AE86 Shell Prep And Epoxy Primer All Night!
This was probably the most significant change in the ae86 build. The car had sat in that strange maroon colour for so long in various shades, paired with primer and glimpses of restoration work; the car was essentially a patchwork quilt of misery. After years of tackling this without seeing any significant visual change, sanding the entire body down to bare metal and seeing the whole car uniform in silver was a moral boost.
I can hear the air tools in these photos; we spent the entire summer of 2022 grinding every last bit of paint off the car with little wire brush wheels. You can see Barry’s work above and trace repairs.
Every bit of sealer was to be ground out for a refresh. It’s excellent even looking back on these photos now to see how far we have come; the delay always reminds me of our recent progress.
Silver was such a relaxed look with this, too; it almost became a suggestion for paint. It would have been awesome if we could have clear-coated the silver, but sadly, that never worked out, and I have a vision for this thing I wanted to achieve.
The rust converter took anything else off the panel that we might have missed, like body salts and water, and once that was all applied, we sanded it off, hopefully giving this thing every chance we could to last a little longer.
Even after all this work, we will have some surprises; it is always nature with these older Toyotas and our not-so-desirable Irish climate.
I’ve mentioned it and will mention it again, Jackie was the ultimate driving force on the build the last year; how he has the drive to keep going after a days of work with enthusiasm, is something ill always remember/
The final blow-off before we backed this into the spray booth to begin the masking procedure has to be masked six times; each time, a layer of paint goes onto the cat, and the masking method takes hours! Insane.
Cars look so good in the booth; this would be the last time this car would look this way, and I was just getting used to the silver.
The car needed to be baked for anyone asking, so the Gold bonnet, boot lid, and bumper would be painted separately.
You can see how the lads tried to repair the panel above; sadly, the metal was too far gone, so a whole new section would be welded in.
I love this shot. We pulled a late one to try to get this sorted, music blaring and full steam ahead to get the first coat of primer onto the chassis, six years in the making.
Jackie began cutting out the bag; I was highly impressed with the masking skills. After 18 years, he had many tricks to get the right look.
How good does it look here? Why does a masking job look so fucking cool
All wrapped up and ready to go
I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes watching white go onto the car, we used a Lessenol Expoxy for the first coat as it was the same stuff we had used on the bottom of the vehicle after sand blasting, and it worked so well. We kept going with the same products.
A blurry image as I look through the doors, watching the master at work.
White was such a good colour, too! We could finally see all the work Barry and Jackie were doing; the arches looked perfect =.
More shots from the blurry glass as I watched on in amazement.
Finally, the car was a different shade of fresh paint; even if it was epoxy, it gave us a good idea of the overall look. We could close the chapter on its maroon past.
I was slightly emotional at 3 am as I sat in amazement; it didn’t feel like my car.
It had been so shit for so long that I knew nothing else; for the first time in my life, I had a somewhat clean-looking AE86 trueno, and it only took six years to get to this state; even going back over these images is making me so happy as I get to relive what was probably one of the best nights on this build. I hope you enjoyed the flashback!