Over The Christmas Period!

Ahhh it Christmas, a time for giving and receiving!!!

Lucky for me i will be receiving bits and bobs for Ugly Betty this year. A whole list has gone up to the north pole for Santa to choose from.

My Christmas present to myself however is to get the wheels and wheel arches fitted to the car. I cannot face doing this myself, im afraid my knowledge of metal work is no existent so to do it myself would just be too expensive and time consuming.

So its going down to Sommerford Mini on Sat 13th to stay with them for a while so they can do the work, hopefully in time for Xmas.

After that its fixing on the things bought for Christmas and then thinking about what to buy next with the school budget for the next term. I think it will probably be a music system. This in addition to me saving for the paint job!

First Bit of Orange Goes On

The front grille as you can see from the photos has drastically changed.

Originally it was chipped and rusting in places, so we sandblasted it in the Design and Technology suite. The grille comes in 3 parts so they were each done individually.

After sandblasting, they were primed with a standard white primer from Halfords. Three layers went on. 15 mins drying time between layers


This was then left for a week.

Next came the luminous orange colour. Looking at the colour it is probably a little brighter than i was hoping for but it will match the orange acrylic of the centre console so it will at least match other areas of the car. There were probably 3 layers of this colour too. Each layer with 15- 20 mins drying time.

Again it was left for a week in the painting booth.

Lastly came the clear lacquer, 3 layers of this as well.

This was then left to harden for a week before it was then bolted back together and fitted back onto the car. I will admit that with the current blue colour the orange looks a little out of place but it was something that the boys could get on with so it had to be done.