Time to fix up the truck.

What a job, I would have never guessed that it would take a full day to give the truck a bath, get it dry and do all the masking.
But the masking is nearly done ready to start squirting paint in the morning. Just a few bits to cover up that I still need access to.

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Well morning came and went. There was such a heavy dew overnight that the truck was literally dripping wet. It would not have gotten any wetter if it were raining. But by mid afternoon sitting in the sun it was dry and it is now all RED.

Last night was another heavy dew so it may not be until mid afternoon before it is dry enough to shoot the clear today.

Side note. I took the rear wheels off to make it easier to get to the inside edges of the wheel wells. I lifted it up with the floor jack under the rear end. I put jack stands under the rear spring mounts, and set in on the jack stands. I then lowered the floor jack all the way so I could put it away for the night. (around here anything of value left out will be gone by morning.) This left the rear drums about 3 inches off the ground. and a lot of weight on the fully lowered floor jack. I could tell my the position of the jack handle that someone tried to pull it out last night, but could not figure out how to get 7,000 Lbs of truck off of it. LOL
 
Well it is now red and kinda shiny.
I spent all day Friday doing the masking.
Saturday it was so wet with dew that I could not start until 3:00pm. I got the masking finished and took the back wheels off so I could paint in the wheel wells, and did some final prep and getting everything ready to go. But I got all the red on by 7:30pm, was just getting pretty dark out.
Sunday same game, it was so wet with dew that I could not start until 3:00pm. I had to wet sand some bugs out of the red and luckily did not sand thru so it was still ready to clear. I did the wet sanding in the morning while it was wet anyhow.
Finally finished the clear at around 6:00. by the time I got everything cleaned up and put back together it was to dark for pics.

Left side of box where I did all the work this Summer. I also fixed the bullet hole in the rear left door and cleared that at the same time.

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Right side of box that I did 2 years ago, there were a few curtains in the clear and I tried to blend clear by not clearing the whole box side. Last time I never took the bumper off to clean up behind it, so I did that this time around and sanded out all the curtains and masking edges from the first try and recleared the whole box side this time.

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During the process about a month ago, I had a headlight go bad that could not be fixed so I had to get new headlights for it also. They work and look a lot better than the stock lights. I had to replace the lights twice. The first set looked great but the DRL and turn signals were not visible in daylight, I called the manufacturer and they said the light look great and are the best available at night. This they were correct about. But they said that if I want DRL and turn signals that can be seen in daylight that I should send them back to where I bought them, get a refund and buy something else. So I did, these are the second try. These are the second best at night but also look good and are very visible DRL and turn signals in direct sunlight.

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This is a 14 year old truck that lives outside and is driven daily in the Wisconsin version of the rust belt. The rust is coming I understand that. I will not be diving into any more restoration projects on this truck. However I will still continue with the Fluid Film treatments to prolong it as much as possible.
 
looks great. Surprised you didn't put a tarp over it at night.. Dew is a fact of life. Also keeps the bugs off and keeps them from S H I T T I N G on your clean panels... not that you can shoot without another paint prep solvent.
 
I was never expecting that much dew. and yes I did a chem wipe and tack cloth immediately before shooting. It is the bugs that land in the wet paint while still spraying, and there is nothing you (or at least me) can do to get them out without making a bigger mess.

I have never painted anything outside and not had at least one bug in the wet paint.
 
came out great, especially for an outdoor paint.
I painted a car outside once.. never again. Any breaze plays havoc, you wind up getting a dry spray, or too wet a spray with runs.
in your case, you can get dirt from the ground with a little thermal activity... :rolleyes: , that would be horrible, worse than a bug.
I'm down to my last gallon of Sikkens M600 paint prep.. gotta find a new source. Never used chem wipes.
 
I did water all the ground all around where I was working to hold the dust down as much as possible.
 
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