Alright, well... disregard that bit in my last post about it being a long time between now and the time I start painting the Jeep. There's some life changes coming ahead in a few months, and it turns out that the best time to paint is now, before we move again in January and I lose my garage. Not only that, but there's a car show the first weekend of October that I think I can be ready for. It'll be close, but that's the goal, which mean's I've spent a lot of money over the past couple of weeks.
I bought my paints, primers, clear coat, and some tools to help apply it all myself. I've seen there's two main colors people use for their red. One option is Jeep's Radiant Red, but I'm a Ford guy, and have owned several Mustangs in my time, so for my red color, I went with the other option: Ford's Performance Red, from the 92 Mustang. And, since Sand Beige is supposed to be a low gloss paint, I picked up a matte finish clear coat to apply over everything.
Also picked up a new Spice colored soft top. I chose the half door option, since I don't have uppers for my half doors yet and the kit included them. I didn't know that there were a few differences in the kit besides having extra pieces. The back windows are cut a little differently too.
Anyways, since I had some time to kill while I waited for all of my parts to arrive, I headed to a local body shop to see about pounding out some dents in the hood and rear corner. He took a look at the hood and suggested it'd be cheaper to buy a new one. Conveniently, he happened to have a spare TJ hood lying around that was never picked up by a previous customer of his. 45 minutes later, my old hood was off, and a new one on.
The paint on the jeep is original, and since it's in good condition, I don't have an issue putting an epoxy primer over it, and painting on top of that. I don't see the need to sand a good quality, factory applied paint job down to bare metal. However, my plasti-dip job has to go. They advertise it as just peeling off, but apparently that's only if it's fresh. Outside in the elements, in the 100°+ temps and bright sunlight, it loses that ability. So, I've been having to spray it down with GooGone and rub it away. It's a slow process, but it's working.
What isn't working, apparently, are metal containers used to store clear coats. Mine arrived today with some of my tools, and I noticed one box was wet on a corner. As soon as I picked it up to move it away from my front door, a stream of clear liquid poured from the box and onto my uniform. I immediately cut open the box to see if this was a cleaner or the clear, and turns out...it was the clear. They had it in a ziplock bag, half filled with its own fluid, inside of a box that had been packed in another box.
I went inside, stripped down, and attempted to wash the clear off of my uniform and scrub it out of my suede boots. It didn't work...
Still need to get a hold of someone at Eastwood to see about a replacement. Hopefully it'll be packaged better and arrive this week. Don't have the time to spend if I'm going to have the jeep done by the 1st of the month.