>I'm thinking of painting it myself. Bear in mind I do not want anything
like a show car >finish. I'm sure anything would be better than what it
looks like now.
Try the forums at www.autobody101.com <http://www.autobody101.com/> to get
an idea of what you can and can't do yourself (for your comfort level). I
think just like painting your livingroom the prep work is much more effort
then the actual painting...
I'm in the same boat with my TR3. I don't want to do full "restoration" to
fix various rust and accident damage, but I don't want it to look like crap
either. I read stories about guys doing 100's of hours (each) of blocking,
colour standing, polishing, wet sanding and the thought of that makes me
want to sell it and buy a Miata instead. No offence anybody if that's
you're "thing" but body & paint work makes me think of hundreds of hours of
not driving. PS if it is you're "think" I have some work for you...
I'm thinking there's no way they put that much labour into the finish did
that back at the factory, the labour costs involved would have been
prohibitive. I'd be happy with "as new" not "better then new".
My plan (so far) is to do the stripping myself (as there are too many layers
of paint and chips to get a common surface level now) farm out the actual
body work, prime it myself and then send the car to my local Maaco shop for
final paint (all with the engine in place). I have a hard time believing
that Maaco's middle of the road paint job in 2004 wouldn't be at least as
good as Standard Triumph could do 45 years ago.
Art
Check out the new British Cars Forum:
http://www.team.net/the-local/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=8
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