At this stage in the restoration process, you can really begin to see the car transform to resemble its former glory. Our highly skilled paint shop team have over 50 years combined experience solely in restoration, coach building and paint work.
Meticulous preparation goes in to ensuring the panel work is perfectly aligned and sighted before the body shell is coated in primer. The penultimate layer of Jaguar Carmen Red paint is applied before receiving a 3-stage polish and coats of wax for a high-shine, flawless finish.
It has taken our paint shop team over 550 man hours to complete this concours worthy finish.
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#824 has been fitted to our custom built roll-over rig. Our rig has been specifically designed for E-type's, fitting both roadsters and coupes. This allows us to roll the body shell over safely to gain access to the underside of the body, meaning floors and inside areas can be refinished with no interference.
Our standard process is to prepare and paint the underside of the body shell first. Preparation includes dent removal, seam sealing of all panel joins, meticulous masking and stone guard protection.
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Despite our paint teams extensive research into where the factory would have originally applied stone guard protection, there has been no definitive record for us to go by. Therefore, due to inconsistent evidence, we have applied stone guard to the full underside of the car.
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Each join is seam sealed and etch primed to ensure longevity and the spot weld indents are left unfilled as per the factory finish. The complete underside of the car is then painted in 2K HS paint - in original Jaguar Carmen Red.
This is then followed by painting the boot floor which can sometimes be challenging when the car is right sided! A tough and durable paint finish underneath the car will help preserve it for years to come. Zero water ingress is the key.
The underside of the boot floor shows the joins in the boot floor to the rear quarter panels, which is correct as the factory only lead filled what was visible from a standing position when behind the car. The paint finish of the boot floor matches the quality of the top side.
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Recreating the same finish as the factory back in 1961, the complete floor pan is painted to match the rest of the body.
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#824's original exterior colour of Carmen Red was spectro analysed and successfully achieved a 99.9% match. We are fortunate to have an original colour sample book used by Jaguar to spectro the paint colour. This assists us in ensuring that we have the correct version of Carmen Red.
The exterior finish is flawless and displays perfectly aligned panel gaps.
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Due to the make-up of modern paint, a 100% match is never truly obtainable. The reason for this is that the historic make-up of paint included lead and metallic used ground fish scales to achieve their 'sparkly' finish. Modern day metallic paints are achieved through a blend of acrylics. Today's paints are much more robust, hard wearing and have a much better finish in terms of shine and appearance.
The engine frames are bolted in to place ready to take the bonnet.
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The completed painted shell is arrow straight with perfect panel gaps and all the correct period features in place and preserved for many more years.
The high-level of paint quality is achieved by our highly skilled paint team who have a passion for preserving the features of the car and to replicate the factory finishes. It is fair to say that this level of paint finish is far higher than what the factory would have produced back in 1960's.
+44(0)1590 610929
info@newforestclassiccars.com
© NEW FOREST CLASSIC CARS 2014
