Painting:

First up, the paint booth has to be built. I built this in my one-car garage using PVC pipe and plastic sheeting. In retrospect, I will never attempt this again until I have a larger garage. It locked me out of doing anything non-painting related for weeks.



















After extensive prep work that simply cannot be captured in photos, the tub was ready for paint. This included repairing minor dings and dents with body filler, surface corrosion/rust, removing stickers and mystery residue, etc. With heaters firing, I warmed up the makeshift paint booth and shot the primer. The shop recommended Evercoat Dura Build primer, which worked great to build up a layer and sands extremely easily. The primer was sanded to a smooth finish and shot with basecoat Sand Beige Poly.















And as seen from the front:















Now that the SBP basecoat was down, I had to wait long enough to tape off the lines, but not so long that the clearcoat would cause a problem. This was challenging because it gave me a much shorter window (roughly 4-24 hours) to work in. I had to make sure I had the time blocked off, because unlike nearly every other step of the project, I couldn't simply put it on hold and come back to it at a later time.



I did come across an issue with the popular dimensional graphic that's floating around the internet, namely the rear stripe dimensions are incorrect. Following the proper angle (72.5 deg) from the rear edge of the middle flair leads me to 1.5" forward from the graphic shown. In order to use these measurements, the angle would end up being approximately 70 degrees. However, 70 degrees is not correct because going by movie reference documentation the front is clearly 72.5 degrees. Unfortunately a number of JP Jeeps out there use these incorrect measurements, and you can tell the rear stripe is not properly parallel. I quadruple verified by measurements and angles of each stripe. Here are the corrected dimensions.



Using a Laser Line Projector paired with a 10" Digital Angle Finder I was able to easily make precision tape lines for the tub stripes.























Unfortunately I hit an issue. My compressed air drying system failed and parts of the second coat of clear became very cloudy after drying due to moisture. The paint shop had run out of stock on materials, so the paint booth had to stay up for another two weeks. Once the materials came in, I lightly sanded and re-cleared the tub, thankfully I did not need to completely take off the clear, which would have also required new basecoat, to fix the issue.







A restoration was completed on the fuel neck cover, the license plate bracket, tail lights, tailgate latch, bumper and bumperettes, and spare wheel bracket. All mild steel hardware was painted semi-gloss black, and the spare wheel bracket hardware was replaced with stainless steel. One of the spare lug nuts was replaced with a unique key anti-theft nut. I also chopped the third light wire and installed a waterproof 4-pin plug. If the state inspection gives me any grief about not having a third brake light I can easily pop it on and plug it in within a few seconds.











Earlier on when removing the above door sport bars, I found out the driver's side bar's rear bolt was completely sheared. It took some work with left hand drill bits, but after slowly stepping up from pilot to 1/4" it finally broke free. Removed the passenger side and noticed the threads were all buggered up. I retapped both roll bars and replaced the hardware with new Grade 8 bolts. The bars were repainted and brand new spice covers installed.







The angle sweeping from the sides of the hood to the front of the hinge is tricky, however having the laser line made it very easy to put down straight.







The body accessories went under the gun. Breaking all of these out into numerous steps is a painful reminder of how much easier this is in a real paint booth.











April 30th 2017, JP17 officially hits the road for the first time!







And the remaining accessories get painted and installed.



















Mission Accomplished!





