Painting The Rear Chassis

This was a long time coming.....

Now.....

To enable me to drop the engine back in the car, I had initially just repainted the front section of the car - as far back as the front door pillars and half way up the screen pillars.

.......and before

With the engine back in, I'd started stripping the paint from rest of the chassis late last year, but then things ground to a halt over winter.

Paint stripping - October 2023

'Tin worm' trails - but nothing serious

I picked up the pieces again in June.

Chassis prep. - June 2024

I made up some Jotun two-part epoxy primer - the same stuff I used to paint the underside of the chassis - and used it to brush paint the gutter where the roof would sit and the outside faces of the 'C' panels. These are both areas particularly prone to rust and I wanted to protect as best I could. I used Xylene thinners to thin the epoxy but it still left brush strokes. 

When I'd taken the fuel tank out a couple of years ago, other than evidence of mice(!) the fuel tank and it's box looked pretty tidy. I honestly thought about not including it in the chassis repaint and instead putting the tank back as-was and just sealing it back up again – rather like a time capsule.

Fuel tank 'time capsule'

But closer examination made me realise that wasn't a clever idea. Then I got bored on a recent rainy day and couldn’t help tinkering.... I took some reference photos of the bitumen 'anti-drumming' strips  and rubber  strips glued to the floor......

Boot area

......and got down to scraping them off.

Stripping the old paint off from the inside of a box was a slog, but eventually I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.

I turned my attention back to the whole chassis and  finished the job of cleaning off the old paint and any rust, adding some rust killer for good measure. Initially I just masked off the area around the tank box and sills and then painted the area with a spray-on zinc-rich primer. 

Tank area and sills primed

This was the first real step on the journey towards repainting the whole back end and I was glad I'd started.

I planned to use my garage as a paint booth and had already fitted the necessary pipework for painting. You can read about that HERE. I rubbed down the tank area epoxy finish on the roof gutter and 'C' panels to remove the brush strokes, added new bitumen 'anti-drum' strips in the fuel tank area, and then began the long job of masking everything up. 

I took my cue from a couple of examples I'd seen.

How hard could it be? it turned out it was a lot more fiddly than I'd expected.

My car still had its original sound-deadening in the passenger footwell areas and - as the floor was sound - I didn't bother painting these. That area got masked. 

I also hadn't stripped the rear inner wheel arches. Based on the effort it took to clean up the area around the hydraulic pipes....

Cleaning up the left hand wheel arch

Same on the right hand side

I cleaned, de-greased, de-rusted and primed part of the rear arches

...it seemed like a lot of extra work at this stage and would delay me. I can always go back and paint them in isolation when I remove the rear arms. So, for the moment, those got masked-off too. 

I'm not painting the rear wheel arches yet

As did EVERYTHING else - including the engine and  - since the exhaust had been fitted - even the underside of the car.

Gift wrapped!

I lined the garage with thin polythene sheeting used for painting and decorating. And of course that meant also putting it under the car on the garage floor. That was fun! By the time I'd finished, my wife refused to enter the garage - calling it my 'kill room'......

I didn't mask the 'up-and-over' garage door so that I could still open it to ventilate my make-shift spray booth. 

My 'kill room'

I sprayed a primer coat of Eastwood 'Extreme Chassis Black Primer' and then rubbed it back. It was nice to see everything 'black' again!

Primer coat on

Rubbing-back, vacuuming the dust and degreasing took time and was a slog. I applied some sealer to the tank area, boot gutters and 'elephants ears'. As with the engine bay, I wanted a little more than a satin finish for the top coats and planned to use the same ratio of satin and gloss 'Extremes Chassis Black' paint that I'd used before.  

My particular 'weapons of choice'

Given the size of the area to be painted and number of coats, I tried to buy some more paint but, unfortunately, Frosts were out of stock. The 'Eastwood' paint comes from the USA and there was no indication of when it would be in stock again. I couldn't leave the garage in this state indefinitely and wanted to make use of the good weather - so needed a plan.

I worked out that I had *just* about enough paint to spray a first coat that would have to be more gloss and less satin than i really wanted, but that it would then leave me enough satin finish for the right mix for the second topcoat. So that's how i went about it.

Initial glossy coat - too glossy for me

Second top coat - less glossy

Most of the chassis goes unseen once everything else is fitted - and that was party why i was happy leaving some areas masked and unpainted - but I paid particular attention to painting around the boot edge gutters, rear edge of the boot, 'elephants ears' and over the top of the rear screen. These are areas that are either visible or which are likely to get wet. Or both.

By the time I'd finished, paint was everywhere and I was glad I'd covered the floor.

Sticky, black floor

Taking off all the masking paper and tape was a lot quicker  - and a lot more rewarding - than putting it on. As the paint went off and hardened it lost some of its initial gloss sheen and settled down. I'm really pleased with the outcome. I've spent most of July on this job but it's really starting to look like a proper car again.