Even after the first conversation with Eric from “Used Trailer World” in Sydney I knew that the RoadCruiser was in great condition, although the outside paintwork was looking a little tired. When we first talked with Mrs Barker, (along with her husband, were the first owners of this van) she thought the outside finish was the original paintwork. So to make it a little more presentable we decided to give the outside a respray.
There are a few ways to tackle a repaint.
• The first would be to mask up the windows, clips and lights etc., and repaint the van.
• The second would be to remove everything that is easily removed on the van leaving the windows.
• And the third would be to strip the outside down to a bare shell including the windows and repaint from there.
The last option gives the best finish and is what I would normally do, but taking into consideration that this is the most original RoadCruiser that I know of, and that the RoadCruiser has 6 tinted Perspex windows. I knew that if we removed them they would all need to be replaced with new Perspex. So the decision was made to remove everything else from the van, leaving the windows in place and paint from there.
I removed most of the add on bits from the outside of the van including the annex press studs and clips, the power inlet and a couple of gas labels, which were mainly held on with 1/8 pop rivets and 4 gauge screws. I was also surprised at this stage to find that the van had been repainted at some stage in its life. Once the van was at the workshop I finally removed the clearance and tail lights, number plate, door lock and roof hatch. Since the roof hatch had been removed for painting I also covered the inside of the van with some $2.00 drop sheets to help with the dust and overspray that would come through the hatch.
To start, the van was sanded with 240 grit removing as many of the paint blemishes and chips as possible. Even at this early stage of sanding back the first coat we revealed an undercoat and another coat of white under that. The front of the van was particularly stone chipped, which would be expected after two trips around Australia. So to fix this and other deep imperfections they were filled with flexible body filler and again sanded.
The windows where then masked up as well as anything else that I didn’t want painted and since the sanding didn’t need to go back to the bare fibreglass body we did not need to use an etch primer. The body was then sprayed with a high build primer/filler, and after this was dry a light dusting of black was sprayed over the van. (The black paint is used as a guide to show where you have and haven’t sanded.) The whole body was then sanded again, this time with 1200 grit in preparation for the final coat.
Trying to keep the RoadCruiser as original as possible the final white colour was matched to the original white finish that we found. The final coat was sprayed with 2 pack and unless you have had experience in spray painting I would leave it to the professionals to do this. The 2 pack was mixed using a “slow hardener” to stop the paint from going off too quickly. This helps in spraying a large area like a fibreglass caravan that has no definite starting and stopping areas and helps the spray painter from getting dry areas in the paint where the previous area has started to dry.
To finish the painting the body was then buffed using and electric buffer to remove any tiny imperfections and to give it a high gloss finish.
To finish the outside, I replaced all of the annex clips with new ones along with the original style clearance and tail lights which I had sourced while the painting was under way. The tyres were removed from the rims which were sanded, primed and painted a similar blue of the original stripe that was on the van. The next decision, whether or not to paint the stripe back on. I say yes but Linda says NO.
Repainting photos courtesy of K & D Smash Repairs Unanderra.
The RoadCruiser as we first saw it.
The original white I found under a clearance light.
An area under the number plate bracket which was not painted, it also shows the join of the two outer shells.
The badly stone chipped front of the RoadCruiser.
Sanding and filling under way.
Final preparations before spraying.
The under coat and sanding guide coat applied.
The final 2 pack finish.
The RoadCruiser just about ready to leave the spray painters.
The RoadCruiser with just a couple of jobs to finish.