Hey everyone… we’ve attached the Paint Booth Instructions for everyone to use… good luck… and don’t forget to visit our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Duplicolor and let us know how your projects are working out…

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We knew we couldn’t cut any corners on the “half and half” project when we started and this week was no exception. When we pulled that nasty blue carpet off the interior floor we were surprised at the amount of rust we found. This was one of the rare instances where we actually worked on both halves of the car. It didn’t make sense to only treat half of the rust because anything untreated would have continued to spread and ultimately ruin our project. At Dupli-Color® we aim to restore, restyle and protect any project, so we were obligated to stop the rust out of basic principle (and a little common sense).

Our first step was to sand all the surface rust, which helps to identify the really affected areas. After we cleaned it up we went right to the Rust Fix® application, which basically stops rust on contact. We treated the entire floor just to be safe and then it was on to the door panels. The door panels had definitely seen better days and were really faded from 30yrs worth of sun exposure. You’ll see in the episode how we drenched these with Prep Spray… I think we cleaned them at least 3 times. We stuck with a black them on the interior and just used some Silver Vinyl & Fabric Paint for accents. Personally, I think the transformation was remarkable, but I’ll let you decide.

Want to see how to give a 30yr old car a well-needed facelift? Check it out and you’ll be amazed at the results. Make sure to stay tuned next week when we tackle the most distinctive part of the Elco; the truckbed!

So, the Elco’s engine bay was essentially finished at this point and the next item on our checklist was the underbelly…and let me tell you – it wasn’t pretty. We had 30 yrs of brake dust, road grime, dirt and surface rust to tackle before we could even think about reaching for the paint cans.

Now you’ll probably notice the whole 3 seconds of my demonstrated scuffing technique, but what you don’t know is that it took quite a while and quite a few scuff pads to knock all the junk off that frame. And I’m still not sure how I ended up with all the dirty work and B2 got the “oh so hard” task of removing the wheels, but I digress… Anyways, once I had that frame scuffed down to the paint I really had to drench it with Dupli-Color® Prep Spray because the dust in that warehouse was unbelievable. After waiting for the Prep Spray to dry it was a quick mask job before getting to the fun part – painting. We decided on VHT® Roll Bar & Chassis for the frame and I have to admit that it ranks with some of my favorite products. It can take a beating and still look great; which was exactly what we wanted for the not-so-soft underbelly of the Elco.

After I had taken care of all the hard work (scuffing, cleaning, painting the frame, masking everything off, etc.), B2 magically appears with his Dupli-Color® Undercoating looking to steal my thunder… Let me tell you, as soon as those cameras went live he was like a hog at the trough. Ok, maybe not that bad… Well, surprisingly he did a pretty nice job and managed not to mess up my beautiful paint job. Once he knocked that one out, we were slapping the brake drum back on and checking the list again.

Next up — the wheels! Definitely tune in for this one next week and see how we roll with a 2-tone paint job!

I would like to start by highlighting the golden rule of any paint project: PREP is key! Yep, it’s just that simple… So, when your buddy says you messed up the paint job you can always refer to the footage of him exhibiting a rushed and sloppy prep technique… Hypothetically speaking of course…

Ok, that being said, the worst part of any project has got to be the prep. It’s a necessary buzzkill though, since every great paint job starts with great prep. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind getting down and dirty, but it’s just so hard not to jump right into painting something especially when it’s a cool paint like VHT® Wrinkle Plus™. I guess that’s just the anticipation that really kicks in at the beginning. Now, we finished our project in about 2 months, so I can’t even imagine the delayed gratification that comes with a long-term resto job!

Our resto job for this episode included a valve cover, some accessory brackets, the cooling fan and the air cleaner housing. Shooting this segment was probably my favorite since we were putting the finishing touches under the hood and it was visually starting to come together.

Check it out and stay tuned next week to see how we tackle the Elco’s underbelly!

I remember thinking, “what had we gotten ourselves into…” as the sun-beaten powder blue beast came to rest on the 3rd floor of the warehouse. We had scarcely two months to get it shipped out for the AAPEX Show and time was ticking. There was also the small detail that we had to precisely finish only one half, which proved to be more work than a complete restoration. There was no two ways about it; it was “go time” and it started under the hood.

I will say that we had managed to do our homework on this project, which is surprising considering the fact that we could barely decide on the vehicle. I wanted to go the Jeep route and the other Brian (or “B2” to avoid confusion since we share the same name) couldn’t get anything besides Cutlass out of his head. The only solution we could agree upon was to let the project objectives decide the vehicle and so we came up with some criteria:

1. It had to have potential and look like a car we’d want to drive when we finished it (I’ll admit, I was skeptical on the old ’79 Camino meeting this one.)
2. It had to have a seriously bad paint scheme (um, faded powder blue? Check that one off the list.)
3. It couldn’t have too much rust (we’re only paint guys, not body shop pros, so why bite off more than we can chew)
4. It needed to be somewhat local (the clock was still ticking…)
5. Lastly, it needed to highlight Paint Shop and our Truck Bed coating (we’d done trucks in the past, so the El Camino was a perfect fit)

Our plan of attack was to start under the hood and get the really intricate work done first. We knew going in that we would need to spend some considerable time cleaning, especially since we wanted to paint the engine without taking it out…

Wanna see how we did it? Check out our first episode for the complete step-by-step process and stay tuned for next week to see the finishing touches under the hood…