Since these old Chevy pickups are (still) quite plentiful, I swapped much of the sheetmetal, including the entire bed, but still did a lot of hammer/dolly/filler bodywork, before spraying (with rented/borrowed equipment, in my driveway) my first full paint job, in black lacquer. It’s truly easy to paint and maintain. Got some chips? Spot it in and rub some more. A daily driver, it had made several cross-country trips when these photos were taken. The camper was metallic silver catalyzed enamel, color sanded and buffed out (my first try at that). Ed “Big Daddy” Roth added the pinstriping (red on the camper, blue on the body).
But here’s the funny part—nobody told me anything about color sanding. And I didn’t have any kind of buffer. Besides, I’d always heard that “hand-rubbed” lacquer was best. So I rubbed out that whole paint job, with paste compound and rags, by hand, until it had that deep gloss that only black lacquer can have. It took a couple of days. My hands were blistered. But it was beautiful! What did I know? With a little camper on the back, my wife and I drove that truck all over the country, several times. When the paint got chipped or dinged I just spotted it in and rubbed it out some more. Black lacquer is probably the easiest-to-maintain paint there is (or was; I can’t get it where I live any longer). You don’t have to color-match it. It doesn’t need clear. Simple.
About this time catalyzed paints were coming on the scene. Trickier ones, like Imron (or urethanes, or whatever they were calling them) really needed to be sprayed in a booth, and were very susceptible to fisheyeing, running, and other problems. But there were also new catalysts that could be added to regular automotive enamels, so I tried some of that on the truck’s camper—silver metallic. The first thing I learned is that if you got runs or sags, you could sand them out the next morning and respray them. I also learned, somehow, about color sanding. But no amount of hand rubbing would bring it up to its as-sprayed high gloss. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that these catalyzed enamels (or urethanes, acrylics, or whatever they’re calling “two-part” paints) need to be power-buffed with proper cutting pads and compounds, and then re-buffed with glazing compound to get a gloss anywhere near as good as old hand-rubbed lacquer.
There were a lot of misguided trends during the ’70s, one being a brief flirtation with “un-Ford” street rods. The main attraction? They were cheap! I got this Olds-powered, orange, ex-drag ’32 Chevy for $500 with a busted Hydromatic transmission.
This was my first metallic lacquer paint job. I should have stripped the existing paint, but fortunately it was old enough that I could just sand it down, spray several coats of lacquer primer over it, and block sand. I also should have sprayed some clear coats, especially over the lighter blue, before rubbing it out, but I didn’t know about that yet.
By then I had a one-car garage to work in—not big enough for painting, though. After the Olds Tri-Power caught fire, I decided to put a hot little Chevy six in it and paint it two-tone metallic blue (two-tone “resto rods” were another ’70s fad). Here I’d prepped and painted the firewall before installing the new engine.
After more than a decade, I made a few minor changes. But the only parts I repainted were the front fenders. That old lacquer paint job held up pretty well.
One further example: Given that these new catalyzed paints went on really smooth and glossy, without rub out, I decided to try a new catalyzed clear coat over a Porsche light green metallic lacquer on a VW bug for a friend. I figured it would be simple and quick, and these clears were compatible over lacquer (most of today’s aren’t). Everything went fine as I finished laying on a good, wet, glossy coat of the clear. It looked beautiful until it suddenly broke out in a case of fisheyes worse than any teenager’s zits—all over the whole car. I called my paint store to ask what might have gone wrong, and he called the Ditzler regional rep, who actually came over to my house to see. His first question was, “Did you wait 20 minutes and spray a second coat of clear, as the label says?” Of course I didn’t. I sprayed it like I’d always sprayed enamels—a light tack coat followed by a heavy gloss coat a few minutes later. It flowed out great, and I wasn’t planning to color-sand or rub it, so I didn’t want to push my luck spraying it again. Plus the thing about “second coat after 20 minutes” was buried in the fine print on the label, and I never saw it. After asking lots of questions about my prep, and looking at my equipment, he couldn’t come up with any reason why it fisheyed; but he assured me that, since I hadn’t added the second coat after a 20-minute interval as the directions said, the whole thing would wrinkle up if I added a second coat now. Something about “chemical cross-linking.” My only recourse was to very carefully color-sand the clear down until the fisheyes just disappeared, and then buff it out, both without going through the clear coat. It was very painstaking and time consuming, but in the end my friend thought it was a beautiful paint job (which it was) and got lots of compliments. But it was way more work than I had planned
When my wife and I got married we bought a near-new ’69 VW Bug that mechanically self-destructed. So we found this cherry, one-owner ’65 on a car lot going for something like $600 because it had faded red paint and a couple primer spots. All it needed was a good paint job. VWs have lots of painted metal inside. Since this car was red to start with, I sanded down the outside and sprayed it with Porsche India (or Guards—same color) Red in lacquer, rubbed out. In subsequent years I painted it twice more; same color, but in single-stage urethane, which didn’t need rubbing.
I can’t remember how we figured out the problem, but it took a while. I think someone suggested I double-check my old compressor, which I had bought used. Sure enough, it was worn out, just like a smoking engine, and was pumping minute amounts of oil from its crankcase, with the air. While it doesn’t affect lacquer, any oil, either on the surface to be painted or in the air supply, causes fisheyes—or worse—with modern two-part paints. I rebuilt the compressor with new rings to solve the problem. Further, someone who knew told me to also get a new hose, because my old one was contaminated with oil (the same problem occurs if you have ever used an oil-vaporizer on your compressor to lubricate air tools). Clean air and an oil-free hose are musts for painting.
While the red VW became Anna’s driver, I picked up this ’60 for $100 and started fixing it up for mine. In its first form, as seen here, I painted it inside and out (under hood, under deck, interior) in lacquer in Porsche Metallic Salmon. Still no clear. But as I drove it over 15 years, I kept repainting parts that needed it, finally using a lacquer-compatible clear urethane on the fenders and hood. One point I’m hopefully making here is that if you take care of your car, use a cover if it sits outside, and maintain the paint, it will last for years—even decades. And if you painted it yourself
