips and valleys - once it's all gone, you should have sanded off enough primer to end up with a smooth finish. Et voila!

I actually had a really hard time taking this pic - the camera just didn't want to focus on the panel - I guess that says something about how smooth it is :)

Next I set about making something to hold up the panels for the colour. I wanted to be able to get the whole panel done in one go to save on the hassles of cleaning the gun between uses, so I needed some way to hold all of the edges in the air, without using wires or anything which might catch on the sides. Carboard boxes and kebab skewers to the rescue!!

They work really well, holding everything up nice and high...

Well almost anyway. The one on the left, with the heavier panel. Two of the skewers snapped, dropping the panel onto the concrete, right on the corner and put a nasty dent in it. I did a quick repair which is a LONG way from perfect and justified it to myself with "It's the bottom, rear corner, on the side of the case which goes against the side of my desk - cmon - be reasonable - don't put hours and hours into trying (and probably failing) to get it perfect....

After that little annoyance (and lots and lots of loud swearing) I started to hit the panels with some colour... The basecoat I'm using dries really quickly so over the space of less than an hour, I managed to get 6 or 7 nice thin coats on.

And here you can see that corner which caused so much colourful language...

This basecoat needs to be clearcoated pretty quickly or it over-dries and goes cloudy, so to end the day I hit both panels with a (too) heavy coat of Hi-Solids 2k Lacquer.

I have a couple of pretty nasty runs in the side panel with the vents and windows, but I'm hoping they'll sand out ok before I put another coat or two of clear on. If you look closely in the final pic, right on the right hand side, in line with the top of the paper cup, you can see the bottom of one run. There's also a nasty edge at the bottom of the panel where the clear has gathered - both of these will need attending to as this is the visible panel where my PC sits....

There may not be a lot of progress before next weekend, work and that other boring stuff getting in the way, but a huge shout-out goes to the wife who acted all upset and sad when I dropped the panel, and for putting up with me smelling of paint all day and effectively ignoring from about 1pm until she went to work at 7 :S I think I may have used up whatever credit I got from her scratching the drive bay so it's time to be the good husband again lol

The grey is seriously sparkly - it's almost wasted on a case which is going to be inside but I'll try to get some in-the-sun pics of the panels so you all can see just how strong the effect is - the in-the-shed pics just don't get close to doing it justice...

EDIT: those runs I mentioned....

Nice work with the paint, it looks awesome! Too bad about that corner though. :(

...also, should we be worried about the gas can right next to your grill? :?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by x88x

...also, should we be worried about the gas can right next to your grill? :?

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LOL - the grill got beat up pretty badly in a weekend of serious wind about 3 weeks ago. Until I have time to strip it down and sort it out, it won't be getting used - but thanks for the thought.... My Petrol weed-whacker is kinda dead too atm so the gas won't be getting used anytime soon, and as I keep it pre-mixed with the oil the whacker needs, I can't really use it for anything else (oh and my car is has a Diesel Engine too lol)

Sounds like you have had a series of challenges with this build my friend. I thought the case was looking pretty good all white, but that charcoal is going to look great. Can't wait to see the orange go on!

Is it supposed to have a speckled look

That's a flash artifact. The paint is a very sparkly next gen pearl colour. The flash has caught the crystal in the paint. I'm going to try to get some better daylight pics soon

I thought as much, the paint looks excellent to me. I have to say I'm with OvRiDe with the white. It looked good like that also, but I think your sparkly paint will look excellent, hope to see it all together soon.

The white wasn't an option. As it happens, it isn't white or even close to it. The plastic primer I used on the top and front parts is a light grey, and the primer on the side panels is actually a greenish yellow. I guess the flash just washed them out a little and made them look white. I really have no need for a white case, for reasons which are hush hush right now but will hopefully become clear in about a month.

On a seperate note, I was showing the worklog to a couple guys at work today, and that dented corner is really starting to bug me. I see a more thorough repair and repainting on the horizon. Fortunately I have plenty of the paint left that I used on the side panels. I think I used, at most about 70ml of paint out of a half-litre.... It is amazing how far the paint goes when put through an air powered spraygun!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by x88x

Nice work with the paint, it looks awesome! Too bad about that corner though. :(

...also, should we be worried about the gas can right next to your grill? :?

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It makes BBQ's more fun :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by flare

It makes BBQ's more fun :D

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That comment, and your user ID here.... SOOO apt lol

Haha I didn't realise that!

The project is looking good man, nice job with the paint.

Modkitty says "Do the orange bits, do them NOW!!!"

Hmmm.... Last time I checked, I wasn't quite finished with the grey bits lol....

If you all can remember as far as last week (I vaguely can) you'll remember that after getting the blank side panel all lovely and primed and smooth and stuff, it fell on the floor and got a nice dent in the corner for it's trouble. I decided, at the time, that as the corner in question was the back, bottom corner on the side that sits against the side panel of my desk, I could live with the damage, and straightened it a bit and painted it anyway...

Well this is the corner I'm talking about, and how it looks painted and clearcoated...

And... well no, I can't live with it.... Wire wheel time - it was almost heartbreaking seeing the first gashes appear in that nice shiny paint...

The metal was twisted, bent AND split from my quick and dirty "grab a pair of pliers and bend it back" repair. I spent about 15 mins with a hammer and a straight screwdriver, and the same pliers as last time and got it a lot straighter, then applied some single-pack stopper filler to it.

I then sanded it down and gave it a dusting of primer, then sanded it again. Actually I repeated that 2 or 3 times before I was happier with it and ended up with this...

A good heavy sanding of the area later and it looks like it's ready for primer again, but because I didn't flatten the clearcoat, there's actually quite a texture to the panel as you can see from the pattern left behind...

I decided then, it'd probably be better to just repaint the whole thing instead of trying to puff in the repaired part so set to work sanding the whole panel...

Because I used a high-build primer last time (the one with the yellowish colour) there really wasn't any need to do it again, so a few quick coats of aerosol low-build primer later...

While I was waiting for that primer to go off, and in the repairing mood, you may recall the drive bay my lovely wife scratched when moving my sons BMX frame... Well a quick sand down and a quick blast of black later we have...

Which now looks much tidier. As for the corner of the case...

That also looks MUCH improved... Time for some colour but... this is ME we're talking about and with my luck, after the first two coats of grey, a great big drop of paint fell off of the tip of my spraygun.... I was very surprised when it effectively ate straight into the low-build primer...

There was no way, after the hours it took getting that corner back to being close to perfect, I was going to be able to put up with that either, so back to sanding....

And then back to the paint. Fortunately there were no more dramas and I ended up with this...

If you look really hard and really closely, you can just see where that drop landed, but it's a LONG way from obvious and it is definitely now acceptable. I didn't have enough time to clearcoat it - it was starting to get dark, so I may try a little something tomorrow to make it even less noticable. As for that nasty dropped corner.... Well that I'm completely happy with. Again, really close inspection WILL show where it was damaged but it is nowhere near as noticable as it was before....

If the weather holds tomorrow, I might get around to doing what the cat wanted... The orange, but no guarantees. I still have those runs to deal with on the other side panel and this panel will need another coat of colour before clear too. I really want to get the grey finished and put to bed before I start on the orange parts....

I've been told by people who know WAY more than I do about it, that you really should be putting clear on within 30 minutes of the last coat of coloured basecoat, so there'll be one more coat of colour tomorrow (or next time) before the clear goes on....

Wow, massive improvement on that corner! It looks great!

Thanks - for all of my "I want it PERFECT" attitude, I'm more than willing to accept this. There's one tiny chip like mark remaining and it'd definitely something I can live with...

Today I decided to make a start on those plastic front and top panels parts. Before I did anything new though, I wanted to check on the primer coverage. I've deliberately avoided priming up the whole panels because I've had problems in the past when primer, primer, colour, colour, clear, clear, clear etc ends up adding so much thickness to the surface that the parts don't fit back together again. I quickly popped the 4 parts of the front panel back together for a test fitting and, so far so good...

Pulled them apart again and gave them and the top panel plastic a gentle sanding with wet 600 grit paper.

Then I took the air powered sander to the windowed side panel. Those runs were just too heavy to be gently sanded out, so back to primer we go. After about 40 minutes work we end up back here....

But while I'm working with primer, it made sense to give the two mesh parts a quick scotchbrite to provide a key for the paint, and a couple of coats of primer.

Now I knew the orange pearl I had was semi-transparent, and I got some plain solid orange to base it up with so it'd cover nicely, but I thought I'd give SXRguyinMA's suggestion a try (well kinda....)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

use something like a metallic white as a base, it'll make the orange light up

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The only white I have to hand is solid white, but there's more than enough pearl in the orange to take care of the lighting up aspect... Time for a little experiment methinks! Grab one spare case side panel, and give it a quick sand down for some kind of smoothness, and add a coat or two of basic primer. I then added a coat of the same primer which is on the plastics. It's actually a proper plastic primer, but it seemed happy enough grabbing hold of the panel/primer...

I then masked off the bottom half (ok it's a really bad "half" but hey, it'll work for my purposes lol) and hit it with a heavy coat of white (way too heavy to be honest, but I was after the effect here, not the perfect finish)

And finally a good coat of the orange I plan to use on the plastics...

There really is no doubt that the orange over white comes up much cleaner and brighter than directly over the primer.

I know I could add several coats of orange and it'd end up looking exactly the same, but every coat is one more chance for something to go horribly wrong....

With that decision made, I decided it was time to get the rest of the colour on. I mixed up all three of the colours I'd be needing, the grey, the orange and the white (there is white in that cup, I promise)

Then I cleaned the orange out of the spraygun and set to work on the white... We have the top panel...

The re-masked front outer bezel...

The two side bars and the mesh panel from the windowed side...

And finally the bit that sits at the top/front of the case.

And this is where all the plans fell apart. When I was finished with the white, I cleaned out the spraygun again, ready for some orange goodness and.... used the last of my Standard Thinners up. I could have pushed on and gotten the rest of the colours on, but I only have 3 of these sprayguns, and while I could have used one for the orange, one for the grey, and the last one for the clear, I'd have had no way to clean them. By the time I get in from work tomorrow night, the clearcoating gun would definitely need to go in the bin, and the other two would need serious cleaning, if not a similar trip into the trash.

I do really want to push this project on to completion, but not at the expense of 3 sprayguns lol...

Here's hoping I get some time one evening this coming week - if not - next update will be next weekend - until then - cyas ;)

Making some good progress here. Oh, and yeah, that orange over white looks much better. :up:

It's been almost 24 hours since your last update.. post moar pictures slacker.

I'm a weekend warrior - hear me roar!!!! :p

I just in from work and ate lol - the only thing I plan on doing tonight is properly cleaning my sprayguns as I had to kinda scrimp on the thinners yesterday lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

I'm a weekend warrior - hear me roar!!!! :p

I just in from work and ate lol - the only thing I plan on doing tonight is properly cleaning my sprayguns as I had to kinda scrimp on the thinners yesterday lol

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That's no good... the beatings shall continue until moral improves or worklog gets updates, this is one of the more interesting worklogs I have looked through in awhile keep it up :banana:

Aaaaaaaand we're back. Last weekend was a bust due to weather, and yesterday, well no excuse, I just never got around to it. Today I woke up with a rotten cold, sore throat, cough and a headache so I decided not to do anything on the project.

Until about 5pm that is lol - two weeks is long enough and if I don't get this finished soon, it'll get too cold to paint again so - pushing on....

Because I didn't get around to clearcoating a couple weeks ago, I had to give both of the side panels a quick rub down with some 800 grit. I could have gone a little coarser, but as I only used a low-build primer on the windowed panel, I didn't want to risk going through (again). After the sanding, I gave a new weapon in my painting arsenal a try....

Farecla G-Scuff

This is a relatively new product which is designed to help prepare a previously painted surface for fresh paint. You drop on a couple of, well, splodges lol, of this and thoroughly wet your scotchbrite pad then go to work.

Prepared Panels

You end up with what looks like a layer of soap but under the soap you get a very nice, even layer of keying scratches. The G-Scuff also acts as a cleaner and degreaser and my first impressions of the stuff are very positive. That small tube is about £8 which is around $13 and I only used a tiny amount so it'll go a LONG way. In the above pic, I've done both but the white foamy residue doesn't show up as well on the light grey as it does on the dark.

Time for some colour anyway. As this will, hopefully, be the last time I'm using the grey colour, and I happened to pick them up when I got the Standard Thinners I ran out of in the last update, I strained the paint. I actually used the paint I mixed 2 weeks ago. It's been sat in that cup for 2 weeks, in the shed, and it was just fine. I like basecoat lol - it just lasts!!!

A Used Paint Strainer

And I hit the solid side panel with a fairly wet coat of colour...

Solid Side Panel

I then gave the windowed panel the same treatment, except the first 2 coats were dustcoats.

Windowed Panel

Then I went back n forth until I'd used up all of the paint. I gave each coat about 5 minutes to flash off before applying the next, with the final coat going on about 15 minutes after the one before. I figure there are between 8 and 12 coats on each of these panels, maybe as many as 16 more on the solid one.

Painting Done

Painting Done

And then it was time for some clearcoat. The product I'm using is a 2-pack high solids lacquer. Excuse my language but, as one of the guys at work put it "Basecoat isn't too bad. 2-Pack is different. That ****'ll kill you!" so it was time to cover up my stunning good looks....

Me!!!!

I laid down 2 or 3 dustcoats of the Clear on each of the panels as well as the top grille. (I painted that today too lol - I just never took any pics of it). Once they'd had time to flash off, I hit them both with 2 or 3 nice wet coats, resulting in this...

Solid Panel Cleared

Solid Panel Cleared

Solid Panel Cleared

Windowed Panel Cleared

Top Fan Grill Painted and Cleared

And finally, one gratuitous shinyness shot. This is the solid side panel. The reflection you see is my house. This was taken AFTER the clear had flashed off so it isn't just the wetness reflecting. I can't wait for it to cure properly so I can flat and polish it up properly.

My abode...

Until next time (probably next week)...

Looks great.

So when you have to scroll through to halfway down the 3rd page of "Works in Progress" to find your project, you know two things.

1. There are a lot of kickass mods in progress out there which is ALWAYS a good thing... Keep 'em coming guys, it's great to see us producing so much good stuff!

...and...

2. You seriously need to post an update....

So, here we go....

Last time I was here, I was talking about how good the main side panel was looking and how I couldn't wait to get it flatted and polished. Well that's now done...

As soon as I got it home, I put it straight onto the case chassis because I couldn't wait to see how it looked, and I figured it was the best place to keep it where it wouldn't get knocked over or scratched etc.

I also got the orange onto all of the parts which needed orange. I based them up with white to help the orange really pop, although to be honest, there ended up being so many coats of orange, it probably wasn't needed.

And again, because I'm impatient, AND to protect them from being dropped, lost, eaten by a pet etc, I put them into place (temporarily) on the case...

I'm really liking the way this is turning out. I'm going to give them another day or two to fully cure before I start reassembly proper, but I'm definitely well on the home stretch now. I'm not going to put a date on it, because that'll be the kiss of death, but I seriously expect some REAL progress towards a completed job by the weekend :D