1964 Kaiser Willy's Jeep Gladiator J300 Pickup Truck "Cindy" Resto Mod Thread

[5JeepsAz]

Paint

All opinions as far as paint. You can spend more on paint than anything else, or less. Really.

Consider a concourse paint job. Perfect in every way. That is plenty money and plenty months. On the other hand, a rattle can? Well, you might use it where you will be the last person to see that paint for fifty years because you are going to close it up within a frame rail. No, not on your hood!

Put it like this: We might see a dozen cars during grocery shopping. Every auto has different paint. Every auto has many thousands of paint decisions into it. The chemist, engineer, advertiser just to start. How many decisions did they make, and remake, in the creation of the paint job on those cars? Has to work on plastic, has to match interior, has to survive the North Pole and Death Valley, mom and dad both have to agree on it, etc.

It’s what people see. Paint is as much the truck as the silhouette, the engine, the performance.

All those decisions on that dozen cars in the grocery parking lot and exactly NONE were made by you. Until this build. Now you make ALL the decisions, all thousands of them. Paint coloration, quality, and application. It’s a thing. It is what people see – and it is what you will see. Therefore, it needs to be right. And, that’s up to you!

For this build, the decision tree went like this: what do I have, what do I want, what does the truck deserve, budget.

What I had was disputed. Was it patina? Was it an old respray? What I wanted was a period correct paint job. The truck deserved an honest paint job. I budgeted way more than I spent, but that was just lucky.

If I have original paint, patina, then I have period correctness. So I started there. I just needed to know what I had, easy!

I was sent packing by one auto detailer shop. Finally referred to the owner of a place, he looked at it, shook his head, and pointed at the exit gate. Barrett’s comes through my town – there should be tons of detailers available, right? Not one. Sure, I could pay a grand plus for someone to fly in from a commercial shoot, but that wasn’t happening. Absolutely nobody would take on the truck. One dude looked at a picture, said no. Month later texts, he had some time, could he come look at it. Sends his guy over the next week. Texts me this exactly: “Get it painted and I’ll detail it”.

So I am without a team. No expert help. I start earning my degree in paint. Here’s what I remember from months of watching youtube auto detailers, reading the internet, all the threads on paint and there are a lot of them.

First, you have the surface to be painted. Metal, yes, but what kind? Does it rust easily? What kind of nonmetal moldings did they make back then? Has the original surface changed in fifty years – will it still take paint?

Then we have the paint layers. Primer, paint, in my day. Each layer, metal, primer, paint, expands and contracts differently. Are the layers still adhering to each other? Is the metal rusting from under the paint? Is the paint weathering off of the metal? Flakes, chips, scratches? Can you sand the original paint without turning it to dust?

What is patina? Is it particulate matter resting on the paint each evening for fifty years becoming a layer? Is it cellular – plant matter resting on the paint, or, is it chemical matter eating the paint, or, is it shim shaped rock shavings poking into the paint, or, is it velcro shaped vines of something metallic or plastic plastered onto the paint? Imagine fifty years of splatter on your paint. That’s patina.

Just how the hell do you get that off, to reveal the original paint?

What is auto detailing? A process of cleansing to first remove loose particulates, then dissolve grime into solution without harming the paint, then cleaning the actual paint, then applying solution to be absorbed by the paint to protect it, then applying a coating over the paint. One thing astounded me.

Somebody said dry paint is like dry skin – lipids work on both. Lipids? Are you kidding me? Be careful – that is true and it’s the other stuff in the lotion for your car that can harm your paint! End of the day, easy off oven cleaner is a viable treatment for my patina – heck, it is the same problem – same solution for baked on grease and grime, cooked on stains…

I can rub off a 4”X4” square of patina in an hour. It is SO BEAUTIFUL. I can power buff a 4’X4’ square in an hour. It’s Pretty enough. So I do. And you know what? The doors look perfect. If the whole truck looked like those doors, I’d keep it like that. But it didn’t .

Someone sanded that thing for paint – specifically the bed, a very long time ago. But they didn’t paint it. The patina was on bare metal as much as overtop red paint. Strangest thing. Nobody figured it out. I found the swirls and marks from many dudes trying to resolve that paint problem over many decades. But every night – the patina set in, building itself up again. When I finally got her cleaned up – she looked like she was ready for paint. Not like a cool old paint job that could be clear coated. Like a POS ready for paint; no money for paint; back yard sittin, hidden; under a tarp, stashed; ugly, old, future barn find, automobile. Almost killed me. So many hours.

I concocted rusto solution out of salt and vinegar and hydrogenated peroxide – made me sick to fake rust it but it did look cool from two feet. The problem was from twenty feet it looked like amateur hour. I just couldn’t do it. So I needed to paint. And fast. My daily aint no eyesore. That meant studying old trucks just for the paint – learning how to search for early 60s trucks with various paint applications. Ended up watching walk through videos of truck shows and parades. The look I liked? Single stage paint. They had the period correctness I was looing for.

So you can strip to bare metal, primer, paint, paint, clear. You can do less of any. I’m not even going to get into the quality of paint. Let alone, the quality of a professional painter. I watched a ton of videos of people rating paint shops. Found the vids rating shops for specifically trucks, then for resto trucks.

Somewhere I jumped to MAACO. Found out that our friend Earl Shibes was onto something. He had a quick, cheap, and workable process. Learned from enough youtubers that if you find a maaco with a good painter, good manager, it’s good. Cut to today – and that is what is on this truck. Painter has 17 years in the shop. His assistant 15 years in the shop. The manager at the time had been around several years.

I went with a light sand – leaving the old paint under there – maybe primer, and single stage paint. I can still see all the damage from the years – but it’s painted a nice red color. Decided to stick with original color because changing the color meant taking it down to frame, for me anyway, and then why would I not do a rotisserie or frame off resto of all the parts – what, I’m gonna take it apart to paint it but not restore it? Nah.

Finally, went with the original red. And, trusted the painter to pick the white for the bumpers to match a picture I had. I love it. Wife gave me a kiss and a hi five.

Hope you enjoy the pics!