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White 83 242 Commuter

Care to give a quick tutorial on using the appliance enamel, as far as steps you took and how the finish ended up?

Sure, but there's nothing too crazy about it. And I wouldn't claim that it's anywhere near the "right way" to do things. I used that paint just because I'm not decided about painting the whole car eventually, or just having the hood done. So this is a good enough for now situation. The appliance paint is just a slightly more durable rattlecan paint that goes on thick and stays pretty glossy for a long time.

To prep, I just washed with degreaser and then wet sanded the hood with 400 grit paper. I sanded it until it felt nice and smooth to the touch, no roughness or anything. It's not perfect, and I didn't fix the little dent where something was closed under the hood. I just sanded it smooth.

To paint, I laid down a medium/heavy coat, overlapping by 50%. It's a hood laying flat, so it's pretty forgiving as far as runs are concerned. It took 3/4 of one can to lay down the first coat. If there's any trick to it, it's this: paint somewhat fast, so that you can get the second coat on there before it dries. This paint doesn't flash like other paint, so I just spray the second coat within 1 or 2 minutes of the first. The second coat should be heavier, and more consistent. Because this coat will be your gloss, so if you leave dry spots, those will look like dull spots in the final finish. The second coat should be thick, and it will take a few days to dry entirely. I like to paint the second coat in swirls, to create a larger wet spot to simulate a larger spray pattern of a real paint gun, if that makes sense. I like to put it in bright direct sunlight to dry faster.

One more tip, try and paint it in the shade, because the bright ass white will start to blind you, and you won't be able to see your spray pattern.

BTW, I discovered this paint when I was touching up my wife's old 66 bug. The rear decklid, apron, and both rear fenders were appliance paint:



That's a spot where I painted a chip, so you can see the appliance paint against the real paint.








It was lowered.
 
Got it cleaned up a little more this weekend. Wet sanded a couple of really crunchy parts with 600, 1000, then 1500 grit. An d then Claybar, and then polishing compound, and then Meguiers Cleaner wax. My arms are DED. But the car looks a lot better.








And then I drove it over to San Jose for the get together at In-N-Out, so that I could stand in a cold parking lot and talk about fuel injection with a bunch of other Volvo dorks. It was great.







And of course, there was another white 242 there, lower and with cooler wheels. Of course.



Up next, I have a lot of mechanical stuff that I need to do. It has a bad front wheel bearing and warped front rotors, so I'm going to replace the entire front strut assemblies with later non-ABS units. That way I'll get the bigger wheel bearings and vented rotors. After that, I need to go after the squishy engine and trans mounts, and then the driveshaft support bushing. The throwout bearing also sounds like it's making a bit of noise, but I'll try and hold off on that until I'm doing the clutch. I also wouldn't mind trying to quiet down the engine. It seems like the belts are making a ton of noise, so I'm going to try replacing accessory bushings and adding new belts. Might also look for a later AC compressor, because that big ass York compressor might be the source of all the noise.

I also have a lot of little visual crap to clean up and repair. Prep and paint all the black trim, rebuild and paint the front grill and headlight surrounds, remove the bumpers to smooth and repaint them, fix or replace some of the side trim, etc... And then continue cleaning up the interior. If I find a deal, I might swap in a lighter tan leather BMW interior, and then paint the vinyl parts to match. Just need to find a deal.

But for now, I'm just enjoying driving it!
 
Looks cool.

The wheel bearing should already be the larger style. Only thing different needed to change to vented rotors is the calipers. Rebuilts are pretty cheap.
 
Good job on the paint cleanup! Thanks for the motivation.

Thanks! It's sometimes amazing what just cleaning up your old garbage can do. LOL Gotta make the best of it.

Looks cool.

The wheel bearing should already be the larger style. Only thing different needed to change to vented rotors is the calipers. Rebuilts are pretty cheap.

Thanks!!
I need to followup with some close up pictures. This car had something like brake fluid spilled on the roof and trunklid (i'm guessing vandalism), which caused a bunch of heavy checking, down to the primer. So I just made the best of it by wet sanding and waxing it anyway. There's also a ton of slight waves and dents, like some kids walked on the trunklid. Luckily, the white paint hides all of that very well. It's pretty ugly up close, but it looks great from across the street. I don't mind, because it's going to be parked outside and daily driven anyway.

Thanks for the info on the wheel bearings! It'll be a lot easier to just change the one bad wheel bearing, and upgrade the brakes later. You saved me a lot of time and a some money. And at that point, I will get rebuilt ones rather than used Picknpull like I was planning, which will probably result in better brakes. Much appreciated!
 
Looks cool.

The wheel bearing should already be the larger style. Only thing different needed to change to vented rotors is the calipers. Rebuilts are pretty cheap.

Thanks! It's sometimes amazing what just cleaning up your old garbage can do. LOL Gotta make the best of it.



Thanks!!
I need to followup with some close up pictures. This car had something like brake fluid spilled on the roof and trunklid (i'm guessing vandalism), which caused a bunch of heavy checking, down to the primer. So I just made the best of it by wet sanding and waxing it anyway. There's also a ton of slight waves and dents, like some kids walked on the trunklid. Luckily, the white paint hides all of that very well. It's pretty ugly up close, but it looks great from across the street. I don't mind, because it's going to be parked outside and daily driven anyway.

Thanks for the info on the wheel bearings! It'll be a lot easier to just change the one bad wheel bearing, and upgrade the brakes later. You saved me a lot of time and a some money. And at that point, I will get rebuilt ones rather than used Picknpull like I was planning, which will probably result in better brakes. Much appreciated!

That said which rebuilds are worth buying? The parts store ones are well-known to use mismatched halves resulting in brakes that will never bleed properly...
 
Shiny!


IMG_5679.jpg
 
That said which rebuilds are worth buying? The parts store ones are well-known to use mismatched halves resulting in brakes that will never bleed properly...

I know there are lots of opinions out there, but I bought a Kelsey-Hayes rebuilt caliper from RockAuto and it worked fine. I checked to make sure it didn't have mismatched halves before installing by using a piece of wire to poke in the bleeder valve passage to make sure that the fluid passages were oriented correctly per this diagram from another TB member:
xEvoh3
 
Got only a tiny bit done this weekend, chipping away at it little by little.

The side trim was in OK condition, but it had a few blemishes. One of the worst blemishes was on the black part of the rear quarter trim, and that stick is somewhat hard to find since it's 242 only. So in an effort to make the best of it, I pulled the black rubber off the trim, and gave the remaining stainless trim a nice subtle brushed finish. I prefer the early stainless-only trim, and had no idea that all I had to do was remove the rubber to get a very similar look! Also trimmed down the plastic caps on the ends, to match the new profile of the trim.









I love the clean look of it against the white paint. I'll tweek out on the trim's end caps at a later date, maybe with a bit of satin nickel paint to better match the stainless.


 
Oh, and as promised, a few close-ups of what I imagine to be brake fluid vandalism, but it's sort of odd. Most of the spots are slightly larger than a quarter. Maybe some really aggressive tree sap?









There's maybe 10 spots all over the roof and trunk, but they're pretty subtle from far away. That first close-up is the darkest spot, middle-height towards the right of this image:

 
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