Doing things yourself, you learn that way.

I am by no means a professional at automotive paint, body work, paint correction, polishing or window tint. But I don’t think anyone should be scared to learn these skills in fear of damaging something they own. Anything can be fixed, may take some time and a little bit of money, but if you’re not constantly learning what fun is life?

I bought my 1995 Toyota Supra over the winter of 2016/2017. My Supra was in fairly “good” shape considering its a 25 year old car, however that wasn’t good enough for me!

Thanks to the help of a few close friends and youtube, I was able to learn the essential skills of doing automotive body work. This included hammering metal to fit properly, welding in patch metal for rusted panels, adding filler in low spots or rough areas and then how to “block” sand a panel to achieve a very flat surface that gives you that beautiful glassy reflection.

Moving on from sanding you get into primer and surfacer. Ever heard of this? Never in my life would I have believed someone if they told me that spraying such a thin layer of material and then sanding it could change the appearance of the final product so much. After countless coats and blocking I ended up with what experts would call a PERFECT surface to apply paint.

Feeling confident in my prep work, I hauled my car off to be painted by a professional. I chose to utilize a professional painter on this project due to the value of my car, supras in perfect condition are worth between $40,000 and $100,000… not a risk I was willing to take.

AND a few LONG weeks later!  WE HAVE A PAINTED CAR!

 

Now the long and tedious process of reassembly begins.  Fresh paint is extremely soft, in the first 30 days it goes through a process called “outgassing” during which the chemical reaction which causes the paint to harden finishes.  Any sort of wax or sealer on the paint during this time would cause the paint to remain soft and easy to damage.

After carefully reassembling the car and paying a lot of attention to delicate pieces and edges of panels, you end up with a final product something like this.

 

 

But I just couldn’t stop there!

PAINT CORRECTION!

The idea behind paint correction is to “sand” the painted surface to be entirely flat.  Ever been to a car show or seen a car that looks like a piece of glass with a reflection so clear you can see yourself?  That’s paint correction.  All paint naturally has whats called “orange peel” which is that reflective texture in the clear that looks like an orange, while paint is drying there’s a differential in the dry time which creates micro dimples on the surface because of tension.

I have more pictures, need to find them and put them here.

 

Engine / Electrical:

Suspension:

My car has been in ohio its whole 128,000 mile life.. needless to say it saw some winter road salt here… and well.. it fared okay but that’s simply not good enough!  See the theme yet?

Sand blasted and powder coated!

Back in the car fresh as hell!