Dipped my Whole Car
06-14-2013, 01:57 PM
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Dipped my Whole Car I have always been one to lean towards white cars, and with the GTO never being offered in white I realized that I would have to come up with a creative solution. I have owned garage queens, and when I bought my car I really wanted to pick something up that wasn't a cream puff that I wouldn't be afraid to bring out of the garage. My plans from day one have been to HPDE this car, and really cut my teeth on more in depth DIY/Fabrication projects.
I'll go ahead and let you know that I'm not going to apologize for plastidipping my car. It was financially realistic, I won't have to get pissed during Florida Love Bug season, and I can wash my car with a pressure washer in 10 minutes or less. Additionally, I can use a little bit of mineral spirits for rock chips/marks from racing on the road course, or just peel and respray the entire panel.
Enter my '04 GTO I found in San Antonio with 117k miles:
Attachment 727334
Attachment 727335
The car came with some outdated 18" TSW Montage wheels, so I kept them on for financial reasons and they already had some Pilot Sports which were still in great shape. Eventually I'll be going with some 18x8.5 RPF1s for simplicity, cost and weight. I had zero aspirations to keep the gloss black/chrome lipped wheels for long, and the silver paint was in good shape for the miles, but definitely a "10 footer" by all means.
So enter, the plastidip. I decided that I wanted to go with White because of my history with the color, not because I really wanted to be an attention *****. In hindsight, had I known the matte white would be so damn bright, I probably would have done a few base coats of light grey (which I would recommend for other reasons, see below).
I got the 'Pro Kit' from a vendor who may or may not be registered on LS1tech, but I can imagine you can guess who it came from. It included all of the small bits, sprayer and 4-gallons of plastidip. As I mentioned earlier, this paint wasn't much to call home about before so I didn't do much for prep. A basic double-over with some dawn, shammy dry, leaf blower in the crevices and small spots, and a tack rag once it was 100% dry.
Then I prepped the car:
I covered most of the windows with newspaper to simply preserve some plastidip. It was my first time, so I expected to screw things up. The basics are obvious, the only parts that were tedious were the front grilles, which I would recommend spending extra time to protect.
From there it is pretty basic. Mix the dip, load the gun, and go to town.
I'll go ahead and let you know that I'm not going to apologize for plastidipping my car. It was financially realistic, I won't have to get pissed during Florida Love Bug season, and I can wash my car with a pressure washer in 10 minutes or less. Additionally, I can use a little bit of mineral spirits for rock chips/marks from racing on the road course, or just peel and respray the entire panel.
Enter my '04 GTO I found in San Antonio with 117k miles:
Attachment 727334
Attachment 727335
The car came with some outdated 18" TSW Montage wheels, so I kept them on for financial reasons and they already had some Pilot Sports which were still in great shape. Eventually I'll be going with some 18x8.5 RPF1s for simplicity, cost and weight. I had zero aspirations to keep the gloss black/chrome lipped wheels for long, and the silver paint was in good shape for the miles, but definitely a "10 footer" by all means.
So enter, the plastidip. I decided that I wanted to go with White because of my history with the color, not because I really wanted to be an attention *****. In hindsight, had I known the matte white would be so damn bright, I probably would have done a few base coats of light grey (which I would recommend for other reasons, see below).
I got the 'Pro Kit' from a vendor who may or may not be registered on LS1tech, but I can imagine you can guess who it came from. It included all of the small bits, sprayer and 4-gallons of plastidip. As I mentioned earlier, this paint wasn't much to call home about before so I didn't do much for prep. A basic double-over with some dawn, shammy dry, leaf blower in the crevices and small spots, and a tack rag once it was 100% dry.
Then I prepped the car:
I covered most of the windows with newspaper to simply preserve some plastidip. It was my first time, so I expected to screw things up. The basics are obvious, the only parts that were tedious were the front grilles, which I would recommend spending extra time to protect.
From there it is pretty basic. Mix the dip, load the gun, and go to town.
Last edited by WhyHelloOfficer; 06-14-2013 at 02:09 PM.
06-14-2013, 02:06 PM
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Continued After some peeling and cleanup, it started to look like a car again.
And where it sits now, where I would say is closer to 85% complete.
I would still like to do some small clean up and touch ups to some small areas and where I did the wing delete. The grilles cleaned up well, but I would like to get some of the very small areas along the inset edges to make it a little more successful and closer to perfect.
I would also like to do a little more touch up to the badges, I feel that once those have some black accents it won't look nearly as unfinished. Right now with the badge being sprayed over, I'll admit it looks ghetto. I haven't decided if I want to pull the whole badge off and respray it, or possibly razor out in the inside of the badge to show the existing black.
For future reference (especially anyone spraying white) I would recommend laying extremely light layers on the car, no matter how inclined you are to lay it on thick once you have a few coats. The reality is that the white dip is extremely thin, and required a lot of thinner to work through the gun. As a result, if you lay it on too thick, it will run and the thinner in the dip you are spraying on will actually screw up what you have already laid.
So in hind sight, I got the 'Extra-Large' first time kit with 4 gallons, but if I was doing white again I would definitely go with a 5th gallon. If I wasn't DD'ing the car and planning on tracking it I would definitely have already re-sprayed the parts I'm not thrilled about. But then I realize it is going to get messed up regardless, so why lose any sleep over it?
Also, refer to this video regarding laying down a few light grey plastdip layers before you do the white and it will help to act as a primer and enable you to lay the white a little thicker than what you would normally need to do.
All in all, I did 6 coats, and one more coat of small touch-ups around on areas that didn't appear to be 100%.
Other than that, I would say my best advice would be to not be afraid to paint on the car. Having never painted a car, handled a spray gun, or prepped a car before I was a little hesitant just blasting away at the windows with something that looks like paint. So the peeling process was a little more tedious because the areas along the trim were very thin and as a result required a lot of patience to get all of the surplus plastidip removed.
I am happy with the end result, and definitely learned a lot during the whole process. I would love to completely re-do the car, and hopefully in the future I can have the opportunity to once I see how this job holds up. All-in-all, I took a tired looking 10-footer, 100k+ looking GTO back to looking a little better (and dare I say closer to being a 4-footer?), and took a lot of stress out of DD'ing and tracking my car. So I would chalk this one up in to the win column.
And where it sits now, where I would say is closer to 85% complete.
I would still like to do some small clean up and touch ups to some small areas and where I did the wing delete. The grilles cleaned up well, but I would like to get some of the very small areas along the inset edges to make it a little more successful and closer to perfect.
I would also like to do a little more touch up to the badges, I feel that once those have some black accents it won't look nearly as unfinished. Right now with the badge being sprayed over, I'll admit it looks ghetto. I haven't decided if I want to pull the whole badge off and respray it, or possibly razor out in the inside of the badge to show the existing black.
For future reference (especially anyone spraying white) I would recommend laying extremely light layers on the car, no matter how inclined you are to lay it on thick once you have a few coats. The reality is that the white dip is extremely thin, and required a lot of thinner to work through the gun. As a result, if you lay it on too thick, it will run and the thinner in the dip you are spraying on will actually screw up what you have already laid.
So in hind sight, I got the 'Extra-Large' first time kit with 4 gallons, but if I was doing white again I would definitely go with a 5th gallon. If I wasn't DD'ing the car and planning on tracking it I would definitely have already re-sprayed the parts I'm not thrilled about. But then I realize it is going to get messed up regardless, so why lose any sleep over it?
Also, refer to this video regarding laying down a few light grey plastdip layers before you do the white and it will help to act as a primer and enable you to lay the white a little thicker than what you would normally need to do.
All in all, I did 6 coats, and one more coat of small touch-ups around on areas that didn't appear to be 100%.
Other than that, I would say my best advice would be to not be afraid to paint on the car. Having never painted a car, handled a spray gun, or prepped a car before I was a little hesitant just blasting away at the windows with something that looks like paint. So the peeling process was a little more tedious because the areas along the trim were very thin and as a result required a lot of patience to get all of the surplus plastidip removed.
I am happy with the end result, and definitely learned a lot during the whole process. I would love to completely re-do the car, and hopefully in the future I can have the opportunity to once I see how this job holds up. All-in-all, I took a tired looking 10-footer, 100k+ looking GTO back to looking a little better (and dare I say closer to being a 4-footer?), and took a lot of stress out of DD'ing and tracking my car. So I would chalk this one up in to the win column.
Last edited by WhyHelloOfficer; 06-14-2013 at 02:26 PM.
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07-02-2013, 11:32 PM
#16
TECH Enthusiast
looks good. i had a cop pull me over and ask about the gs strips i have on my fenders. i told him i used plasti dip and he was like i was thinking about using it on my new mustang. gave him some pointers and he said have a good night.
