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This page shows the car being painted after the bodywork repairs.

This was planned as a bottom half re-spray job by masking to the trim line that runs down the side of the car. However the front wings needed some minor rust spots doing and I tried to just blow them in and use "T-CUT" or compound to loose the overspray. This was not to be with the paint being metallic it was not possible to loose the silvery edge of the overspray. So the front wings had to be completley resprayed, the hard part of this was masking up the trim line with special narrow tape Ł6 a roll. This trim line tapers towards the front and it took one hour to do it on each wing. But this worked out a lot cheaper than buying new trim lines, they seem to be very expensive. The car had been resprayed before with clear lacquer on top and was definatley "Cellulose" paint. So cellulose primer/filler, colour matched metallic paint and clear lacquer were purchased from my local motor factors. They made a great job of the colour match, obviously if a "Two-Pack" paint had been required I could not have tackled painting the car, because of the special equipment needed for safety.

I only have a small compressor "7cfm" so this made it harder to spray the car, as the poor old compressor tried to keep up with the spray gun. This is when I realised how big just the bottom half of an XJS door is. But it coped and with some careful "T-cutting" between coats and the use of high gloss thinners for the final coat a reasonable finish was achieved. The final coat was the clear lacquer, this came pre-mixed and is very thin and you have to move like greased lightning with the spray gun, to avoid sags and runs. The colour coat was mixed as 50:50 paint and thinners. I left it a week between the final colour coat and the clear lacquer application, this was to let all the thinners residue evapourate out of the colour coat. I had fallen foul on my previous Jaguar XJ40 of applying the lacquer 24 hrs after the colour, on the cars boot-lid. Three months later I had the most horrendous crazing on the boot-lid and it had to be stripped down to the metal, and re-painted. I asked a friendly guy at a local paintshop why had this happened ? He told me that it is due to thinners trapped between the colour coat and the lacquer, bubbling to the surface when the sun starts heating the panel up. So if you are contemplating re-spraying your car in "Cellulose" I hope the above information helps.

First image shows the nearside door with a first base colour coat. Second image after the first coat the scuttle still needed more bare metal stopper to get the surface right. Note also at this point the front wing masked up, this was before I realised I was going to have to paint all of the front wings. Third image shows base coat on nearside rear wheelarch and panels, the repair is looking good.Fourth image shows base coat on rear of car.

First image shows second coat of paint on repaired offside wheelarch and new lower quarter panel, I was starting to feel really pleased at this point. Second image shows repairs to front offside wing, can you spot the horrible overspray at the rear of the front wing, just above the trim line? This was when I realised that blowing in metallic paint was a no go. Third image shows front scuttle again and the careful sheeting of the bonnet, to protect it from overspray. Fourth image shows the offside door after the repair on the lower corner and second coat of paint.

First two images show both front wings and scuttles sprayed with base coat, which was lightly "T-Cutted" and washed with soap and water and rinsed before second high gloss coat was applied. I was now satisfied that the scuttles were looking really flat, this is the important thing with painting a car, it's all in the preparation very boring task but a real must for a good finish. Two more images showing both scuttles and the nearside rear wheelarch again.

First image is the nearside door during painting. The next two images are of the rear boot plynth, which had large paint blisters on it. This was the last thing to be repaired and painted. All the chrome work had to be removed from it by drilling out the rivets. Then it was stripped back to metal with "Nitro-Moors" and treated with the rust killer before repairing with the alluminium filler. The last of these images shows how the whole rear and inside of this boot plynth was coated with "POR15" paint.