The Lotus Grand Tourers

CJA wrote:Hi there,

I was having alook on an Espit world site and found this usefull page about paint codes. It seems to have most of them.

http://www.lotusespritworld.com/ETechni ... Codes.html

By the way from personal experiance you can spray 2 pac over cellulose, but not the oter way round otherwise it will create a unique eggshell effect. Also when buying the laquer make sure that it is compatable with paint underneath it, not the modern water based ones.

Chris

Great link Chris. Thanks

steven popay wrote:I dont think there is any water based laquer out yet is there,

Mine seems water soluble

it is not possible to spray over laquer, it does not provide enough of a key with which to spray with. the reason why paints fade, is cos they were cellulose based, a natural organic compound, that gets denatured by sunlight. red is at the beginning of the spectrum frequencies so it is more vunrable to fading cos od this fact. hope this helps...

I hope you can spray over laquer i do it every day working for a toyota main dealer bodyshop and nearly every colour i paint is a clear over base (baescoat and laquer) and the main base coat i work with is water based. With Steve C's water soluble paint when some colours fade very badly the surface of the paint can come off just by rubbing it with your fingers.

So Steve, since you like Excels, how much for a respray?? Flaking lacquer but otherwise body is tidY!

i currently work part time in a bodyshop, and have spoken to my boss about doing work on lotus's, and he seems quite interested in the fact that there is no rust to contend with. if there is anyone out there who is thinking about getting it done, i should be able to get it done fairly cheap, cos he owes me a few favours... it shoudl be possilbe to separate the body from the chassis as well, so the whole of the car can be done, engine bay and all...

Phil

Hi Steve C
a respray like you need depends entirely on what you want taking off, one thing that does not help excels is that they are not on computerised estimation systems and all times given for panel strip and paintwork are all opinion times, (completely guesswork) and when nobody knows exactly how much time is needed for something they tend to put more than they think. one thing i wuold advise is that all the laquer is sanded off,as painting over laquer that has a tendancy to flake will do so even if you put more paint over it. If you can i would recommend you take off everything you can. Ask the bodyshop what they would like to see come off and go from there. The bodyshop i work at would not entertain doing something like this, when i do mine i will have to prep it at home take it to work one weekend and have it back home for the sunday night so its not in there way. But as Phil says it should be cheap to do as there is no rust to contend with its just some bodyshops are afraid of fibreglass.


One last thing i will say be, carefull about low bake ovens these normally bake off at 80 deg c and in the factory excel bodys are tested to this but after 20 years or so it might be better to low bake them at about 40- 50 deg c just to be on the safe side. or just air dry them overnight.
hope this helps

Mine was air dried, old style workshop.
They do car resorations, well for a while longer.

They did say something about two pack paint going out soon.
Something around HSE or other Gov regs (COSHH maybe) that will make solvent based paints hard to use for smaller units.

Anyone any experience on the latest water based paints...

Or have I got the wrong end of something again.?

I use water based paints (glasurit 90 line) with H.S. solvent clearcoat (high solids) and H.S solvent solid colours. At the moment these are compliant with the relevant regulations we also have to use H.V.L.P guns (high volume low pressure) but the regulations are changing all the time. The water based paint is great i would not like to back to solvent based, i have been using water based for about 10 years now and have not had any problems related to the paint itself, just user error. Except when we converted to P.P.G aquabase (the laquer peels off the basecoat on that too)