1974 Karmann Ghia Convertible: Finally

I took a two week vacation from work so I could get the car painted. I hoped to have it prepped and ready to spray last Friday. I spent around 12 hours a day Thursday through Monday getting the car sanded to perfection. The nose and right fender both had hairline cracks in the primer right at the body lines. I wound up grinding out all the bodywork on the 3 inches both sides of the nose ridge to make sure whatever caused the primer failure was gone. That meant completely redo-ing the bodywork on the toughest part of the car in a day. As I was washing the car for the final time, I noticed the crack in the fender. It was about 1/8" long and barely noticeable, but still it needed to be sanded and fixed so it would not translate up through the paint.

The paint day was ridiculous. I started working at 5:30 a.m. emptying the garage and getting everything clean. After the cleaning my dad came over and helped me hang plastic, mask the car and get the lights set up. I started painting at 1:40 p.m. From the time I started painting I was non-stop busy. There were a couple quick water breaks, but that's it. I laid down sealer on everything, then started laying color. I base coated all the parts. Somehow I did not get the gun perfectly clean between sealer and basecoat. The first coat of base had trash from the gun splattered all over the left fender. A quick call to a hotrod builder in Arizona gave me the tools I needed to fix the troubles and continue the paintjob. I took a piece of 1500 grit and some grease and wax remover as a lubricant to sand out all the goobers. I would guess there were 25+ areas that I had to fix. After the next coat of base, you couldn't tell there were any problems.

I had issues with the hood, fuel filler lid and license plate light bar. All the parts that had been previously painted. It wasn't the existing paint it was just coincidence. A bug landed in the hood after the clear was down. I got runs in the base on the other two parts and had to sand them down to the sealer... It was a mess and I'll probably paint them again.

Yes, there are a couple sags and some orange peel in the paint, but all in all it looks really good.