My Cat ...... Work In Progress.....

Lewy said:
Ya missed a bit:dita::ihih:
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Always one isn't there :eek:ut:

:LOL:

With regards to doing this for other people....I would do it, but it would all come down to price I guess.

Primer, paint and laquer alone is just shy of £50 ...... and that's just for the interior, not including the brake caliper paint.

It's pretty labour intesive also. The steps are below:

Remove all parts to be painted
Rub down with 600 grit paper
Wipe down white spirit and allow to air dry
Apply 4 - 5 coats of primer and allow to dry for 24 hours
Rub down primer with 1200 grit wet and dry paper
Wipe down with white spirit and air dry
Apply 4 - 5 coats of paint and allow to dry for 24 hours
Rub down paint with 1200 grit wet and dry paper
Apply 2 - 3 coats lacquer and allow to dry for 24 hours
Refit all parts back into the car....CAREFULLY :LOL:

Those steps above are the basics. If the primer reacts with any cleaners that might have been used on the interior at any point in it's life, then the fun and games begin.
Also, a lot more sanding is required if any parts are scratched etc

I would also suggest that if you (or me) are doing all of the above, then I would def suggest recovering the headliner. A darker colour just makes the pillar covers etc "pop" out.

I am on a VERY tight budget and there was no way in hell SWMBO was going to let me buy new material and glue for recovering the headliner :mad2:

As I said, I will gladly offer my services for painting interior parts, recovering headliners and painting brake calipers etc, but it has to be worth my while.
I can also machine polish out minor swirls and scratches etc in your paintwork if you want that "Ultra Showroom shine" that you simply cannot get from normal washing and polishing.
Whilst I don't want to fleece anyone, I wouldn't want to do this for a pittance either.

What would people think would be a fair and reasonable price inc the £50 worth of paint, for doing the interior?

With regards to the paintwork correction, costs for this would be discussed dependant on the work required, area to be worked (If not the entire car) and the level of finish.
To give you an idea, I am compound cutting the entire car as the paint is in very poor condition as I assume the first owner used a dirty rag whenever he cleaned his car.
I will then be going over the entire car with a final finish polishing compound.
Once I have done that, I will then be using a liquid gloss sealer (designed for dark coloured cars).
Then the whole car will be rubbed down with a pot of DoDo Juice wax (£35 a pot) which again is designed for dark coloured cars. This is worked onto the paintwork with your fingertips.

The finish I hope to get should be great, allthough being a 10 year old car and thus having it's fair share of stone chips and scratches, I appreciate it wont be 100% flawless.......just a million times better than it currently is and hopefully stand out shiny compared to any other Cougar currently for sale.


The colour I chose was VW Diamond Silver Metalic......simply becuase I liked the look of it in Halfords :D
 
Procomm said:
looking stunning mate, could do with some Cougar sill plates though :yesnod: Looking forward to seeing it completed
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If the group buy finishes in time, I will buy a set and stick them on for the new owner.

I also need a couple of UKCougar window stickers for the rear windows (y)

One quick question for people, should I remove the rear Ford badge and replace either with a Cougar head badge I have, or a Mercury rear badge?

The car allready has the US Style grille so the only "FORD" writing on the car will be the sills which I hope to remove as per above...
 
Definitelty de-Ford it. Cougar head or Mercury? Eeny meeny miny mo! The Cougar head would look more cohesive, especially if it's got a US C2 grille. I'm erring more to the Mercury badge though, lots of us have Cougar heads (me included) and the Mercury badge might be a little more individual. It'd look more US 'factory spec' too.
 
Thanks for the colour quote Paul(y)
As regards prices for this type of painting/refurbing, i know what a pain it can be spraying plastics, sometimes even the plastic itself will react. I use "Panel wipe" on every job i do now, it clears the surface of any silicon, oily compounds etc ready for taking the primer/basecoat/laquer. Spray cans also make it an expensive outlay, so unless you have the spraying tools, it's worth using the stuff, theres nothing worse than using half of your paint only to see it blistering as it starts to cure/dry.
This is indeed labour intensive, not just the painting, supposing everything lays on perfect every time on every panel, theres the stripping out, and what i especially find annoying/aggravating is that, people don't understand just how much work has to go into the dried paintwork ie: cutting back, polishing and re-polishing to get that glass finish. Painting is really the easy bit.
Work out how long it took you to do what you did Paul, then pay yourself a fair hourly rate, add on the cost for paint/ materiels etc. It may seem like a high figure, but imagine this scenario. Take two cougars to a spray shop, one is yours with the newly painted interior, the other a ten year old unloved example with, tobacco ingrained panels, general dirt and grease from the previous owners over the years. Ask the body shop for a quote to do the work, using yours as the example of what needs doing. I think you would be in for a shock.
Imo, you would be extremely generous to your customer if you were to offer this service for £100 inclusive.
 
paul could i make s suggestion if you decide to go ahead with this'it might be worth while getting your hands on spare plastics that you can then do then offer on an exchange basis and when all is done the spare set could be sold on ebay
 
Hi all again.

I do actualy have a compressor and some spray guns, so if I was going to do this for other people, I would get all that lot up and running. That should save some costs and also get a better finish.

The idea of getting some spare interior parts is a good one that I myslef have considered, however, the cost of buying the following from a scrappy could be pretty expensive.

A pillar covers
B piller covers
C piller covers
Rear frame covers (3 pieces)
Dashboard side infills (2 pieces)
4 air vent rings
Headlight switch surround
Centre console surround
Hand brake console
Overhead warning light surround

Don't forget that I also painted the door handles and door handle surrounds, so I would need 2 door cards.

All in all I don't think I could justify the spend.

Whilst it is a complete pain, it is still possible for people to drive/use their cars whilst all the above parts are out.

Thanks for the heads up regarding the scotchbrite discs Topcat.
 
Yup...you can't remove the handle...you can remove the handle/electric window switch surround if you don't mind breaking the plastic welds and then hot glueing the part back on, but the handle is something you don't really want to be ripping off.
 
Shagmonkey said:
The idea of getting some spare interior parts is a good one that I myslef have considered, however, the cost of buying the following from a scrappy could be pretty expensive.
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Or not if you knew somebody who was breaking one:ihih::ihih:
 
Top job Paul. Could never fault your attention to perfection ;) I'll have a rummage in my garage, think I've got most of the parts you listed there kicking about. I know I don't have the dash parts or an overhead console but the rest I may be able to do. If so I'll chuck you a PM ;)
 
Blimey guys...forgot just how generous this club is.
BTW, I was supposed to have PM'd you Lewy about the internal fuse box etc. I forgot. I'll PM you after this post mate :ihih:

So...............the saga continues. Today, thank God, it decided not to rain.

I therefore managed to finish the bonnet.
A couple of passes with Menzerna power Gloss on a heavy cutting pad, followed by a single pass of Menzerna Final finish on a finishing pad.
I then went over the whole bonnet with poor Boys Black Hole Sealer Glaze.
Finally I then applied DoDo Juice Purple Haze by massaging it onto the paintwork with my fingers:

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The bonnet looks great but I will be honest and admit that in an ideal world, it would have a respray. Allthough my car has yet to hit 50k miles, the front of the car is soooooooo badly stone chipped I almost wanted to cry. The worst stone chips i will be sorting out later, but for the hundreds of tiny ones, there isn't anything left I can do.

I then moved onto the passenger side wing. As you can see from these photos, the paintwork was awefull :yikes: How on earth it got to this state I will never know. BTW, you can see in one of the pictures that the passenger side headlight looks quite scratched. This will also be "attacked" and detailed on here, later next week.

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Anyhow, applying the same process as for the bonnet, this is a 50:50 shot with the right hand side after only 1 pass.

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This is the wing after all the cutting, but before I applied the sealer and the wax:

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And me pulling a funny face, just ....well....just because :eek:

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Yes, the white dots are stone chips. I will tackle these after I have finished all the other more important jobs on the car.

I then moved onto the roof, but because my phone was on charge, I don't have any "before" pictures. All I have is this one below, which was after all the same process as the bonnet, so after all the sealer and wax etc.

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So, all in all quite a succesful day. Would have got more done if I had a roof over my head, but when the sun starts to go down, the air gets very damp which isn't good for this kind of thing.

I have my kids over the weekend so there wont be any more movement until Monday.
 
i thought i was sad lol fantastic looking job paul least i can see what the black cat should look like once i get motivated and working again my lad can get over here with his machine polisher to lol
 
Paul, that is one top job. It puts mine to shame, however with this damned weather can't do much until it dries up and warms up. I don't think my paintwork will come up as good as yours, but will try to get it close. I know what you mean about stone chips - why did they use white undercoat for a BLACK car???? unfortunately living where I do I'm forever getting more and more stone chips on my bonnet..and my car has only done 58k miles.
 
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