OUR CARS – TORRENS
TORRENS HAS HIS MX-5 WHITENED
IT BEGAN as a pimple just above t he driver’s door handle and within a few weeks had become a rash of green/grey primer as my 1990 Mazda MX-5’s white paint began to peel. Immaculate when I’d bought it in 2016, t here was obv iously a problem with the now 27-year-old paint… it was f la k ing of f in small crispy scabs a lmost ever y time I opened the door. Oh, and then the boot-lid began peeling too…
Eeew! Thankfully, I’ve been doing an evening course at TAFE, topping-up my three decades’ worth of back yardhackers’ f i x-it k nowledge with some proper industr ystandard training about automotive panel and paint repair. After classic metalbending and painting sk ills are taught for t he f irst half of t he year, in t he second half of t he year students are expected to bring a long t heir own litt le projects – such as indiv idua l panels or motorcycle f uel tanks; one of my class-mates brought an old-school Kelv inator refrigerator! – to repair and paint under t he teachers’ super v ision.
So instead of hav ing to book-in my Mazda to a collision repair or restoration shop, or attempt to repair t he f la k y paint in the garage at home (a lways fraught wit h problems !), I removed my Mazda’s bootlid and driver’s door, loaded them into my Commodore wagon and took them to TAFE. There, I removed the paint from both panels (can you believe I was able to blast-of f most of t he white
paint with compressed air?) and use paint stripper gel to ta ke t he panels right back to bare metal.
A week later, I primed the t wo panels and in the t hird week, I was able to do a final mask-up and then mix and lay down some lovely fresh Cr ysta l White t wo-pack paint in one of t he four proper paint booths my loca l TAFE has on-site. Both panels were of course baked in t he booth before I took them home.
Once home, I was able to re-hang both the door and the boot-lid onto the Mazda and reassemble the door handle, the lock mechanism and trims before de-nibbing, buff ing (t wo more sk ills taught during the TAFE course) handpolishing and detailing t he entire car to make it look pristine again.
Sure, it’s probably litt le more than a few-hour job in a ‘rea l’ shop – and I had to store my panelchallenged drop-top Mazda in my carport for three weeks – but keep in mind that with signing-in and getting instr uction, the time on-task is 6pm to 9pm and there’s sharing of equipment (such as the paint booths) wit h t he ot her students to consider, too. But no matter what, the TAFE tuition fee is money well spent!
I just hope t he rest of t he original paint stays stuck to my Mazda…