Rover P6 3500 repaint
Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 10:17 am
In order to make progress with the Jowett projects that are waiting in the wings - I need to move some of my fleet on - I have owned the Rover for 11 years and it wants for nothing but it came from a muesum collection and during its time in the collection it gained a couple of minor paintwork scratches - these were rectifyied prior to my ownership but the colour match was off hence I had a door on each side that was slightly off shade in colour - this had always bugged me - the car is very original and has covered less than 21,000 miles from new - so before it goes I needed to sort the paint - to add to this there were some minor stone chips to the front valance.
The real problem came in obtaining a match for the now 41 year Lunar Gray paint that is on the car and despite taking a panel off the car to no less than 3 so called colour matching specialists in the automotive refinishing supplies trade - none could obtain the correct milky white hue that the original paint on the car has. I tried to blend down the either side on to the other panels but got no closer with the colour match that I required.
In the end I cut to the chase and obtained a very close match but not close enough to match a newly painted panel against an original panel - looking down the side of the car the match was fine but then standing back from the car side on - you could see the unmatched panels. So nothing left for it but to paint down both sides + boot & bonnet in order to attain the matching colour I stripped the fittings off the car and set about carefully flatting back with 600 wet & dry There was the odd minor remedial repair to undertake - mainly where the door handle had cut through the gasket and into the original paint The front & rear deck panels along with the rear valance was removed for ease of painting - these would have been awkward to paint insitu - Due to the nature of the boot & bonnet overlapping the wing flanges I opted to paint the sides with boot & bonnet up and shall paint these seperate So after much careful prep work and masking - on went the paint - which is when the fun with the mcb on garage electric supply started - the intial load on the compressor kept tripping the mcb which also resulted in the loss of lighting - it has never done this before but then again the wiring in the garage is somewhat of a joke (previous owner) and high on the agenda is a rewire (It was only built 5 years ago but is just a snake pit of extension leads & gang plugs) I had to keep going as I now had wet paint on three panels so just placed a couple a of torches to enable me to get to the mcb safely - once reset I was back painting but every second cycle of the compressor out went the mcb - it got to the point where it was comical - Still manged to get the paint on and will take some shots later on today - might get the boot & bonnet into paint a little later today if I get time - but so far so good
The real problem came in obtaining a match for the now 41 year Lunar Gray paint that is on the car and despite taking a panel off the car to no less than 3 so called colour matching specialists in the automotive refinishing supplies trade - none could obtain the correct milky white hue that the original paint on the car has. I tried to blend down the either side on to the other panels but got no closer with the colour match that I required.
In the end I cut to the chase and obtained a very close match but not close enough to match a newly painted panel against an original panel - looking down the side of the car the match was fine but then standing back from the car side on - you could see the unmatched panels. So nothing left for it but to paint down both sides + boot & bonnet in order to attain the matching colour I stripped the fittings off the car and set about carefully flatting back with 600 wet & dry There was the odd minor remedial repair to undertake - mainly where the door handle had cut through the gasket and into the original paint The front & rear deck panels along with the rear valance was removed for ease of painting - these would have been awkward to paint insitu - Due to the nature of the boot & bonnet overlapping the wing flanges I opted to paint the sides with boot & bonnet up and shall paint these seperate So after much careful prep work and masking - on went the paint - which is when the fun with the mcb on garage electric supply started - the intial load on the compressor kept tripping the mcb which also resulted in the loss of lighting - it has never done this before but then again the wiring in the garage is somewhat of a joke (previous owner) and high on the agenda is a rewire (It was only built 5 years ago but is just a snake pit of extension leads & gang plugs) I had to keep going as I now had wet paint on three panels so just placed a couple a of torches to enable me to get to the mcb safely - once reset I was back painting but every second cycle of the compressor out went the mcb - it got to the point where it was comical - Still manged to get the paint on and will take some shots later on today - might get the boot & bonnet into paint a little later today if I get time - but so far so good