IRS Painted

I spent this weekend finishing off painting the IRS for the Ghia. I stripped the paint from it last weekend using a combination of paint stripper and a zip wheel in my grinder. There was only some minor surface rust, so I sanded this back ready for painting.

I decided to paint the suspension myself, rather than getting it powder coated, this was mostly due to the shiny finish that powder coating normally gives, I wanted a low gloss almost satin finish to be more like the original.

I had some paint left over from painting the pan and roll cage on the oval so decided to use this. It comprises of an etch primer and enamel based topcoat. I generally favour this paint for chassis stuff as I can thin it with normal meths and don’t need to buy a special thinners as I do with other brands.

I had a bit of an issue with the primer separating out from the thinners, which I put down to it being old paint, this meant going out to buy some more paint and spending a fair bit of time cleaning the sludge out my spray gun.

After wasting a fair bit of time battling the sludge (trying to thin the paint down simply made matters worse – I might well have been using water) I finally got a few coats of primer on the parts and left things to dry. Fortunately the paint that did initially make it onto the part did not ruin it.

I then moved on to the top coat. I mix the paint up and start to paint, only to find that the topcoat reacts in exactly the same way that the primer did. More sludge to clean out, and more paint to buy. I’d never come across this issue before, and am not 100% what caused it, but I know that in the future I will only use fresh paint for spraying, and leave the old paint for brush painting.

After cleaning the sludge out for a second time, and being really grateful for the spray gun cleaning kit that I bought somewhere along the track, I load up with some fresh paint and get some topcoat on the suspension.

After leaving it overnight I sand out the splatter marks caused by the initial sludge spraying and give it a final coat. Fortunately it looks like it will be okay, which is a relief considering that I have already stripped one lot of paint off.

Next week I can start to reassemble the suspension. My plans are to get the rear suspension in and the engine trial fitted so that I fabricate the rear engine mounts – a job that will hopefully be easier now that I have the sheet metal bender.