Face Off Grille Project - Primered

This post is a continuation of the following two posts detailing the progress of my custom Moto build face off grille.

Face Off Grille Project + Coolant Flush

Face Off Grille Project - New Mounts Fitted

Once the fibre glass holding the new mounts had fully cured overnight, I could start preparing it for paint.

To start with I made a stand for it out of card. The stand could hold the grill off the floor so that I could spray right around the edges, as most were visible when it was fitted to the car.

Even though it was very crude the stand worked really well, and obviously didn't incur any marks in the painted surface either, marks that might have been caused by hanging it on a hook or by string.

Once again though, due to the poor quality of the Moto build product I had to do a fair amount of filling and sanding to get a decent surface to lay paint onto.

With the stand in place I set about putting the first layers of Halfords primer down. In between each layer I used 600 grit wet and dry to give each of the 3 layers something to key into.

After the primer had been allowed to fully cure overnight I could put down the first coat of the red colour coat. The paint code for this car is CMU - Solar Red, quite a tricky one to get right apparently.

Anyway, the first coat went on well, and left a smooth finish. I test fitted it on the car to check the colour match which turned out to be surprisingly good.

Once the red coat had dried I began working on the grille mesh. The grille from Moto build came supplied with some mesh but was not cut to the correct size.

Taking the mesh I bent it around the centre aperture of the grille, so that when fitted to the car you would not see any of the edges. I also trimmed it and cut around the mounts to avoid any fitting issues.

With the mesh shaped, the grill was really starting to come together, not much more to do until it is finished and on the car. Next steps will be to lay down some clear coat, paint the mesh and fix it to the grille.