Painting rub strips while still on the car

This past week I have been working on repainting a few of my rubstrips. I have been thinking about and studying this process for a long time. The paint was getting so thin on a few of them that they were starting to show black under the red. First part of the process was taking a sharp razor and making sure all the paint on the rub strip was disconnected from the body paint. Next I masked off starting with kitchen wax paper. You need to get the wax paper stuck down into the gap and I accomplished with a plastic body trim removal tool to get just enough clearance. It worked best to put on one 3 in. overlapping strip of paper at a time. I think it is important to make sure the paper does get seated in the gap. Total process was about 20 minutes. After that it is just a simple task of mask taping and covering with newspaper. Make sure you are not directly spraying on newspaper with no wax paper or tape to back it up. Now I prepped the rub strip with 600 grit to level it and get something for the paint to stick to.
For the paint I used an automotive qaulity paint mixed in a spray can. It has the hardner and reducer already mixed in and any good auto suppy store who mixes paint can put this in a spray can, only about $20. I believe the best spray nozzles are usually blue. I was lucky to find the exact paint color match using their color eye. It came up as a Chryser color which was not perfect but the Chrysler color next to it in the book named "rio red" was an exact match for my Indoschrott G1. The painting process is very easy and hard to screw up with such a thin strip. Go over it with about 3 coats. I wet sanded with 2000 after the base coat but some guys say you should not wet sand the base coat. If you do make sure you clean it again with thinner before applying the clear coat. For the clear coat I used an automotive grade clear coat in a spray can made by Sem company. Most good paint shops will have qaulity clear coat. Again spraying the clear is easy for such a thin strip. Let that dry for about 1 or 2 days depending on how warm it is and how many coats of clear you applied. Now you are ready to wetsand with 2000 grit. I soak the paper in soap and water for about 5 minuts before starting. It will take the clear off quickly so make sure to use long smooth strokes and go gently. Now it will look like shit. Clean again with thinner and you are ready to rub down with a mild rubbing compound and finshing with a polishing compound. Your surface should now be looking very good after the carefull polisihing. Here are some pics of my process. The rear rub strip has been repainted and it looks very good next to the original door strip. Bottom two pics are the before and after. You should be able to see the ugly blackening that I talking about in the third pic.

Attached files [img]media/attachments/14642=1774-ppaint2.jpg[/img] [img]media/attachments/14642=1775-ppaint6.jpg[/img] [img]media/attachments/14642=1772-rub strip paint.jpg[/img] [img]media/attachments/14642=1773-rubstrippaint2.jpg[/img]

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Looks great. I need to do this on my brothers 87.

WOW! That is AWESOME!!! Great job!

That's the way to figure something out and go for it! Great job. It is indeed interesting about matching paint. For example, I too ended up with a Chrysler metallic gray touch up paint for a Viper. It almost matches my paint perfectly for small abrasions. I just picked it out by eye one day and have had good success with it.

that looks pretty good! well done.