THE PAINT PAGE

Your first steps in painting Lexan bodies by Mike Zoetmulder, 10/20/00

I figured it would be easiest to describe some tips I use, using an example. So I'll use:

This was really quite simple and done in one afternoon on a Saturday, (after doing the headlights/taillights/etc early in the morning). I used 4 colors, well 5 including window tint, all spray cans.

First step was to wash/scrub out the body really, really, really, really well, (don't worry about scratching it slightly), before painting to avoid having the paint crack and chip off later. The scratches make the paint bond better to the Lexan. Having paint too thick will also cause cracking and chipping. I remove the plastic wrap on the body if there is one. I prefer a box, as I’ll describe later.

Also before painting I take the wheels off my car/truck and set the body on its mounts. I get it where I want it and then use a sharpie to make a mark above each post on the outside. I never actually make the holes till I've cut the wheel wells and can test fit to make sure of things. If it doesn't look right I mark the top of each post with a sharpie and set the body on them where I want it. The marks on the posts will transfer a little to the inside of the paint on the body.

(When mounting an RC body, especially for off road make sure the rear is a bit higher than the front PLEASE! There is nothing that bugs me more than seeing some car/truck rocket down the straight with its nose in the air and the rear sunk real low. :) Pet peeve :)

A word on window tint. This paint is, for me at least, hard to get right. I prefer using just black or leaving it clear now. If you are going to cut out the whole windshield, as I did here, don't mask it, just cut it out after your done and go around the edge, in the groove, with either an RC paint pen by Pactra or a fine tipped Sharpie Marker. With some bodies it looks better to mask and paint the window and then leave about 1/4-1/2" all the way around.

A word on Sharpie permanent markers. They are your friends!!! Get all the colors as they make great touch-ups when a scratch happens. The black one is especially useful. A fine one can be run through the door jam grooves for great detailing. If you screw up just wipe it off with propanol.

Boy can I get on tangents or what? Where were we? Oh ya, okay I started with the original box for my GT, (long time ago), I flipped it over and cut a rectangle in the bottom so that the body would fit into it held by the extra lexan around the outside. I ran masking tape around it to seal it on and mask the whole outside of the body all at once. This also provides a nice working platform and a way to carry and handle it. I re-use the same box for most all my bodies.

Windows: I use 2 layers of masking tape to completely cover side window. I then use a ballpoint pen to mark the tape by running it in the groove all the way around the window. I peel off the tape all as one piece. Cut out the window mask I have drawn and stick it to the PAPER side of a piece of contact paper. On the plastic side of the contact paper cover the area to be used with more masking tape. One layer here. This will keep the mask from stretching out of shape if I miss putting it in the right spot and have to re-place it. Anyway I cut out window masks with scissors and stick ‘em inside the body:)

For the lightning bolt I used contact paper for the mask. To make it the same on each side I used graph paper to draw the design and then folded the paper in the center and transferred the pencil to the opposite side of the paper giving me 2 lightning bolts. (See, the stuff you learned in kindergarten was the most important!). I then used spray adhesive to mount my designs on the Paper side of the contact paper. I cut the designs out leaving enough contact paper to cover the whole front end. I stuck them into the body on each side. I made sure they went all the way to the roof of the car. I used some automotive pin striping tape across the roof from one design to the other. I filled the gaps in the tape/masks with masking tape so that the whole front end was covered.

Now I'm working with just the back of the car. I wanted to fade from fluorescent green at the lighting bolt to white at the very rear. I sprayed the green first, aiming it just in front of the lightning bolt. I let fly with one good sweep this way and one the other. Very little is needed for good effect, you should be able to see right through the paint.

(A good tip here is to start spraying just AFTER you enter the area to paint and stop just BEFORE you get to the end of an area. This will stop the paint from building up on the edges).

I let this dry till the paint was not shinny at all anymore. (This is something you can do only with flat or florescent colors). I then sprayed the white to cover the rest and the green area already covered. Do NOT use too much paint, it will weaken the lexan and may cause mixing of colors. Better to do 2 light coats about 15 minutes apart than to get too much on at once. If you are not confident in your ability to paint you can leave it to dry overnight but you take the chance of peeling paint up with your mask that way. AND if you leave the automotive pin striping tape on for more than 48 hours it will be permanent!

While the white paint was wet I peeled the design mask off. Always peel towards the paint and not away from it! I set the box over the heater vent in the house, (it was winter if it's sunny I use the sun), for a couple hours for drying.

Ok, next came the metallic green. I applied it the same as the florescent green, very little paint aimed just on the white side of the lightning bolt. I let this dry for about 1/2 hour or so over the vent. I then sprayed silver over the rest of the front and the new green. While this was wet I removed the window masks. Just before bed that night I stepped outside and sprayed what should have been the last coat, the window tint. I would have woken up in the morning to a new body to start cutting and mounting if I had just used Black or nothing. As it was, the tint looked terrible, so I over coated it with more silver.

Ok a few extras, one bottle of red for brake lights, one bottle of yellow to mix some red into for turn signals. (They just don't make the right color). I don't bother with brushes or thinner I just use toothpicks or a scrap piece of balsa shaped with an exacto blade can make almost any size brush. For the headlights I sprayed some of the white paint into the paint can lid to use so's I wouldn't have to buy another bottle of white paint.

Remember that metallic paint is transparent, and really, just about any color is. To make a job really look as intended and keep the colors from mixing is to spray an under, well, overcoat of white or silver over the first color before spraying the next, OR, mask the first color while spraying the next. OR just make the first color so thick the next won't show through it. This is the Wrong Way, as too much paint will weaken the Lexan. All colors need some kind of overcoat to really bring them to life. Usually silver for metallic and white for all the rest. I have gotten some really cool results using black as a backing for silver and white. Experiment, white instead of silver for backing a metallic color usually brings a pastel color out, etc..

I’m sorry I have no tips for the liquid mask stuff. Never worked all that well for me. Dunno why. I use contact paper for all masks these days. Another great masking tool is automotive pin striping tape. This stuff is flexible sticks real good and will come off very clean leaving a perfect line. Not only that it is very cheap. That automotive tape can be used after painting for creating the wheel well curves to follow for cutting as well as any other lines to cut. It comes in different widths, from 1/16" to 1/2". I've even used it for permanent pin stripping on the inside, (before painting), as they make sets with a point that spreads out into 2 parallel stripes, one is 1/8" wide and the other 1/16".

HPI bodies come with nice little accent stickers for the vents and window lines. I use these on the inside of the body before painting. This way they will not scratch off or get otherwise yucky.

Usually I don't use the vent accents, as they are not made right. The black part of the vent should only be what would be the hole itself. Take a look at the example again and notice the scoop on the side. There is no dark area in front of it. The only thing that would appear as black there is the hole facing forward. If you want really realistic looking vents, use the tape to mask off the forward face of a vent and paint it black. Or use some of that tape in black and cut it to the shape of the vent hole and stick it on and leave it. Or use a barrel sander on a dremel after painting to grind out the face of the vent, this looks really good.

Item of the century:

Thoro

It is a cleaner for clothing...let me get the bottle just a sec...

It says on the bottle:

THORO the ALL-purpose spot remover Thoro Products co., Denver CO.

Says it removes grease, oil, and soil from any clothing, along with chewing gum, candle wax and adhesives. I can attest to this, the stuff works great on just about anything. Removes sticker and mask goo as well as gum from the bottom of your shoes and won’t harm paint or lexan.

Happy painting

Z

© All rights reserved by TWF8