‘Lucy Repainted’
Posted by Aaron Donohoe | Filed under Restorations
Above: For a good finish, the bodywork must be 100% perfect/smooth. This means filling in inevitable dents, scratches, stone chips, and other damage with such fillers like Isopon. Luckily, very little work was required, a quick skim over rough patches, and the filling in of small panel damage was all that was required - Luckily!
Above: The webmaster can be seen getting his hands dirty from time to time, seen here sanding imperfections from the rear nearside wheelarch - when sanding use coarse pads to begin with and gradually increase the grain to a finer texture.
Above: Looking worse for wear, Lucy was backed into one of our workshops (featured in her Head Gasket replacement), and the more intense bodywork was attended to - following this, the entire body was wiped down using a surface cleanser before being ‘masked up’ for painting to begin the following morning.
Above: All allies were called in to aid in ‘masking up’, pictured (L-R) Karl Roche (Vehicle Manager), Aaron Donohoe (Operations Manager) and Patrick Donohoe (Transport Consultant).
Above: Alan Donohoe, who kindly donated his time and expertise to paint ‘Lucy’ is pictured applying a ‘Tack Coat’ to the nearside. Alan has been professionally respraying coaches, buses, cars and trucks for over 20 years, and it was an honor to have him work on our vehicle and to donate his time to the cause. The finish Alan applied exceeded our expectations!
Above: Waiting for the second coat (of four) to dry, you can see that at this point the roof hasn’t yet been painted. The roof is generally given a more liberal coat of paint, which was given shortly before the commencement of coat three. Pictured is our vehicle manager Karl Roche inspecting the paint finish!
Above: Once the paint had cured, we couldn’t resist removing the ‘masking’, and pulling her out of the workshop, to check the paintwork in the sun - the photo doesn’t do it justice, but she was has a mirror finish - a credit to Alan who did a superb job of her.
Above: Frontal view, with all auxillary parts (grill, dest. glass, head light surrounds etc…) removed. The rubber trim had been refitted by the time of this photo, but the rock guards located below the lockers haven’t been painted, due to the fact they have to be straightened and will be painted black!
We’d like to take the opportunity to thank the following people who without their input the project wouldn’t have been able to progress to this stage:
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Mick & Johnny Fortune
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Alan & Paddy Donohoe
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Willie & Paddy Doyle
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Stephen Lynch