One of the first cosmetic issues I identified with this car, and both the previous GTOs, is the black ridge around the boot.
If you look closely at the above photo you will see that there are a lot of white marks around the black paint. This seems to be a common fault on all GTOs. As I intended to spray all the upper body panels black anyway, it seemed wise to start with one that was already black to limit the potential damage.
Stage one is obviously to mask off the area (cue helper minion). As I am spraying with the same paint used on the wheels (The Halfords Plasti-Dip knock off) the masking off isn't technically necessary if you have a clean edge as it will just peel but I wasn't 100% sure of this stuffs peeling ability, so didnt want to risk it. After doing a few light coats the spoiler was getting in the way, so i pulled it off. A task easier said than done, but once, you get some of the interior plastics out of the way its fairly simple.
I am really impatient when spraying. You are supposed to do very light coats, and wait 15-20 minutes between coats. My coats were, by comparison, fairly heavy, and I kept checking the paint to see if it was dry before respraying after about 5-10 minutes. I dont know if this was detrimental to the finish. This was done outside in a fairly strong, but warm, breeze. Having a spray booth, or garage would have made this task a lot simpler.
The finish is pretty good overall. It used one entire can of paint, and took 5 or 6 layers. I left it about 30 minutes before pulling off the masking, and in hind sight this might have been better left for longer to allow the paint to set. Alternatively prepping the surface would give a better adhesion. When pulling the mask several of the edges started to peel. I caught it in time, but it did require a little remedial work to set the paint in place and prevent further peeling.
As the spoiler was off the car we decided to give it a coat of paint too. My diligent helper took care of this (also masking off the various bits that needed to stay red. The finish on this didn't quite come out as well as it could have done. This was mostly due to the wind, but also the angle of the sun meant it was hard to tell what areas were covered properly. Again, something that would have benefited from an enclosed space.
Returning to the car briefly, the boot lid under the spoiler is quite grubby, so we took this opportunity to give this a quick clean. The spoiler was then re-fitted and everything reassembled.
... and there's the final product. Up close, its not perfect, so I think I will need to revisit this, but it looks fine from a distance. The good thing about these plastic paints is they do peel of cleanly so I can re-do it properly later if I want.
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