Painting the Bullbar

First order of business was to strip the bar down ready for it's new paint. After an afternoon with the spanners, this is what we ended up with:

The lower section of the bar to be painted, and...


... everything else!

On Saturday morning we took a trip down to Cairns Wholesale Paint on the access road - I've always found them very helpful, and can't recommend them highly enough. They're happy to spend the time with you to make sure you understand what you need and the process involved, and can recommend the right equipment and supplies.

Earlier in the week we had stolen Jess' Dad's air compressor, as well as his brand new HVLP spray gun. And what a nice gun it is - so easy to use. But more on that later! On Staturday morning we picked up $150 worth of 2-pack paint & hardner, thinners, sand paper and other misc consumables.


Once home, we set up our custom spray booth:


Not ideal, but the best location we had. I was a bit concerned with the amount of dust in the air from these dust storms that have been rampaging over the eastern states, but luckily the air pollution wasn't too bad on Saturday, so we decided to kick on.

A quick sand of the existing paint with a 400-grit sandpaper to roughen up the surface, followed by a comprehensive wipe down with grease and wax remover, and we were ready to start painting. You don't want to muck around with 2-Pack paint - it's nasty stuff for you. I was able to get away with just a good quality paper mask since I was painting outside and in a very well ventilated area. If you were working in an enclosed space (like a shed) or were doing more than an hour's worth of painting, you really should upgrade to a proper replaceable-cartridge respirator. And be sure to follow all the normal safety measures - it's just not worth it otherwise.


First coat on - if anything, a little too much paint (but a pretty speckled finish!!!):




Final coat (number 6) :


The finish came out reasonably orange-peeled, but flattened out a lot overnight as it dried. This is a shot from when it was still wet, just after the final coat:


You can really see the texture in the paint in that one. Not ideal, and if you were painting a whole car, then you'd be pretty disappointed. In reality though, I'm pretty happy with it - the bar is only going to get stone chips and scratches all over it anyway. And since it's dried, the finish has levelled out a lot, and it is now no worse than the Pathfinder paint. so it matches it pretty well, all said and done!

As mentioned above, the gravity-feed HVLP "upside-down" gun that Trev had bought is a wonderful bit of kit. Easy to set up and tweak (the paint shop guys had given me some base settings to work from), and wonderfully easy to use. With a bit of practice, you could get a great finish with it. I'd highly recommend anyone attempting this sort of project splurge on one - they're not expensive (~$40 from memory), and they use a LOT less paint compared to the old style high pressure guns.

Next time though, I'll need to put down a bigger drop sheet...


Whoops. Oh well - hopefully it's nothing that the pressure cleaner can't fix up!

Sunday morning we tipped the bar forward, and cleaned up the mounting brackets and inside bits of the bar with a spraycan of black. It made a huge difference, and makes the whole thing look factory done instead of the Dodgy Bros backyard job that it is.






Once that had dried, we were able to reassemble the bar, adding back on all the rubber bumpers, the lights, and the polished stainless hoop. The finished product looks great!




Tune in next week as tragedy strikes the project!