BN1 in Healey Blue

The thing is blue, thank goodness for that.

I managed to persuade a friend of my wife's to help me get the car back onto the trolley early on Sunday morning which was a relief.  The day started at about 6 with the old masking tape coming off, new tape applied and a wash with panel wipe.  I also covered the trolley with a new layer of plastic sheeting to reduce dust in the paintwork and cleaned the garage out.  Derek arrived before 9 and we got the car on the trolley before a quick sausage sandwich for breakfast.

Fuelled and ready to go I started with the base coat.  It went well, just the one run on the first coat, but a big one at that!  I used a lot of paint though so I thinned down the next batch to make it cover the car better.  Apart from the area between the front wheel arch and the chassis leg that comes down from the bulkhead I got a good layer on the whole car.  The second coat also went well so I returned the unused paint to the tin, cleaned the gun and mixed some lacquer up.  At this stage I noticed the time and it was not good.

My wife and I are lucky enough to get the summer off, comes with the territory of being teachers, so we generally swap our homes with somebody from a far flung place.  This year our swapping partners were flying in from Thailand and landing at 12:30 in Gatwick.  It was 12:00 and I hadn't even started mixing the paint let alone pack, damn.

I started rushing a little from here on in which with the benefit of hindsight was a shame.  I like the saying 'less haste, more speed' and I started to make some silly errors.  I threw the paint into the gun pot with such vigour that I spilt it. When I cleaned the gun I changed some of the settings without realising so I found the painting harder work, until I realised, I kept pulling the air hose across the bodywork and so on.  I also got a few more runs than I should have.

When I finished I washed myself down in thinners and then jumped in the shower.  Clean, I packed for the holiday and then took a look at the car.  I am very happy to have it in blue and despite the challenges of painting to a time frame I think it looks good, very good in fact.  It has been 25+ years since I sprayed a car and it doesn't look bad.  Mind you I have made my mind up to get the outer bodywork done professionally, what I've done today will be covered by carpet or grease in no time at all so it isn't quite as crucial.

I'm still a little perplexed by the colour.  The pictures below look like it is a completely different shade of blue to the pictures above.  I am a fan of the colour but somewhat surprised how dark it is compared to my memory of Healey Ice Blue Metallic.