Paint Prep 3

It has been a while since I posted anything, and to be honest it is because lots of other things have gotten in the way of the TR7 restoration. Work, travel, garden - you know how it is.

Anyway, the body is coming on quite nicely as I continue to fettle it prior to painting. Speaking of paint and just for interest, I did a couple of colour picker samples from the internet today of the car's original colour, Flamenco, an alternative BL colour Vermillion and its later Ford Rosso Red.

Flamenco

Ford Rosso Red

Vermillion

The experiment didn't really work at all because Flamenco came out brown when it is supposed to look something like this:

Well, if it ends up looking like that I'll be amazed - I'd be the first person to turn a TR7 into a Spitfire, but you get my gist.

So, on with the photos and a brief amble through the work done over the last few weeks. It has been pretty steady, but I did finally get the offside rear wheel arch profile right. Hurrah!

Since my last post the car has been rubbed down with ever finer wet & dry (wet, with a dash of washing up liquid in the water) and any imperfections (and there were, and still are, many) lightly filled with stopper and re-sanded. Following that, the whole car has been sprayed again in 1K (cellulose) white/grey filler primer mixed 1:1 with thinners.

It's great to see the old thing all one colour again, even if it does look like a battleship. I'll keep doing this - spray, fill, rub down, spray - until I am happy.

I did have one disaster, however. When sending the rear lower sill panel, the vibrations from the DA made the brand new factory original and newly painted boot lid fall off the car. It landed half on the Bond Equipe and half on concrete. I wasn't too bothered about the Bond (perhaps the impact will shock it into running properly) but I was quite fussed about the bent boot lid corner. Grrr. Anyone know of a good panel beater in Northants?