av8
10-05-2003, 08:28 PM
Just "discovered" TEMPO rattlecan acrylic lacquer. They tout it as "truck and sport utility" finish, but that sort of silliness aside, it is as good as any of the acrylic lacquer finishes of days gone by. The big surprise is that I was able to buy it at our largest automotive paint house -- Hawley's -- here in NorCal's oh-so-fussy AQMD. And, it didn't cost the moon -- just $5.75 per can.
I'm redoing the black-painted details on my F-1, most of which have received little or no attention over the years, allowing light rust to blush through the thin old finish.
So far I've done the steering column and column drop, the gear selector, and the brake and clutch pedals. I gave everything a thorough scuffing with 280-grit, right down to the metal. I then shot everything with TEMPO's primer/filler then knocked off the very light "fuzzies" with 320 before laying down several coats of gloss black.
I gotta tell ya I was skeptical going in. We've been sold so many really poor-performing automotive finishes in rattlecans over the last decade-plus that I'm not easily won over. Claims of "fast dry" are largely bullshit, and the resulting finishes are as bumpy and cobby as the finishes produced by the first rattlecan enamels of the '50s. I deferred to the folks at Hawley's, however, because they know their stuff and just do not sell crap.
The net effect is that the repainted surfaces look original or correctly restored, which suits my purpose; my goal is for this truck to look like my dad's low-time F-1 he shared with me in the '50s.
I'm redoing the black-painted details on my F-1, most of which have received little or no attention over the years, allowing light rust to blush through the thin old finish.
So far I've done the steering column and column drop, the gear selector, and the brake and clutch pedals. I gave everything a thorough scuffing with 280-grit, right down to the metal. I then shot everything with TEMPO's primer/filler then knocked off the very light "fuzzies" with 320 before laying down several coats of gloss black.
I gotta tell ya I was skeptical going in. We've been sold so many really poor-performing automotive finishes in rattlecans over the last decade-plus that I'm not easily won over. Claims of "fast dry" are largely bullshit, and the resulting finishes are as bumpy and cobby as the finishes produced by the first rattlecan enamels of the '50s. I deferred to the folks at Hawley's, however, because they know their stuff and just do not sell crap.
The net effect is that the repainted surfaces look original or correctly restored, which suits my purpose; my goal is for this truck to look like my dad's low-time F-1 he shared with me in the '50s.