Hey guys. Gonna put a scoop on the hood this weekend! I want to know if I'm doing the prep work right though, and maybe pick up some tips learned through experience that I don't have yet... Some day when the whole car gets new paint I'll sand again and the scoop will get proper "car" paint, but in the meantime I think I can make it look good with aerosol. So, thus far I have gone over it with a 180 grit block to take out the heavier defects and high spots. Just a few little blobs and such. After that I put a couple of coats of DupliColor "filler primer" to help with the low spots. A few scratches, nothing big. That's drying now. Here's the rest of the plan... Using the primer as a guide coat, I'll hit it with some 320 grit until it's nice and smooth, then another thin coat of primer if needed, and finish with 600 grit. After that, a compatible can of DupliColor black. (Should I wet sand after that, or am I over thinking this?) And I have not decided what kind of black I'm going to use. Typically when I've seen a black scoop it's been a flat or satin finish, but my car has a black stripe down the middle that's gloss, so I'm leaning towards gloss for the scoop, but as you probably know the surface needs to be nearly perfect for gloss black. (I guess I could always sand it down again and use flat or satin if I don't like it.) Any advice there? And if I do gloss, should I bother with clear? I haven't had good luck with rattle can clear coat before, but maybe I've been doing it wrong...
Would love to see some pics of your scoop. I'm not an expert, but have done some automotive painting in the past. It sounds to me like you are doing everything correctly, and I would not bother with the clear coat (that can come later when you paint the whole car). My vote would be the gloss, to match your hood stripe. I think painting it flat (next to the gloss black stripe) would make the scoop look like it's still in the primer stage.... That's my 2 cents worth...
Gloss it will be then. I'll take some progress pics this weekend. The scoop is a new reproduction of a Cobra II scoop. It's 1.5" high, 15" at front, 13" at back and 19" long. Not very big, but I wanted to do something other than the Comet GT style scoop, and all the other factory Ford style scoops seemed pretty big for a Maverick, as they came on bigger cars. I figured something off a smaller car would be more to scale. Hopefully I haven't made a mistake. We'll see... At least I can always go bigger later, since it's easier to make a hole larger than smaller.
looks like the hard part is over......getting the hole cut in the right spot is.....well for me it was measure 17 times and cut once.
I'd paint it Semi-gloss if your just doing in with spray can, what would a body shop charge to spray it for you?
I would get a bodyshop to paint it, then it is done and should last quite a while. If you are painting it yourself, hang it up. You will get less dirt and dust landing in the fresh paint.
I think I have the paint looking acceptable for now. Will sand it down again this summer when I repaint the car... Tentative plan is to take a week off work, spend it tearing down, sanding, filling, taping, spraying, sanding, spraying etc. and put a proper paint job on it with the requisite TLC. Got a friend with a location and all the equipment, who recently (perhaps foolishly) disclosed that he knows how to use them. So... Maybe... Just maybe, this milestone might come sooner than I thought. ...Anyway, back to work on the scoop! More pics tonight.
Looks good. I'm about to get another mav with the air cleaner sticking up through the hood, so this could come in handy.
Okay... I actually finished this over an hour ago, but I kinda just couldn't stop staring at it. I'm really pleased with how it came out. These are cell phone pics and they're awful, but here they are... Once the weather improves a bit I'll wash the car and take some pics in the sunlight with an actual camera. *no salvageable Grabber grills were harmed in this process. **(but I sure mauled a busted one)
Is that just universal weatherstripping trimmed to fit on top of the air cleaner/ under the hood? And where did you get that hood scoop?
Looks great!!! When I first put the scoop on my Sprint, when it was a couple months old, I used rattle cans. 20 years later, it looked just fine. The gloss was the correct choice in my opinion. I hate flat black on bodies. Always looks like primer in my opinion.
