Panther Kallista Restoration: Blocking down

Nice early start this morning, I was down there for 8 and the primer had set off and was nice and dry.

I sorted out the sanding equipment which was 180 grit paper on the long sanding pads, I had two different one's to uses, one is 12" long made of hard plastic for flat sections and the other a little longer but very flexible for the many curves on the car.

The other item is the guide coat, this is the powder type which is rubbed on as opposed to the spray on matt black I was using before.

This is where the work started, I have gained a lot of respect today for the guy's who do this type of sanding day in and out. It took around 6 hours of sanding to get it ready for the next coat of primer and my arms feel it now.

I started at the front and worked back, I was warned that the guide coat would show up all of the hidden imperfections and they weren't wrong, from stone chips to dents I hadn't seen all jumped out at me. So a bit more filling was required and then a bit more sanding.

One of the jobs I had planned was a mod on the inner door surround to aid getting my long legs out of the car, this was a simple mod, just cut out a piece of the steel to give more foot room on exit. First I needed to know if it was possible so I got the drivers door down from the loft to hold in position, this was my first real look at the colour in the sun .

The pearl red looks great.

I tried it in position but unfortunately the piece I wanted to cut out is needed to seal the door when closed.

The door looks great in position, shame that the colour design has changed a little and the door will be repainted pearl white. After a discussion with Ant (the boss) on the design I had planned which was the Austin Healey angled down two tone is out, the reason is the difficulty in masking around the false air vents as the colour interface will run right through them and getting the flow of colour may look odd. So after looking at lots of different colour schemes I have decided to follow the natural line around the side of the car from the front all of the way around to the rear. This means the door will be Pearl white, not a problem as I think the Kallista looks fantastic in white and combined with the Pearl Red should look great.

Another bit of work today was the scuttle, after I made it I painted with red hammerite.

We discussed this colour and decided that it would look better colour coded but Ant was a little worried that the solvents in the hammerite would be a problem with the primer, he wasn't wrong. I sprayed it yesterday and after a few minutes it started to react in a crazed pattern.

Now that the reaction is complete I rubbed it all down and gave it another coat of primer and luckily this time it stayed nice and smooth.

Finally I finished the rubbing down and after a good sweep up and blowing the dust off it was at last ready for its second coat. I gave it a couple of wipe overs with panel wipe and got Mick to do the spraying, I would have done it myself but after getting runs yesterday I decided that it would be best to get the pro sprayer on the job.