| MIATA BUILD |
|
|
 | | August 3, 2007 - Operator error.
Whoops, ignore this particular entry.
entry 245 | | |  | July 26, 2007 - Battery comparison time.
I've become fed up with trying to keep used batteries alive, so I sprung for a new one. See if you can guess which one it is!
The big one is a stock Miata Panasonic battery, only available in a new Miata - and no longer available at all, I guess. The blue stickers are on the Mazda replacement one, and the little red thing is an Odyssey PC680. It's about half the weight of the others, has more cranking power and it's a tough little AGM. I've been using one of these in the Seven for a couple of years and I love it.
entry 246 - tags: weight loss, other cars | | |  | July 26, 2007 - Carbon fibre!
Ricky Nietubicz offered this to me in the hopes that I'll do something cool with it. At least, that's how I understood things.
And I will do something cool. I'm thinking headlight covers. Small, relatively simple and a good place to learn. Plus the factory covers are amazingly heavy. Once I learn how to do this, there will be no stopping me.
First step, though, is to get the car painted in time for the Flyin' Miata Open House.
entry 247 | | | July 27, 2007 - I'm going backwards!
In order to paint the stripes, I need to strip off some parts of the car. A couple of pairs of hood pins, the door handles, mirrors, taillights, various trim pieces - I'm starting to pull it off now. Now I just have to finalise the shape of the stripes on the nose and I'm good to go.
entry 248 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 29, 2007 - It's masking time.
This is an ambitious job for someone who's only just learned how to spray paint. But that's how you learn, right?
For masking the stripes, I'm using plastic "fine line" tape. It bends and curves much easier than masking tape and should leave a nice sharp edge. I sure hope so, I'd hate to have to do this again.
entry 249 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 29, 2007 - The fine line tape makes it very easy to lay down nice curves.
I've reworked almost every section of the car slightly, and pulled the tape up over and over to get a slightly better arc. I'm very happy with how the rear's turned out, but the front was still bugging me.
entry 250 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 29, 2007 - The lateral stripe across the nose had never worked to my satisfaction.
The original mockup had the stripes originating from the turn signal lens, so I tried going back to that. Think Lancia S4 instead of Porsche 911 for the source.
It took a whole lot of trial and error, but finally I stumbled across a look that I think is a big improvement. I was careful to have the stripe width constantly increasing, that was trickier than it sounds given the compound curves of the nose.
With both sides taped up like this, there was no question. I'd found the shape.
This picture shows the detail masking starting up. I spent a lot of time underhood and inside door jambs making sure I didn't get ugly overspray. I probably still will, but at least I tried.
entry 251 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 29, 2007 - The big masking job begins.
It's tricky masking a convertible with a roll cage and no glass. The masking paper I bought from the paint store makes the job a lot easier than it could be. I thought about using plastic but I'm pretty sure this was the right decision.
One thing I did realize is that the hardtop complicates things. The top covers some of the rear fender when it's installed, so I have to paint the stripes on the topless car. But that's going to make it very difficult to align the stripes properly on the hardtop, and it's pretty obvious I can't pop it on and off when the car is masked. So I'll paint stripes on the car and the base color on the hardtop. Then I'll unmask the car, install the hardtop, mask off the remaining stripes (cyan and red) and spray it then. It means five painting sessions instead of three, but it'll also mean a much better look when I'm done.
I will mask off the wheels properly before spraying, and I might extend the "skirt" right to the floor. I sure hope this tape gives a clean edge. Not that I'm worried.
entry 252 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 30, 2007 - Eric suggested that I do a test panel with my tape since I'm so worried about it.
Duh. So I taped up a random piece of metal and shot it with spray paint. The metal was unsanded, slippery and slightly greasy aluminum. The end result? Very good. So that's all right then.
entry 253 - tags: paint | | |  | July 30, 2007 - All bundled up and ready to go.
I sanded down the rear fenders a bit with some 600 and 1500 grit to smooth out the rough original paint - remember, that had a fair bit of bonus texture. The rest was scuffed up, then cleaned. I went over every bit of the tape to ensure it was well attached for a nice clean line.
One thing that isn't immediately obvious in this picture is that after doing the update last night, I noticed that the arc going into the front wheel was a touch more aggressive than it should be. So I eased it off a bit to match all the other arcs going into the wheel wells. Can you see the difference?
entry 254 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 30, 2007 - First, the dark blue.
This paint is "tape free" in 4 hours and deliverable in 24. I'm assuming "deliverable" means you can hand it over to the happy customer. I'll tape it up tomorrow night, then shoot the cyan.
The VW blue was fairly nice looking as I laid it down although I'm not sure I'd want a whole car this color. I did miss a couple of pinpoints of solvent (perhaps that last degrease was overkill) but I'll deal with that with touchup or by laying another stripe over top.
entry 255 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 31, 2007 - Time to start taping for the stripes.
This is taking up an inordinate amount of time and it's both fun and fairly new to me - so there are going to be a lot of pictures.
One of the most dynamic parts of the car, speaking from a stripe point of view, is the front corner. So that's where I started. The piece of green tape has the "ideal" proportions marked out - even size for the two blues, and the red is the size of three blue stripes. To make my life easier, I'm making the stripe width a combination of my tape widths. In this case, the stripes are 12mm wide, a good match to two widths of the 1/4" tape. You can see where I've used a couple of short pieces to ensure the gap is correct. The light blue tape is masking what will eventually be dark blue in the final scheme.
entry 256 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 31, 2007 - So much for playing by the rules.
The stripes running along the hood didn't look right at 1/2" wide, so I narrowed them down to 1/4" plus 1/8". I also tapered them down slightly at the front. This small change altered the front from being a little stodgy to being very graceful. This is a game of millimeters.
entry 257 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | July 31, 2007 - One fender done!
Okay, not quite done. The top stripe at the rear of the wheel opening has too much curve and doesn't quite work in the "graceful" stakes. I hadn't planned on having the dark blue stripes meeting in a point on the fender, but that's how it wants to go.
This is taking a while. I'm learning fast, though, and I think I'll be able to do the rest of the car pretty quickly. The door is almost done already, but it's easy because the stripes are a constant width. It's the flares at the wheelwells that take a while. Only three of those left, and I'm hoping the layout I'm doing now will help. I'm pretty excited, I think it's going to look really good.
Speaking of looking good, this picture almost makes it look like I can lay down paint!
entry 258 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | August 1, 2007 - The next three corners did go faster as I learned what the "right" shape was for the fender flares.
I also got better at running a straight line of tape. The human eye is great at picking up slightly wavy lines - I could spot when my tape lines moved from 10mm to 11mm apart. Of course, so will anyone who's looking at the car, and I know there's going to be something odd that will show up.
A bit of asymmetry revealed itself. On the right side of the car, the red will dip down to touch the fender. On the left, not quite. I can live with that. Overall, the car was surprisingly consistent from side to side.
entry 259 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | August 1, 2007 - How do you spend four or five hours masking a car without crippling your back?
Well, if you shop at the Snap-On truck, you have a cool little rolling stool that moves up and down and has a padded bench. If you shop at Home Depot, you have a little gardening seat with big wheels. Sure, it's not as cool as the Snap-On version, but it was $10 and it has a cupholder. Beat that!
entry 260 - tags: paint, Martini, tips | | |  | August 1, 2007 - The world's ugliest Martini livery.
The green tape (well, most of it) is masking off what will eventually be red, the blue tape is masking off dark blue and the exposed dark blue will be cyan. I ended up with a lot of red on the car although not quite as much as it appears here due to tape overlap. How will it look? We'll have to see.
entry 261 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | August 1, 2007 - Cyan time!
Well, that went on pretty easily after all the work. The cyan coat, I realized afterwards, is the one where the masking is most important. It has about 4 times as much edge length as any of the others.
entry 262 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | August 1, 2007 - The tape that covered the red sections has now been pulled off.
Unfortunately, I was wrong about the "tape free" time. It's 12 hours, not 4.
No, it didn't cause a problem with the paint - but it does cause problems with my scheduling. I was planning to shoot the red today so I could move the car out of the way and extract my Seven for a track day tomorrow. Now I'll have to mask off the cyan (a quick and easy job, as long as I don't run out of tape) tomorrow morning, shoot it before I go to work, then spend a bit of time just before the 4 pm track day shuffling the cars about. I won't unmask the whole Targa Miata then, just tear through the cockpit so I can steer it around. At least it means I'll be eager to get home after being at the track!
Oh, such problems to have.
entry 263 - tags: paint, Martini | | |  | August 1, 2007 - I think the most recent car to wear the Martini colors in world rally competition was the Ford Focus.
That was a couple of years back. Now they're sponsored by BP and their team colors look a whole lot like this tape ball.
entry 264 - tags: Martini | | |
|
THE DIARY