Primer!

I finally reached a milestone in the '62 Oldsmobile project journey:  It is officially in primer!  After many hours of stripping, sanding, filling, filing, cleaning, treating and masking, I was able to spray this car with generous globs of primer, opening the official painting stage.  The journey has been quite a pain; stripping the car properly, removing rust, fabricating patch panels, welding and metalworking and (near the end) dealing with minute surface rust pits that kicked my OCD into a frenzy.  But I am finally at this stage!  Now I simply have to block sand and address all of the high and low spots I couldn't see before I shot primer.  Simply block sand...and sand...and sand...

The process of priming involved prepping the bare surface with Metal Ready, a pre- primer POR-15 makes that is a phosphoric acid solution you spray onto the metal and keep wet until any minute surface rust is dissolved.  I found it to work very well with a thick scuffing pad; it seemed to take less soak time and still cleaned the metal well.

I then wiped the entire car down with wax and grease remover, making sure I cleaned a bit beyond just the areas to be painted so the masking tape would actually stick.  I hate starting the masking process only to find the tape not sticking where I want it to. 

Next I mixed up a quart of my LIC epoxy primer that Valspar makes.  It mixes 1:1, and after adding the needed reducer (25%) I had almost 1-1/3 quarts, enough to give the entire Olds a seal coat.  I then waited about 2 1/2 hours (tech sheet says 2 hours to topcoat) and then mixed up 2 quarts of 2k urethane build primer.  This primer is 4:1 ratio which I added about 20% reducer to so I could spray it comfortably.  I then proceeded to spray 2 coats on roof, jambs and door edges, 4 wet coats over body, and extra coats over any bodywork or filler areas.  Extra thick bodywork areas ended up with basically 6 wet coats.

The most frustrating part of actual spraying was the epoxy primer consistency.  It notoriously likes to run if you are not careful!  I found it to be this way when I primed the '54 Bel Air;  I mistakenly sprayed it on heavy, and huge sags would drop like sheets shifting down.  The sags also dropped unexpectedly after all of the spraying.  So I decided to be careful using the epoxy on this Olds, but it still dripped in two areas.  The epoxy stays wet far longer than the sanding primer, and I need to keep reminding myself not to spray it like sanding primer.

 So the sanding primer went on as I was used to, with generous wet coats and no sag.  Waiting time between coats was about 10 minutes and everything leveled well.  Also, my new 3M respirator worked perfectly; I couldn't smell the slightest solvent fume until I actually removed the mask.  I know now to keep the cartridges sealed when not in use, and to replace them after the recommended service life is over.

And the bottom picture?  I couldn't refuse showing this motor, a '64 Pontiac 389 that is the original (and rebuilt!) motor to my '64 GTO project car.  It was sold new in June of '64 just a few miles from my house, and is an original Nightwatch Blue 4 speed. I just couldn't resist a peek at something as Pontiac as this!